This poem not about flowers just goes to show

how far we’ve come since the days

when people could practically not think

without a daffodil, when in poetry

a rose was not yet just a rose

but always stood for some trivial catastrophe

and unborn tulips blew the markets into bubbles.

Those lily-livered vegetable-lovers

(the poets) must have been too busy then

sobbing into their patrons’ garden parties,

the lotus-eating painters too busy

fawning over lifeless plants

none of them could picture anything so beautiful

as the head of Ted Cruz on a plate

his once-smug face wreathed in marjoram

and rosemary, arnica and chicory

and held aloft by cherubim laughingly

reminding us that all things fade

and even he, the youthful Senator,

will one day be implanted in a Texan plot

covered over with bluebonnets

and primroses and mountain pink.

But forget the flowers, remember

there is no hell, only decay

and the corruption of his life

which this poem frankly

wishes to accelerate.