Garden of Dictatorship

Forcing bulbs is no easy feat
because bulbs can never be spaded open.
But you found the way,
the way of the trowel
too hard to resist under your
broad bonnet, and flowered gloves,
those hands calloused and bruised.

In the garden of your dictatorship
you dominate the flower tender,
forcing the bulb to do your will
when it could bloom as well without you.
When all that is needed is, not the
shade of your inadequacies, but
the sunlight of acceptance.

Limpid pools of tears  wet his roots.
And the fertilizer of your anger
was the flower's food, and became
part of  the stem, so that same anger
would rise up in a poisoned bouquet;
a fragrance noxious to the nose.
The scent of death is sweetest, after all,
when the bloom is brightest.