The Rose

Well, Starlite Motel of Tony's Tavern told me this one was solid.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
The Rose
Cigarettes burn out like stars in dawn’s grey filter.
The wind kicks and bickers with bricks and pigeons.
Words stumble, stub their toes, and you
are the rose in the garden that God forgot to step on.
Morning slouches like a beaten child. Roses gone
Brown, dust thick on the portrait. Where you’ve gone
Only a sleeping beauty or bleeding Jesus knows
and I’m left in Oregon to languish with photos
and a ring locked up in a safety deposit box
Gone is the rose pinned to the bridal mane. Gone
Are you, the scalpel twisting in memory’s ear.
The body is not a temple. You taught me that.
But your image grinds through the gristle and rocks
of time, raises a bloody fist, growls to me no reprieve.
Sap sucked from a tree. I dust your books often.
The bathroom’s immaculate as you’ve wished.
Cap’s on the toothpaste. Toilet seat’s down,
Chicken soup’s done: two bowls, two spoons,
my works, my faith.
On that rock in the middle of that sea of wherever
You are do you think of me as you dip a little toe
Into the cold unknown? Between your legs
is a rose that tastes like honeydew. I miss you.
The pigeons flap away. The wind gets worse.
Fuck this daily fare of grief’s heat
There’s a mountain outside my window.
May it blow like Vesuvius, send me left of heaven
where angels forget to dust--a rose is waiting there
with open lips to suck me down.