Stinking Benjamin

[Piscator]

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.7FQ9RLTC4dCiAqzNPAax8AHaJ4?pid=ImgDet&w=176&h=234&c=7&dpr=1.5&cb=idpwebp1&o=7&rm=3

 

[_Land]

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.7FQ9RLTC4dCiAqzNPAax8AHaJ4?pid=ImgDet&w=176&h=234&c=7&dpr=1.5&cb=idpwebp1&o=7&rm=3

“Trillium"
Who bloomed from where the dead things fed.

Three is never simple.
Three is never clean.

She opens
like a warning—
crimson triangle
pressed against moss-laced skin,
an invitation
and a curse.

Not here for show.
Not here for scent.
She reeks
of old roots
and women
who bled into bark
before medicine had names.

Wake-robin,
but don’t call her gentle.
She is first blood
in a thawing forest,
the clot that says:
spring is survival.

No one plants her.
She chooses the wounded ground.
The hollowed places.
The loam that remembers
every body buried
without a name.

A trinity of hunger.
A trinity of healing.
A trinity of hands
that once pulled children
into the world
with nothing but prayer
and the red trillium’s root
clenched between their teeth.

She blooms
not to be picked—
but to be understood.


We grow Trillium up her in our mountain top....
More whites then reds but she is beautiful

_Land

 

[_Land]

“Stinking Benjamin”

A root system of war in three petals

He does not speak—
he spores.
A slow release
of rhetoric disguised
as nectar.

He blooms
where boots have stomped
the last name
from a playground.

Scarlet triad,
his petals split
like a war report:
strategic,
surgical,
successful—
if you don’t count the children.

A forest-floor god,
he feeds
on what decays—
history, hope,
the hushed bones
of diplomacy.

His crown leans
not toward sun,
but smoke—
a phototropism
for ruin.

Each leaf
a signed decree
folded like shrapnel
in the mouth
of a diplomat
too tired to scream.

They say his roots
trace back to kings—
that his name
was carved from scripture
and armed
with modern teeth.

But this Benjamin
does not bless.
He builds borders
from bone.
His nectar—
a serum of silence.
His fruit—
a crimson denial
wrapped in a flag.

He smells
like the inside
of a forgotten prayer—
one that once begged
for milk and figs,
now drowned
in policy and phosphorus.

You want to pluck him?
You can’t.
He doesn’t die—
he divides.
Shoots new growth
with every televised grief.
A perennial
with an appetite
for aftermath.

And still,
he insists he is a flower.
He insists he is
order.

But the forest remembers.
And even prophets
can rot
in their own
garden of war.

 

[Piscator]

“Stinking Benjamin”

A root system of war in three petals

He does not speak—
he spores.
A slow release
of rhetoric disguised
as nectar.

He blooms
where boots have stomped
the last name
from a playground.

Scarlet triad,
his petals split
like a war report:
strategic,
surgical,
successful—
if you don’t count the children.

A forest-floor god,
he feeds
on what decays—
history, hope,
the hushed bones
of diplomacy.

His crown leans
not toward sun,
but smoke—
a phototropism
for ruin.

Each leaf
a signed decree
folded like shrapnel
in the mouth
of a diplomat
too tired to scream.

They say his roots
trace back to kings—
that his name
was carved from scripture
and armed
with modern teeth.

But this Benjamin
does not bless.
He builds borders
from bone.
His nectar—
a serum of silence.
His fruit—
a crimson denial
wrapped in a flag.

He smells
like the inside
of a forgotten prayer—
one that once begged
for milk and figs,
now drowned
in policy and phosphorus.

You want to pluck him?
You can’t.
He doesn’t die—
he divides.
Shoots new growth
with every televised grief.
A perennial
with an appetite
for aftermath.

And still,
he insists he is a flower.
He insists he is
order.

But the forest remembers.
And even prophets
can rot
in their own
garden of war.

 

[Piscator]

Stinking Benjamin Purple/ Red Trillium (Trillium erectum)



not a nice name for one of the first flowers of spring

though I admit that coltsfoot, dandelion, crocus

and snowdrops emerge even earlier

I like the phallic inuendo of the Latin name

which my anal spell check always corrects to ‘rectum’

and admit I’m curious what its Greek name might be.

Wake Robin is another common name is as around here

and the American robin (Turdus migratorius)

— I kid you not —

comes back early too

it’s not a flower to sniff – unless you are

attracted to the smell of carrion which

this, otherwise, charming flower emits to

attract the flesh flies who pollinate the flower

and get a light snack in return for their

part in the circle of life.​

 

[_Land]

All About the Benjamins

The dream was velvet—
a slow-burn sax riff
in the back alley of my chest,
where hope once moonlighted
as a jazz singer
and I swore I’d never trade
her voice for coin.

But rent has a growl.
Eviction notices don’t applaud ambition.
And the fridge don’t give a damn
how brilliant my verses bleed.

So I sold pieces.
Piano keys turned into spreadsheets.
Brush strokes became side gigs.
Midnight musings—muted
by 5 a.m. alarms
and the gospel of the grind.

I’ve kissed the lips of survival
with a mouth chapped from poetry.
Watched my dream shrink
until it fit in the margins
of tax returns and tired eyes.

Benjamin Franklin
became my priest—
I confessed to him each time
I traded soul for solvency.
He never blinked.
Never asked about the art.
Just laid there, smug and folded,
in the cracked wallet
where my passion used to sleep.

And yet—
something in me still hums
off-key lullabies
to that velvet vision.
I remember her.
Even if I can’t afford her.

She was never
all about the Benjamins.
But I guess I
had to be