Friday, 15 April 2016

Sweet Roses

Bunches of finite fragrant corners,
Yellow mouths circled in sparse pink

See them grin up to the sun and wink
Their meaningless glories, thorns, honors?

Street roses, do you have to wait
For Darwin to rise before succumbing to fate?

Ah for all the roses I met and held
Airports, funerals and weddings un-smelled

Packaged glory, unwrinkled youth,
skin so soft and oh, so smooth

A rose by another smell, who knew, who knew
Peel those thorns, evolution-man, you
Beauty, imperfect, will never do

Street roses but are not meant for vases
Bumble bees will tumble in at night
And steal their honey, no mess, no fight

Perfect roses meanwhile wait
Refrigerated in an unsmelling smile
Skin so soft, oh so smooth, the guile

This story but belongs neither to roses,
Not smooth skin nor sweet thorn
judgement, evolution, Darwin nor Moses

I was a street rose once, each night
I was the perfect rose, never worn.





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