Jim Adams is the ever-ready and always-prepared host of Song Lyric Sunday. Jim says:

The theme today is Mom/Mother/Flowers.

Here are the “rules”:

• Post the lyrics to the song of your choice, whether it fits the theme or not.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due.
• Make sure you also credit the singer/band and if you desire you can provide a link to where you found the lyrics.
• Link to the YouTube video, or pull it into your post so others can listen to the song.
• Ping back to this post will eventually work, as long as you are being patient, but you can also place your link in the comments if you don’t like to wait.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.
• Have fun and enjoy the music.

“The Flowers of Guatelmala” is from, “Lifes Rich Pageant,” the fourth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1986.

From anti-war songs.org
On a bootleg recording I have of a 1986 R.E.M. concert, singer Michael Stipe introduces “The Flowers of Guatemala” with a single word:”Genocide.” In one of rock’s most haunting songs, Stipe deploys Amanita, a flower that grows wild on graves, as a symbol for the catastrophe that descended on Guatemala’s Mayan Indian population in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “There’s something here I find hard to ignore,” he sings, “there’s something that I’ve never seen before.” The song’s chorus, with its incantation of “The flowers cover everything,” is as evocative an expression of genocidal killing as any in popular music.

I’ve took a picture that I’ll have to send
People here are friendly and content
People here are colorful and bright
The flowers often bloom at night

Amanita is the name
The flowers cover everything
The flowers cover everything

There’s something here I find hard to ignore
There’s something that I’ve never seen before
Amanita is the name, they cover over everything

The flowers cover everything
They cover over everything (Amanita is the name)
The flowers cover everything

Look into the sun
Don’t look into the sun

The flowers cover everything
They cover over everything
The flowers cover everything

The flowers cover everything
They cover over everything
The flowers cover everything

There’s something that I’ve never seen before
The flowers often bloom at night
Amanita is the name, they cover over everything

Songwriters: John Michael Stipe / Michael E. Mills / Peter Lawrence Buck / William Thomas Berry