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.