Be Like Them by Clover Mullins
Learn to be like nature,
Calm until your storm.
You can be as tranquil
Or as chaotic
As you’d like.
Rage when they poison you
With their deleterious ways of inhabitation.
Whisper to them,
The sweet sounds of gentle wind
When they beg for forgiveness,
And only then, you may ripen their fruit.
Do not enable such insignificant creatures
To vex you.
You should learn to be like them,
The trees.
Full of color, full of life.
They provide the air you breathe.
Extend your arms like their branches,
And allow yourself to grow
In the gold-lit heavens.
See their roots, how they flow with water
The same way our veins flow with ichor.
See their leaves, how they change
With the world,
Grant yourself permission to do the same.
Green, flowered and rich of berries,
Bug eaten, yellow, orange and fallen,
Crisp, bare, and finally, gone.
Be like the Lily of the Valley;
Seemingly Innocent and sweet
Upon eyes first gaze,
But poised with toxins upon intrusion.
When the Deadly Nightshade
Offers you berries,
Take them.
Chew them.
Swallow them.
Savor their sickly saccharine taste,
And it’ll show you how to become
illusive and lethal.
Should you ever come upon a Clover,
Reach into the bed
Of Stinging Nettles
And pull it out with
The ruby blood
Still fresh on your hands.
Count the leaves.
Does it have 3?
It’s useless.
Throw it down.
Stomp it, crush it into
The cold, hard, corpse filled earth,
And leave it to rot.
You don’t want to be like that one.
If it holds 4,
Keep it.
Study it.
Be identical to it,
That one brings luck.
Treasure it,
The serendipitous encounter;
Should it be your last?
Be like a Rose;
Alluring and elegant
Wearing its most exquisite shade of scarlett.
Read with your hands how
The petals encase it so perfectly.
Run them down the body of its stem
And feel how hypnotizing
The sensation is,
As the thorns pierce your dainty skin,
Painting it the color of desire
And lust.
Be the personification
Of the color yellow;
A Dandelion.
Happy, and overflowing with euphoria.
Brave as just a seedling,
Wild and free as it drifts through
The lovelorn skies,
Not a hint of hesitation
In its entirety.
Take note of how it always has
A golden beam,
Contagious to all around.
Do not diminish it
Into a vain weed.
It is moral with a pure heart,
Unblemished by hate
And envy.
Befriend the mushrooms,
Royalty among the forests.
Let them lead you
To their foliaged kingdom,
The melancholic graveyard.
Begin to memorize how to do their work.
Necrotize all remits
Of the rotting corpse beneath you,
And slowly wither it
Into an ashy, nebulous,
Echo of silence.
Spider Lilies remain
The only sentient being
In the ghostly meadow,
Only acquainted by the toadstools,
As they comfort the despair ridden,
Crestfallen souls.
Now, take it in.
All of it.
Relish in the knowledge
Of the sagacious world
That you have come to know
So dearly.
Prepare yourself for what comes next,
Because that was only a brief overview
Of the exterior of the Earth.
Envision the Kleos
That is held only
By the rings of Saturn.
The torrid humidity of Jupiter’s storm
As it cradles you
In a whirlwind of corruption.
The warm tenderness and compassion
Of our dear Venus, as you liquify
In her nurturing arms of light.
You will be every star
That has ever been born,
And shadows of all
That have been forgotten.
Set ablaze whatever past recollection
That you have of who you used to be.
That thing is gone now, good riddance.
Plunge into the depths
Of the new essence
You have created,
And absorb it all.
Ascend.
Clover Mullins is a 16 year old sophomore student at Wolfe County High School in Campton, Kentucky. It has been writing ever since it learned how to hold a pencil steady. Its choice of style, in regards to both fashion and writing, seem to be ever-changing, but it likes to stick to the gloomier side of things. If it had to choose something to do forever, it would choose poetry.