The Disquieting Threat of Hazardous Blooms

I avoid those floral gangsters, vainglorious Gladioli, eugenically forced greenhouse Geraniums with their large Shar-pei heads. Garish claustrophobic chromatic mobs, their heavy menacing over-cultivated smells. Charles Darwin, thought these latter-day angiosperms as: “an abominable mystery.” They are life-forms born of missing links, genetically modified to eat oxygen, perhaps out of our human brains? Dogs and cows are immune to their deleterious charms, but we who are drawn to color and form, sniff them out, as if they were hard drugs. O you Peony, overgrown Day Lily, you seemingly innocuous bunches of Mums, I see you, you smug and pretty enticers, you mesmerizing Rasputin's! I cringe, hold my breath, reluctantly bring those heady eye-catchers home to my darling, who waits for yet more perfumed love letters.