Malagasy on the Island of Vanilla II

Speaking Malagasy on the Isle of Vanilla II
(With apologies to Ms. McCullough)

Vanilla comes from Madagascar, growing on a vine
Like a wine it takes the years to mature
Though it’s male and female flowers grow together
The stalks are tough enough for love.

I wonder why it takes so long when such a small distance stands between
Perhaps the leaning of the vine makes the flowers look away or blush
In the summer rain, failing to mix and match like children
Until somebody, maybe themselves, maybe the French maid, reminds them of their gender

The language is spoken there is not Romantic and has no gender
Except the little they borrow from the French
Who though they left so little, took so much.
Like vanilla, like gender, like romance which must be planted and nurtured long
Until it blooms and blushes and meets in the middle
Speaking French and blushing-blushing

Malagasy, the language of the isle is not French
Or romantic, but how could romance be without gender?
Does love feel the same if there is no distinction?
Still, at least there are plurals there

Child-Child and book-book but never French-French
For the French have left and it’s hard to get a Latinate to go there.
A singular place with simple plurals
Repeating gender-gender bad-bad
Rancid repetition sweetly overdone
With real sugar and never HFS          
Or maybe things just overripen on the vine and rot-rot

But they plant vanilla vines and wait five years for them to procreate
Do the male flowers wait for sex and give love
Or the female flowers wait for love and give sex?
I think the little beans do not care who’s on top
And genders do not stop without romance
Even when the French go back to France.

And if a man told me a blow job was just a form of power
Which vanilla flower would he pluck for luck
And free from the sweet-sweet vine?
Who controls the picking and the mating and the making of the beans?
Who plants the vines and waits five years for their fruition?
Who indeed controls the sweetness and the fullness of the pod?

I have my theories too, like repeating others’ triteness, (irony), is not trite?
And if I burn the sweetness it burns slow like real sugar and real vanilla
As if I could tell the fake from the real on my tongue.
If it tastes like vanilla it is, but maybe my vanilla tongue is jaded
And the vanilla is not the same in France as on the isle of Austronesia
The isle with no men-men or women-women but only child-child
Waiting for the mating and the making of the beans.

But like the rancid sweetness of the flowers that do not speak French
The French controlled the imports and the exports waiting for their pods
Packed with what they took for themselves while leaving vines behind
For the Austronesians on the isle of vanilla speaking Malagasy

Now economies depend upon the romantics
Not the French for they have left and others have brought their ideals-ideals
And watched the new vanilla blossoms like child-child on the vine
Which has no gender of itself until the romantics bring the little they bring
To engender the gender for one day, and the French maids are pleased.

The isle of Austronesian speaks of the romantic view
With the line between control and surrender delicate and uncertain
a membrane easily pierced when glanced with vanilla eyes
of surprise with ghost-white lips, blooming and blushing only for one day
They the thinnest of flowers delicate with a romantic child-child gender
Speak French once and make the pods when they can
Hoping that the French don’t steal them all away.