Rose self-flagellant, light and life moulting

nightfall beauty of death, strewn

sweet petalled ashes of evocation

in awe, it

feeds on its own devastation, the sun

with red-rimmed mouth, with

otiose display of transience spun

suffering rapture sharper than the flagrant thorn

spilling deeper blood, deep

in my birth-crypt bleating heart, born

again, in dull golem milt

flung about the Dance of the Worm

in the slippery grip, guilt, mere chimera:  weep.

 

Felt most precious, that

held back from history’s

sprawling tombs

held virgin inside the mime of life, wombs

riotous, rich, rage in inertia

at impotence with words

what is, what is not, in the imaging eye and tongue

as poets writhe in this mothering flesh:  galled

stilled, those first to withhold meaning,

called to the perverse art of yearning,

the festering celebration of life, this

rose self-flagellant, light and life moulting

nightfall beauty of death, strewn

sweet petalled ashes of evocation

in awe.

 

 

                                                     DMcB