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Poetry
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Have You Seen The Flowers?
By Hero
23 February 2007
This is a poem about flowers and life after death. This is my first piece and so i am treating it as a trial and error aspect.


Have you seen the flowers?


 

Have you seen the flowers grow,

where the soil has been disturbed?

Have you ever considered the coincidence?

I’ll tell you what it means.

To you and me, it means life.

It’s natures way of starting again,

Starting a fresh,

Starting a new.

It’s a way of new opportunities

A new understanding.

Every flower that blooms,

Counts for a soul lost,

But a soul remembered.

Every man lost in world war one,

Was remembered by each poppy that bloomed.

Flowers are laid upon graves.

Why?

Because it’s a soul remembered.

Every battlefield has a flower upon it.

Every grave.

Every bedside table.

Every garden.

What good will come out of that single rose

You laid upon your wife’s grave?

A new life.

A second chance.

A way to understand the world more

And to make it a better place.

We will all become a flower –

A new life.

But what flower is upon our grave –

Reflects who we are.

We could be a rose in a rose garden –

Full of love and happiness

And who is willing to share their love all around.

Or a nettle in an overgrown wreck –

 


Always hurting people without warning

Surrounding crumbled buildings,

Never letting go of the past

Spreading nothing but a cruel sting.

Which flower is upon your grave?

God and nature work in mysterious ways.

God takes your soul

To either hell or heaven

And

Nature shows us what happened to our soul –

Whether any good came from it.

A pretty flower like a tulip means new life.

A horrible weed – like a dandelion –

Means pain and suffering.

You are deceived.

You think its pretty

But then you get a taste of what its really like.

What flowers are in your garden?

Have you seen the flowers?

 

 

 


Reviews

Written by Phil (6683 comments posted) 23rd February 2007
Not for me. This meanders to a pretty unsatisfactory conclusion. It's less poetry and more a non-fiction exploration of an idea. Not too comfortable with the idea either. 
 
Sorry. Perhaps others will disagree. 
 
Phil. 
 
Sorry
Written by Talisker (1326 comments posted) 23rd February 2007
Not for me either. "Dandelions" may be considered "horrible weeds" in your garden (and mine) but they are actually rather beautiful, VERY succesful! edible, medicinal and named after the French "dent de leon" i.e. lions teeth, after their jagged edged leafs. As kids, we used their fluffy seedhead "clocks" to "tell the time". What I'm saying is that I don't believe in good and bad plants. A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. 
 
I will not review your poem line-for-line, there are a lot of errors, in grammar, scansion and sense. I wonder what age you are because, for me, this poem is very immature. 
 
Oli :)
Have you seen the flowers?
Written by CliffBowes (176 comments posted) 23rd February 2007
Hello Hero and welcome to GW with your first work. 
Yes I have seen the flowers. The irony is that when you cut flowers for a grave you actually kill them. 
My view is that this poem is a little too long, try to condense it to about half its size. Also I a not too keen on the reference to God, Heaven and Hell. I don't subscribe to that philosophy. I also quite like dandelions, they look a picture when covering the village green, according to schoolboys the only horrible thing about them is that they make you "pee the bed". This is just my opinion on the technicalities of your work but I'm no expert. Listen to the advice of Talisker and Phil, they are much more knowledgable than I. 
I look forward to reading more of your work. 
Cliff

Written by Kathy (220 comments posted) 23rd February 2007
Hi Hero 
 
Phil and Talisker and Cliff are all far more experienced than me but here's my small contribution. 
 
I think that what you were trying to say was perfectly ok. My understanding is that you were asking us to judge ourselves more truthfully. After that I became a little muddled because there were so many thoughts that it was a bit confusing. 
 
I liked the attempt to diamond shape the poem but your concentration on this meant that the meaning suffered. I think that you might have written this in prose better. 
 
Don't give up and read some other's work to show you some great writing. 
 
Kathy
The Flowers
Written by Josie (2780 comments posted) 23rd February 2007
I'm sorry to say it, but I can't see your writing as a poem as it seems to go against everything that is poetic. Why did you write a piece of prose which was broken up into shaped lines? I agree with the others, and I think that if you put it in the Non Fiction section as prose, in regular lines, it would be much better. Prose carries as much status as poetry - only it is different, of course. We've just had a big debate on this following my poem about what is prose and what is poetry. It's getting to the point where I can't tell one from the other, but then I am not as educated as most on this website.

Written by ellipinnock (1753 comments posted) 26th February 2007
I found this challenging to get through - partly because of the formatting and partly because it meanders a bit and reads a bit like broken up prose.  
 
It's a reasonable premise but needs, I think, more focus to carry it off. I think cliff is right - condense this for starters and see what you're left with... 
 
Elli

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