yellow tulips
Yellow Tulips
by eileen myles
I was walking along the sidewalk
in all the daily pain
& miserable faces & awful air.
Up above in a flower box
were yellow tulips, too real
to be real, so big
and sexual looking in
that funny way flowers
always are. I guess
they were like heads
poking in from another
world. How do you
like Wednesday, you
beautiful things?
I like this.
We are in part a product of our environment. Ugliness reluctantly gives way to beauty…just one or is it the main challenge of the human struggle–to find and hold onto perhaps something as miniscule as a pretty tulip. It is a small material icon to behold, yet charges us with an infinite sense of wonderfully pleasant feelings.
Nature’s architecture is the most profound art.
Thanks for sharing Eileen!
yeah, i like it too. good poem for a wednesday.
This poem is ok. But I have to say that first, lines 2 and 3 are weak. In this instance, I think some extra imagery would be helpful. And second, I love the way you describe flowers as “sexual looking,” BUT the phrase you use “too real to be real” is a bit cloying.
you mean “cloyding” right?
I would say that “cloyding” is way worse than cloying. It’s probably even worse to say “this poem cloyds” than “this poem sucks.”