artificial gardens

                           I sauntered throughout artificial gardens of our lives
                           mindless and sorrowful
                           discontented and
                           hardly taking a moment
                           to ponder the blanched daffodil
                           its aromatic toxicity lingered round
                           the electric epicenter
                           gilded hedges of protective perimeter
                           swaddled a kaleidoscopic botany
                           of putrid degradation  
    
                           Years precariously lapsed out of my arms
                           into her small pallid wrist
                           frail fingertips grazed our recollection into
                           subterranean parlor tricks
                           a bleak apartment on the west side
                           where working people went
                           reclining before evening television

                           Indignant telephone calls made
                           amid sultry morning hours
                           plaintively babbling
                           hurtful heroics at
                           the collective memory girl
                 
                           In your baby's arms tonight
                           not throughout eternity
                           we glimpsed an eclectic arrangement
                           of wireless hyacinths
                           gemstone and jewel-like
                           not down to the
                           hot shallow seed        
                           of stolid
                           center