Roses are red, violets are blue, the number of genders is still only two

elodieunderglass:

9thbutterfly:

elodieunderglass:

sodomymcscurvylegs:

Roses are red

You love hetero cis compliance

You clearly never passed fourth grade science

The wildest rose is pink – or sometimes white, 

Dog-rose, bramble, sweet briar, eglantine;  

A thorn of tooth and claw, resisting blight;

Speaks first survival, not someone’s valentine.

Dog-violet’s purple – we once called it blue,

“Purple” being new, a word for modern times.

Now we laugh: “They used to think it blue?”

Now we have new words, to make fun of older rhymes. 

The wildest rose is white, or sometimes pink.

A thorn of tooth and claw and hedgerow powers.

How strange and sad it must be to think

That roses must be red: of artificial flowers –

For that’s labeling the rose as binary,

Divorced from context, as flattened red emoji:

But Rosa spans a spectrum: arbor, bush and vinery,

And there’s no straight answer in biology.

Why not have Rosa real, a thousand forms all true –

Some blooms blood-black, a prized diversity;

When eyes and words show violets are not blue,

Why not see truth? and in truth reality –

For I do love a garden, and I have roses three.

One red as rhymes, one white with faint pink edge.

My favorite’s orange-yellow, but still I love to see

The wildest rose: the answer in the hedge.

From nameless thorns, all others came unfurled –

This, then, is the complicated world.

I love Elodie’s poetry like I love her prose

so here, dear friend, I offer you a rose

or two, or three,

so many colours to see

they come in many shapes, and sizes too,

just like us human beings do

and if what nature gives us does not suffice

we can dye them all colours, isn’t that nice?

(I think there’s beauty and reassurance in this,

if, for example, you are not cis)

Sodomymcscurvylegs deserves flowers too

so here are some violets, definitely not blue

and anon deserves more than our scorn,

here is, just for them, a nice pointy thorn

LOOK AT THAT IT’S SO PRETTY AND NICE!! I love the couplets and the roses!!!

(with the benefit of distance, I’ve realized everything that’s wrong with my own poem, so please don’t read it again, but definitely look at @9thbutterfly ‘s clever flowers though)