The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide

The Disquieting Threat of Floral Hazards

He avoided florists,
those over-cultivated blooms
in their overheated shops
seemed to be a perversion of nature.

He shunned all those floral gangsters;
the vainglorious gladioli,
eugenically forced greenhouse geraniums
with their large Shar-Pei heads.
Garish claustrophobic hosts of peonies
pressing-in and crowding his mind
with a ballooning menace.
His stomach trembled when confronted
with petulant Pelargonium
or the silent perfumed farts of the deadly Dahlia.

Charles Darwin, thought these latter-day
angiosperms as, “an abominable mystery.”
They are life-forms born of missing links,
genetically modified to eat oxygen
out of human brains.
They are the epitome of those hard drugs
that invade our senses.
For him, the Day Lily
was a pall-bearing pale monstrosity.

Seemingly innocuous bunches of Mums
are well known to gather in smug mobs
at a time of year
when our greatest need
is for fresh air.

Passing all flower shops
he cringes away,
and will not pay a penny
for any kind of noxious poesy
or floral frippery.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2022

Poem

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The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace