The Garden

They came to me where I lay
in the poisonous bed,
center square of the rejection garden.

They came to me and said
if there were any real danger
we wouldn’t be here.

They came to me and said,
you can take it, friend.  Said,
you were born for this.

All I wanted was to suddenly find myself
somewhere else, in another time,
perhaps in another world, 

and they came and stood over me
and told me to endure and to wait
and to see the blooms above me

as some show of hope for the future.
They said a lot of things.  I tried to explain
that the flowers they asked me to love

were killing me, that they themselves
had planted them in my flesh,
that they fed upon me,

that they were rooted in me
and tore me, that I lay and thrashed
and screamed, that I did not see

how they could be blind to this,
how they could be deaf to this,
how they could not see me dying

in the poisonous bed,
the center square
of the rejection garden.

They walked away saying,
see how lovely the world is? See how 
the wind bends the garden to and fro?