Do Not Touch the Roses
Public Announcement Challenge
Public Announcement
DO NOT TOUCH THE ROSES
If you are the one of many people that has been picking these roses on the grounds of the owner, please stop immediately.
This Is Private Property
The Roses are :
For beauty......
For fragrance.......
For admiring............
However, if you are snipping the roses off, and taking them home....
PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY
If you are of the Canine Persuasion- This is for stray canines
I Am Talking To You
Please don't lift your leg on the rosebush, or the roses, for that matter. If you are a female canine, please don't squat next to the rosebush.
Your urine, kills the bush, and it kills the beautiful flowers.
If You Are a Canine Walking on a Leash
You have an owner, and I would appreciate the owner not to letting his or her dog to desecrate this beautiful bush.
It may have started out, with Rosebuds...
However, it turned into something, more beautiful than words. You might say it has the "Wow", factor.
So leave the "ROSES" on the bush, for everyone to enjoy their beauty and their aroma.
Signed...
The Owner of the Rosebush
About the Creator
Gregory Payton
I am retired Air Force. I like to write poetry, and about the economy, and about current event. I have lost a lot in my life and I also write about processing grief.
I hope you find my work interesting.
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More stories from Gregory Payton and writers in Poets and other communities.
A Little Bit Of God
January 2026 I thought I’d spend the night in neon lights on grainy film but my brother is telling me how an eternity of hell is caused by prevalent peace, and who am I to disrupt such a thing? So I found myself in the same skin with the same sights, wondering whether or not I am one of those– do I feel peace? Do I expect more when it is gone? It being everything. We’re running out of time but the car is belching up something strange and we’ve got God in between our eyes nodding along to every apology and plea spoken for our friends and loved ones– they don’t know any better, they’ll come around eventually. He’s telling me about barbed wire guides around lives and ties and wives and lies and, look, the snow is starting to fall so I guess we better hang up soon. But it’s been too long. We’re building fields of skills and realms of distrust and these moments are only seen now, can no longer be read as words, only swept with eyes upon oil pastels or smudged charcoal. It’s a painting of an evening, like Daniel’s soles in Edgar Degas’ mind, but if anything is just it’s the lack of unrest in skin like His and lives like this– okay, so maybe five hours on the phone is a lot if you have a job and you’re trying to cook dinner, but only one of us falls into that gorge and only one of us believes in what lies beneath it. My brother tells me things that sit in my spirit like half an ounce of prospect and a squeeze of bourn, how he tells God to let me in: despite my sins, despite all the moons in between these calls, despite the burning in both of our throats. I do feel peace here. I also feel that my peace is a subpar window job, a pinky’s strength avoiding blizzards inside the bedsheets. I’d like to spend more nights like this, with contrasting disaster living between a speakerphone, and God finding some space in between.
By Olivia Dodge2 days ago in Poets
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