Heroin and Oranges
A verse that has no rhyme may speak of love
No doves required – all poets sing for joy
For we may write at last of oranges
Forbidden fruit as sweet as heroin
In words that do not rhyme with anything
In lines that no one cares about at all
And doves, well they’re just pigeons after all
Unnecessary when it comes to love
For lovers see romance in anything
No need for complex rhyming schemes, a joy
That floods within the veins like heroin
As pure and bittersweet as oranges
The virgin orchards groan with oranges
She never wrote of oranges at all
Until today, or wrote of heroin
Or now you come to mention it, of love
Not truthfully, for she finds little joy
In telling everything and anything
To everyone. There isn’t anything
To tell, she lied, and picked the oranges
The juice upon her fingers smelled of joy
She licked her fingers then she picked them all
And drunk on oranges she wrote of love
And of the bittersweet of heroin
There was no poetry in heroin
Just days when nothing rhymed with anything
No lust for life, and even less for love
‘You know where you can stick your oranges’
She would have said. For heroin was all
She needed then, for all its bitter joy
How strange - no doves, no judgement - only joy
Came flooding through her veins like heroin
And spilled upon the page. She wrote it all
In words that didn’t rhyme with anything
For we may write at last of oranges
And how they smell as bittersweet as love
Strange kind of joy, not finding anything
That rhymes with heroin and oranges -
And that is all I have to say of love
© Gail Foster 26th January 2019
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