My friends, my old friends:

our ways are no longer the same.

Our collapsing culture has alarmed you:

it enlivens me with darkest joy.

The pressure of our panicked architecture

has made me soft in the places

where you have hardened; it has

made me hard in the places

where you are soft.

Still, the flowers bloom, now

with something akin to vehemence,

in my vaginal, hot-peeled eyes.

But the stem from a refulgent Earth

is rooted deeper than this body, this time.

My girth grows in the tunnels

where you still refuse to go.

I'll let you wilt on the outside,

in the same place where

these blades and blossoms reign.

I can feel the pain of the water,

the erotic infusion of photosynthesis,

deep in the soil, in the cool caves

that my hands have painted.

I don't need sainthood to be resurrected.