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I meant to write you about the poppies.
Seductive scarlet mosquitoes swarming,
Biting fields, train tracks, sidewalk cracks,
A passionate rash across Poland.
If I sit still, they grow from my
Sweat glands, tear ducts, scalp.
Mornings I pull opiate petals from my mouth,
Spit the vermilion bitterness of your
Romantic interests,
Which still sprout on my skin
Without my permission.
Your prolific flattery grows red in a ditch.
I itch with insectile urges
A beautiful botanical red plague.

What a lovely thing to read this morning.
I like all the sound plays, though I thought it got a little clunky through here:

Spit the vermilion bitterness of your
Romantic interests,
Which still sprout on my skin
Without my permission.
Your prolific flattery grows red in a ditch.

...the italicized part particularly. which do this without that -
it's grammatically acrobatic compared to the flow of the rest of it.
Maybe if I come back to it after a day or two, I'll be used to it enough to like it.
That happens sometimes.

Now about the message/interpretation/what's being said.
Opiates are mellow, dreamy, euphoric, happy, relaxed, warm, etc.
But here, "poppies" are no longer attractive; sometimes mellow gets to be a drag.
and when something gets to be a drag
and doesn't go away,
resentment toward it builds
until you spit it into a ditch and it bleeds.

The poppies (which I keep mistyping as poopies ~ childish, I know, hee hee hee)
--------------> mosquitoes is really nifty
I like this transmogrification * mosquitification very much
because this person (?)
with his (?)
flattering and his romantic interests keeps buzzing around
what a drag
ugh
and you're so uninterested
and it's so frustrating you just want to scream and slap and scratch
and that all makes you turn red.
like a poopy.
poppy. sorry.
yeah. I like it very much.

Hi nonnymonster
love your poppy poem. your very best posted here
It reads very well indeed .
The flower symbolism associated with poppies is beauty, magic, consolation, fertility and eternal life. The Egyptians included poppies at funerals and in burial tombs. The Greeks used poppies in the shrines of Demeter, goddess of fertility, and Diana, goddess of the hunt. Poppies denote sleep, rest and repose.
Perhaps there is a love been laid to rest here

nonnymonster wrote:Romantic interests,

i think the 's' here is perhaps the most important letter in the poem

Been reading Rimbaud?

Awww, thanks, guys.
Rimbaud hasn't happened to me since I was too young to have any opinions on literature worth having. But I'm sure he's locked up in a corner of my brain somewhere. Clawing at the walls, snarling for food, selling illegal weapons to other parts of my brain, whatever it is that he does in there.

Does still sprouting on my skin work better?

nonnymonster wrote:Does still sprouting on my skin work better?

It seems better nonnyM
I left out 'which still'

How do you think this works

Spit the vermilion bitterness of your
Romantic interests,
sprouting on my skin

Nommy!
I love this. Very visceral with a nice bite to it.

Mornings I pull opiate petals from my mouth,

my favourite line

Mine too Cate!