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pencil-neck flowers
by David McLean © 2007

the pencil-neck flowers insult the trees
with the vacuous vulgarity of polychrome
unreality, garish colours worthy of their
vegetable infidelity and vaunted vapid

learning, the unconscious vacuum within
them that makes a flower stink to heaven,
their scent a mind's death on their sluttish
breath. the trees themselves are a silent

chatty commentary on our incongruous
love of nothing. only in meat is meaning
and the promise of death that is
semantics, the trees know nothing

of this, they do not exist;
though they insist on standing there,
like temples alone on a dead hill,
their dream that makes world be

a minute, the innocent trees
the needy trees, dream me
and their childish hungry belief -
for seem is better than be

 

My name is David McLean. I was born in Wales in 1960 though I've lived in Sweden since 1987. I've been submitting seriously for about a year and, as of the end of October 2007, I have round 350 poems in, or accepted by, 154 magazines online or in print. A chapbook “a hunger for mourning” is available from Erbacce press and Lulu. More information here and in my blog, where there are links to various online publications.