Blue Roses

There's a new Gardner in the rose garden

Maybe it’s the old man himself

With all this mist in my eyes

I cannot tell

There's a new Gardner in the rose garden

He prunes and rose petals fall to the ground  

The roses are pretty

They take your breath away

Roses white

Roses red

Roses yellow kissed by the sun

Roses every color beneath the big blue sky

Like wool from sheep he snips, and he shears

Big scissors pruning the tiniest of petals

Every stem he cleans

Until all the earth is a bed of rose petals

And on every stem only thorns remain

The Gardner tends carefully to these thorns

He gives each new thorn a name

He knows it from when it was a bud

While the petals die on the ground

And their beauty is trampled under his heavy feet

The thorns grow bigger and sharper

More terrible to behold with each passing day

The Gardner bestows on us beautiful bouquets of thorns

Bushes so stunning we forget what color the roses were

From near and far we all come to behold

Weary and bent over from sadness and sorrow

We each receive a bushel of thistles and thorns

We water them with our tears

We clutch them in our raised bleeding fists

The thorns cut deep

Our voices cry out from deep inside our bleeding hearts

The roses are dead!

All the beautiful petals are trampled on the ground

Let us beat ourselves with these bouquets of thorns

And do penance for our sorrow is great

Who shall put an end to this horror?

Where shall we go and hide our faces from the evil Gardner?

Roses grow not well in his garden

We must watch over them now by day and by night

No one trusts the Gardner anymore

He prunes and he smashes every petal from every Rose

Yet every day his garden grows

I think he waters it with our pain and our sorrow

Mixes it with the blood from our raised fists

And watches each day as our grief reaches to the heavens above

The Gardner has shaped in us a new misery

There is no shadow of hope in our hearts

We are defeated and we have left our senses behind

We feel nothing at last, we can’t even taste the air

With each rose he cuts down,

The earth is run over with decay

Bloodied petals floating in a stream of tears

Bloodied hands grasping and searching this river of pain

“Have you seen the petals that match my beautiful rose?”

Everyone is searching and finding not

Who shall rescue us from the judgment of this generation?

When will the Roses feel the sun and the air again?

Is the Gardner at fault for tending to this garden?

From Columbine to Sandy Hook

From Stoneman Douglas to Uvalde

The Gardner has broken us all

The Gardner knows just what we long for

Red, white, and yellow roses with the best silky soft petals

But blue roses are what the Gardner wants to grow

Blue rose with big sharp thorny stems

The unlikely preferred blossom for this enlightened generation

We are too busy to tend to our own gardens

No one sees the sunrise

And nobody knows a sunset

This the Gardner knows all too well

In his garden the sun nether sets nor rises

Broken hearts and hopeless spirits

Are its rising and falling

Yet this garden only grows

Tomorrow there will be more roses to prune

A lot more thorns to sharpen

More wailing in the streets

More tears to water the earth

But I alone have a secret that I might share

For I now know the mystery of this world

The key to a good life

My heart has found something worth living for

A thing more precious than my own dear life

I have planted a garden of my own

It faces to the east where hope rises with the morning sun

And rests in the west with the dusk when stars come out shining

I tend to my own garden

With a song for every bright and blossoming flower

I have named each rose in my garden

I shall not lay to waste any of their purpose

My rose garden is my sanctuary and the crown of my heritage

Bloom for me bloom

Beautiful rose of mine

Bloom before me

And the Gardner shall not pluck you out

From my strong and powerful hand

Drink in the sunrise

And strengthen your petals while I shield you with my love

Dance into the sunset

And make my heart proud with the sound of your merry making

Beautiful roses of my youth

 Beautiful roses so rare

A beautiful field of roses

That covers my whole heart.