Rotting Flowers

The blossoms are still scarlet even when you close your eyes

And something in you knows

That when your mind says you can trust your sight

Every bit of it is lies

Does it matter that what you see is rotting

When melting flowers still smell sweet?

 

At the end of the day, walking home

You stop to smell the roses

And you can see the rag-and-bone man

Coming out to start his day

And does it matter that your eyes are saying

The sweet-scented night is empty

When in your bones you know

You saw a shadow at the end of the alley?

Only for a moment as you stopped

To smell the roses, mixed with the sweetness

Of yesterday’s bread as it decomposes

 

Probably just your mind playing tricks on you

But at the end of the day, if your mind plays tricks

Are you sure you’d catch it in the act?

You ask your mind whether you can trust it

“Of course you can,” says the mind, with total confidence

And like any confidence game

If you do it right, the mark will never know

What hit them

They just know they’ll never be the same

 

And deep down you don’t really want to know

Don’t want to peek behind the curtain

Too scared of what it is that you might find

Out of sight and out of mind

But at the end of the night

The rag-and-bone man walks home too

But he walks away whistling, because

 

He saw something beautiful at the end of the alley

And much to his joy, and perhaps to your sorrow

While you won’t have a thing to see

When you walk home tomorrow

And you’ll never know what melting roses mean

The beauty will still be there for him

Just waiting to be seen

 

The blossoms are still scarlet even when you close your eyes.