Ode to a Rose

  I clutch you with a fierce hope,
    a selfish intensity,
crushing your fragile arms
  to feel the kiss of your teeth
        those green knives,
            those tiny deaths,


                              O, infallible perfection,
                                    emblem of romance,

                      create for me a field of
                your jagged armour,
                  decapitate your cusp of beauty,
                      and leave me your fatal corpse,
                  that holy stem,
              my morbid love,

                        so I may bleed, or sleep.



      Darling flower, my sanguine tear,
        you are too merciful,

                - such shallow stabbings!

  If only your were made of glass,
      I'd marry a million of you
  and bathe in your pristine pieces,
          your colorless shards,


                              and I'd stain you with my love,
                          that endless wound,



                  as red as you once were.