This magnificent rose,
many a millennium old,
with a magnetic north
and wholesome moral code,
with morbid blackness weighed
against a heart red high-minded
multifoliated celestial form
so tormented, yet, tranquil it is
as noble mention among men:
the fervent song of the people,
the mortal Blues of Motown sound,
the almighty seed of immortal lot,
and the seat of human immaterial parts.
Not in leaflets or amid the marching
of nuclear niore to be found,
nor in the movements of poetic beats,
nor the in junkies hesitation marks,
nor in the medic’s hands or bag
of livelier arts is it found.
Institutes and journals have looked
and settled on the truth,
that it is not a matter of the mark
missed by surgeon’s scalpel
or the teacher’s defining of youth,
but rather that the idea is obtuse.
Our myths morn it’s downfall and necrosis
in the most sad and uncertain of terms;
like heaven or the mortality of curtains
we speak with meaning but motion to something mired
in the old circular logic of metaphor,
but as symbol the soul’s a meteoric rock
materializing firm from above.
The Poetry Of J.P. 