Heroin and Oranges

A verse that has no rhyme may speak of love No doves required – all poets sing for joy For we may write at last of oranges Forbidden fruit as sweet as heroin In words that do not rhyme with anything In lines that no one cares about at all And doves, well they’re just pigeons after all Unnecessary when it comes to love For lovers see romance in anything No need for complex rhyming schemes, a joy That floods within the veins like heroin As pure and bittersweet as oranges The virgin orchards groan with oranges She never wrote of oranges at all Until today, or wrote of heroin Or now you come to mention it, of love Not truthfully, for she finds little joy In telling everything and anything To everyone. There isn’t anything To tell, she lied, and picked the oranges The juice upon her fingers smelled of joy She licked her fingers then she picked them all And drunk on oranges she wrote of love And of the bittersweet of heroin There was no poetry in heroin Just days when nothing rhymed with anything No lust for life, and even less for love ‘You know where you can stick your oranges’ She would have said. For heroin was all She needed then, for all its bitter joy How strange - no doves, no judgement - only joy Came flooding through her veins like heroin And spilled upon the page. She wrote it all In words that didn’t rhyme with anything For we may write at last of oranges And how they smell as bittersweet as love Strange kind of joy, not finding anything That rhymes with heroin and oranges - And that is all I have to say of love © Gail Foster 26th January 2019