#15

I view a rose

everyday same rose

I scroll the length of it’s body

its wide spread and reaching pedals

one day it stripteases

it grows teeth builds a soapbox

and demands something controversial

it is between the nationalist and progressive but also

the atheist and messiah

I was the only viewer a twitch later

one million it whispered silent poems

about abuse and trauma,

it showed me its

a friend’s child’s birth, then a funeral,

Indica strains, travels around the world,

Afterschool brawls, violence, opulence,

fantasy, beauty and horror gushing down

its sepal to round of Adam’s apple

sometimes it solicits erotic encounters via webcam

in direct messages, it is the glass ceiling it exploits

the weak but in the same beat empowers it

all colors and genders but also reflects

self-hate and xenophobia

the rapper becoming irrelevant

hangs on for relevancy like a cobweb caught on a thorn

the seekers of self-worth make businesses here

my eyes backflip in place, the surveyor of dreams

realized, the purveyor of feuding families,

light

it scratches my corneas I want to quit the rose,

avoid it’s fire but I am so drawn to it, it fulfills the will

of my addictive personality caught in swings of an 8

it shimmy-skips in my subconscious

stirs up lust but also passages of inspiration, thankfully

I know I have choices still in this world where

choice is becoming either a revolutionary act

or a dying pastime. The mystery of life

is dead; a browned apple core

rolls against the wind.