Lisianthus nigrescens

"there is no such thing as black flowers"

but here i am for your consideratio
latin name et al, nothing more than
an entangled mess still rootbound
to a porous terracota matrix
filled with mineral shards of fears

"don't waste too many resources into this"

just a side project left to slowly rot
in an underfunded research lab
teeming with laborious plant scientists
and their duplicitous truth optics

"surely there is a cue for the pollinators"

is this still a question about vision
i wonder as i quietly unfurl myself
looking through the fluid glassworks
of my suspiciously dark floral tissues

"did you run a thorough analysis of the pigments?"

and thus, i become nothing but a lens
super-sensitive to threats of proximity
both broken and entire amidst lush forms
that flicker and then vanish without a trace

"those review papers are pure bullshit"

scentless, blacker than high-end velvet
palpable shadow of every bedding annual
i still clutch the promise of seeds in my fists
an abject circle of asymptotic physiologies

"I mean, it readily produces offspring"

i feel myself through shooting stars of stress-signals
grasping the fluxing chaos of my headless body
meristems slowly dissolving into delirious desire
for a life beyond Sun's cloying affections

"maybe field observation could help"

Linnaeus would surely describe me
as a God-denying abomination
and Darwin would certainly wait for me
to come out as moth-pollinated

"plants are all about sex, even Plato said it!"

unable to reach into a deeper sense of self
or at least cry out in color for a proxy
i induce the secretion of thorny words
such as "resire" and "pataphytics"

"such a weird species, maybe Nature will showcase us"

unfit for human consumption
i absorb every possible hue
and then i proudly transmute it
into useless heat and confusion

"at least it can be marketed as a horticultural novelty"

and yet i can still bloom to death
while I learn how to cut myself
into smaller and smaller pieces
eager to choke this loving world
in blindingly iridescent blackness.