Birthday Rose
Should man pause long enough to smell the rose,
the rose might be the only flower he’ll ever see;
but should he see every flower that ever blooms,
he might never know how sweet the rose can be.
You are my rose. Can you not see
that your sweet fragrance has captured me?
Upon wetted knee I kneel this morn –
in dew-dampened garden I’m pricked by your thorn.
Into your petals, my nose is slipped,
as I lick the blood drop from my fingertip.
I close my eyes with blood-tinged tongue
and draw in the freshness of your bloom so young.
Locked shut are the organs with which I see
as your fragrance completely spellbounds me.
Unable, am I, to consciousness return,
without remembrance of how your thorn did burn,
and how the remembrance of the fragrance of a sweet rosebud
brings with it the remembrance of a sting… and the taste of blood.