Rosebud

Hole in the crack
Bloom of the rose
Undercurrent rhythm breaking the mold
Plaster of Paris, go back to Europe
Replace with liquid gold
Rise up, red rose
Bloom brightly
You’ve long remained as bulb
In the night
Where all has been dark for a while
The undercurrent rhythm, running, ever running, running
Feeds your soul with life
With whispers
With voices of the past
And paths they once traversed

This black and white world
You call your thorn
You know it all will come to naught:
Blocks on the ground like the Parthenon.
Falling to the rhythm,
Laughing in its face—
Karma comes to all
In its proper time and place.
For they built and fought and strove and swelled
To a life of dementia
Life of a drunk
Dancing on embers
And sweat til it stuck
In their heads that they were alright
Though lost in the city
Lost in the night
Lost in the shadow of Freud
And in Life
They felt there was nothing else to obtain
For they broke it all down
Tore it all down
Voices to whispers and whispers to silence
Broke the empiricism in science
Hiroshima’s heart felt it firsthand
Though, ever since, it’s been borne
In the hearts
Of this land

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