Three Cactus Pots Near a Purple Wall

Poet's note: There's a story behind this stucco purple stair step/wall that these three cactus pots are sitting on. It isn't stucco. It's papercrete.

I snapped this image at a west Texas bed and breakfast in 2007 which had been completely constructed of papercrete by the proprietors-- even the tiny swimming pool. (And it didn't leak, either, so there.) No going to the old Home Depot to buy material for these folks. They literally built the place from, well, the discarded paperwork on up.

And one day I ask myself, all right, so why should I be all round and cuddly but with prickles that are more like tickles?

Who said I needed to be a so-called Teddy Bear cactus?

Who told me that, who put that in my head?

Why can't I be tall, spiky, difficult, demanding?

This bad boy look like a Teddy Bear to you?

I'd probably swear some right now but there are ladies present...

Yes, over there, in the vegetable garden

Yeah, you can kiss my grits, and those ladies over there can kiss them double

No more Mr. Nice Teddy Bear

That was never me, that was fake-me all curled in on myself to be somebody I wasn't

Fit in a pot next to a bunch of well-rounded grit-kissers

I'm so not like those guys

Sick of twisting myself up in a ball to pretend I am

Hey

I'm not prickly just for the sake of offending people, you know

Being prickly is sort of a principle of mine

A thing I do

A proof of sincerity

Spiky and difficult and real, it's who I am

The insincere are never prickly

They're all smooth and honey/sugar/darling

Goodbye to all that

And goodbye to being all cute and cuddly and round

Who said a cactus had to be round?

I'm not limiting myself with that BS anymore.

This bad boy cactus is going to shoot up

like so many blades of grass

What d'you mean, I spoil the lines of the photo?

Your photo can kiss my spiky grits

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