The Rose

And what, might I ask, are you doing here?

After the lights have been shut off, the floors swept 

and the chairs put back in their places.

The trash has been collected and 

taken out to be lost and sorted and lost again.

The audience has filed into the clown car of the night, 

has been carted off and saved themselves for sights unseen

and all the eyes and ears of ancient days have sealed themselves

in an eternal sleep that restlessly resists interruption. 

What voice can reach them? 

What mortal scream would dare disturb the rhythm of their dreams,

from here beyond the veil of life where everything smells like coffee grinds

and credit cards? 

Could the poets, blind to the flames of a hell they will not see, 

ever gilding the inferno of their legacy, (they will not break under torture,) 

could they have imagined that some distant day the thought of one night cheap hotels might be a sentimental one? That sawdust and visits might take on the violet haze 

of the dying light which hung, so perfectly over so many tragedies

where real shadow and real light fought viciously for the prize of human love?

Who would listen if words, which you might have said, 

words that are left in you, which rot in you,

attempted to escape your living throat, still coated with mucus, still beating with unformed and and unfinished life?

What stories could you tell anyway, apart from a few lost moments,

ripped apart by years and resistant to ordering? 

A blue dress, cigarette burns in the carpet, 

the taste of whiskey and the rattle of aluminum cans which collect in your car.

All things out of context are poetic. 

Cheap poetry. Poetry that depends on no one,

that has no audience in particular.

But are there yet words that can coax the rose to speech?