The Problem with Growing Things comes from The Greenwood Poet, a book that came out last week as part of my ongoing romance with doubling my years on odd years and then writing that many poems.

I spent a couple of years, off and on, writing about the gothic fantastic and the environment and death, before and after COVID (thought that obviously wasn’t the original intent). I’m going to serialize them on the site for subscribers. If you subscribe for three months, you’ll get this for free. And besides, subscribing is free for the first seven days, so why not try out the Showbear archive?

Of course — 20% will be free for everyone and I encourage you to pick up a copy of the hardback.

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The Problem with Growing Things

The Greenwood grows, gains in the spirit
Of Providence’s priming, pruning the vines,
Climbs cleanly and cleaves the steel
I-beams and each armored truck
And concrete block, captivating Manhattan
By the tanglewood of thundering Brooklyn,
Cracked marble, creased highways, 
Root thunders and breaks new roads:

I’m seated among the rich, certain elites
Of city center, seeing their weeding, 
Their breeding attempts to banish shoots
And shoot the shit about green leaves
They made grey and marbled yellow.
They wield herbicide, overlooking 
How they’re dying, they are the dead
In these catacombs. Calling to me 
In the morning as I rise to make poems,
Calling, “Copy our copy, writer.”

I am in labor. Love-making
Impregnated me with poetry and I swelled
For nine months. New language
Is forcing its way through my five holes,
Tearing things. Teaching these Mad Men:

Greenwood grows, glows in the cracks
Of the archipelago, eating pains
To shit light where the shame should go–
It knows what we need, nestled green
Where rust creeps, running the schemes 
of ruin and wrath and beckons with disease
By growing things. Greenwood thrives
In the wings of the world by wing-seeding.
Word-seething. Whittling verse
And wakening song and unweeding
Concrete playgrounds that cultivate the famous.

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Photo by Jannet Serhan on Unsplash