Fill This House With Flowers

I want to empty out this house
And fill it with flowers

I want them to pour forth
Like a flood
Like I'm flooding the place
Like you're flooding the place
With flowers

I want them stuffed in sofa cushions
I want them left on windowsills
I want them planted in the bathtub
I want them sprinkled all over my hardwood floors
I want to see them poking out
From underneath my front door
When I come home at night

I don't know why
I deprive myself
Of things I love

I don't know why
I don't just eat ice cream
Whenever I want to

I don't know why
I get up every day
At the crack of dawn
To excercize
To do something I hate
Because I think I have to

Maybe I have to
But I also shouldn't have to
It should be a choice
And if it is
Then why am I choosing it?

How many years
Can I really be adding onto my life?

Isn't it just as likely
That they'll find a lump tomorrow
And everything I've done
Up until this point
Will have been useless?

Maybe I'm rationalizing
Maybe it's so
I can just eat the damn ice cream
In the refrigerator

Maybe I'm wrong
For wanting that

But flowers

What could be wrong
About wanting to surround yourself
With flowers?

What could be more natural
Than that?

If I made a list right now
Of all the things
That would make me happy

Flowers
Would be on top

And that's accessible
It's not money
It's not power
It's not some man

Just flowers

So why not do it?
Why do I know what
Will make me happy
And yet deny myself
That very thing?

Because I want someone else
To give it to me?

How ridiculous
How absolutely ridiculous

I'm going to fill this house with flowers

I'm going to stop waiting
For somebody else to do it

I'm going to go out
I'm going to clear out
Some road-side stand
And I'm going to make this place
A goddammed greenhouse

And every day I'll wake up
And without any cliche at all
I'll be smelling the roses

I'll be surrounded by beauty
I'll be enveloped by nature
I'll be wrapped up
In things I love

And I'll have done it for myself

I'll have taken this tiny place
And made it overflow
With flowers