amanita or agaric, agar to jam and amaranth—
I wish in a past life I were an alchemist,
happy
sipping or sucking dew off John Donne’s or someone’s thumb.
 
I find myself shoegazing foliage, foraging poison and preservation,
eternity in a flower’s wilt-quick petals.
I’ll not look up to confess
the world is much wider
than what my feet could compress.
 
and so what, anyways?
 
really,
I don’t care about a single mushroom cap
no matter how god-wrenching perfect its color.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I can’t care, mercurial whore,
enchanted by another color tomorrow on
just another flower.
saturnine bitch, I don’t care
how deep in thought I can scowl at the fouling flower flesh
fallen to the ground.
and I, plutonian prude, loveless, gloomy and florid,
fix my gaze hell-straight
on dead creators of Jovian Canons,
hellaciously straight, straight-laced legacies.
but I eat agaric uncooked, grow amaranth for its look,
don’t die, don’t live forever,
never name a plant my Elixir or drink such romance down my throat,
o, Solitude, I know this rote—
 
so call me witch. I’d rather forget chemistry.