roses

another word for red

necessitated

by the look

of your mouth.

redefinition of sensation,

my lover:

my eyes change color.

exquisite awkward words:

you understand them all,

doves, flowers,

other flowers,

thorns--

your lips displayed like fruit:

apples, pomegranates, plums.

ruby-red, wine, blood,

breath, saliva,

teeth.

let me redefine

your mouth.

roses

the only thing i remember from a rather insincere study of william carlos williams:

the rose that

drops eternity off

the edge

of each petal--

dripping, eternity comes, sliding thick

from the mouth of the rose and all down its stem.

i push the rose into my mouth

to taste eternity, crystalline like sugar, salt--

it's something to savor,

the absence of

decay, the absence of

the moment,

subsumed

in a lush satin swirl of petals.

my mind, too, can be dirty for you;

watch me contort:

i can douse the rose

deepen its color with moisture,

make its new scent

that of a profound and secret blush.

see how i can make myself

your own, see how i set my lips

into the cavern of your doubled hands--see

how i set up an echo

like the stain the rose traces

on a piece of cloth:

see how i repeat.

roses

push the sweet dank rot

out the red lips

coated like with lipstick

and we pushed

together.

fold, please--

re-pleat. please.

fold.

roses

in all honesty,
at this point,
i could ask myself what i am waiting
to acquire--
the beauty of an abstract
painting,
or a trifecta of die-cast
virtues--a suture
for some internal rip,

or something stranger: the discoloration of my eyes
as if they were a doll's eyes, my hand
the slender pale hand
of a waxen statue, the release
of an inner
inanimate
nature,
my nature...

as if, prayed for, i were a galatea, become
human
only to have time
stop about her
like a stiff garment.

i want to hold myself still as memory,
still as flesh can stay.

roses

hurting for a framework of words
with which to house
this blank sacrament of feeling

the feeling of suture
of being threaded
together

along lines, irradiate
between white and black

a spectrum as hollow as whole.

the thing is that the white and black are not the same but they exist simultaneously in the same place.  thus i am strung by what may loosely be termed a paradox.  and the whole world seems to thrum along these strings which collect within themselves moment after moment, while i hang back in fear and in love, mourning what time has discarded, uselessly human.  this is not a metaphor, it is a description, and hence a bulletin from the abyss.  but i will drag myself out.  and then time will pay for all it has broken.

roses

meditations of the beast:
i stare into your fire, red rose,
your heart like lips and your lips like blood,

your blood on fire.

against the ground
it runs
gathering
dry things
to itself--

determine the blaze, rose.
taste the meaning
of the blaze.

taste my meaning,
take it in your petals
and know
until the end of time
how you loved the smear of it,
red rose,
your heart
dry and chapped
as a
thirsty
mouth.

roses

the moment before the shot, the hunter
seeing
sunset light
ripple across the doe's back,
splash, break gentle
and drip down
to pool in the leaves
to soak down into dirt.

everything fluid.
even the barks of the trees
fluid with shadow.

roses

o magnum mysterium:
trapped by the literality
of a dumbass metaphor, i
ride
the backroads
of lafayette.

the world is velvet and blue
and the road is as if a feeling--
the road is as if a feeling--
and the curve of the wheel is a thought mirrored
in the action of the car.

the moon is a slice of white glass
counterdistinct to the point it might draw blood
the stars are white and the sky is black

the time is autumn
the flavor of the air is autumnal
autumn days have lovely thick light
and blue shadows, and autumn nights
are shadow piled upon shadow.

o rose in your pale mystery
your lustrous freshness leeched from you perhaps
yet not not ever the pale twilight colors of your drying
and the smell like raisins

o rose in your pale state
you wait for your lover to take you yet

roses

autumn makes success and failure
look like what they always were, that is,
moments on the line of time, nothing more,
each holding its overfullness of good and bad--

it casts time out like seed in the hand,
like broken shells marking tide-lines at the shore,
life-full and empty both, the twist
of things that can be felt and seen, their core

aspects as blind and hidden as a lintel-less door.
the lie of spring and summer, that what's known fits
with what is seen and touched, is over,
and autumn comes in private, its touch no grander

than one's own unknowable touch, no surer
than one's own face when looked at in the mirror.

roses

masks

the image is of
a stone smeared
across my face
like a crust.

stone, stone,
you crack
in an arctic cold.

the world pouring out
from the hollows
in the hands.
the arms suspended
as if in air thick
as water.

re-pleat.  please.
fold.  fold.

stone, stone,
you crack
in an arctic cold.

roses

give   thanks
for the  sickness   of it
(the words   like
uneven piston)

the  scrap
of  mirror-glass
in   my  pocket

its fresh
points

i can  clutch  at
and feel  razed  there
feel   kept

in the moment
feel
if nothing else

miraculous

inability
to  free   myself

in  compulsive
blank

compulsive
blankness

roses

we were on the front porch and BLOOD the night was warm and the scent of the grass FLESH

i set my teeth against memory.  memory is BLOOD nothing but a FLESH

veronica how i want you.  it's childish to BLOOD
childish to FLESH

foolish to crave in words childish to BLOOD FLESH AND BLOOD

flesh, bone, and blood
hey down a down
flesh, bone and blood
hey down a down