The State of a Rose

The affliction of a rose is of its hue,
A deep disgusting red like blood without breath.
Oh how it makes a crimson wreck of an amorous nose,
A rose.

This its clandestine depth:
A rose is a rose is a rose
And both the adder beneath it.
How now is the charming connotation so bequeathed it?

Sickness falls once bit upon,
It matters not the circumstance thereon.

Imbibes of blood,
That allergy does,
And so leeches this lively dye.
Sneeze away this viral pollen,
Bleed no more and so it dies.
But dogma decrees that so shall it be
A pis aller to let decay this eros.

Yet,
Is there balm in Gilead?
As the timelessly exalted syntagma goes?
Do these poets sing certitude or chicanery,
That there are blessings to be had?

So they repeat duet and say,
That roses can be sated,
That blood set free might return to be ours forever.
Did they glimpse the incompatibility of fact and fancy?
That rooted roses can be boundless wellsprings,
Never to overflow with blooming red reciprocation?

And here, my love, I must admit
That I too
Am a poet.

That I might vow a cigar is more than mere cigar.
That I forswear the extant fear of fanged roses,
In keeping hope eternally by far-fetched chance
The nose could cease to bleed and sneeze,
Instead unfurl unblocked nostrils to insufflate,
- I shudder -
- I shiver -
That it could intake a sweet aroma,
Sending us to fall in sacred pragma.