Tyler R. Martin
Red red Roses plunged into empty bottles of Jack,
They murky-up the water with their decaying stems
And stink up my apartment with their foul scent
Equated only with death.
The red red Roses seem to bleed into themselves,
Like a perpetual ulser of beauty maroon,
Or the bleeding lungs of a shrapneled soldier
Dying in the desert.
That’s the desert Rose, I suppose,
Blood on the sand, gang-green stems,
The compound fracture thorns,
The wilting of a last breath,
The sucking chest wound of the petals,
Receding to its core with the deep deep red
Curdling and slowly blackening gore
Of the red red the Roses’ rotting heart.
“It’s pretty,” she says, “happy Valentine’s day, thank you, love!”
While in my head I apologise again to a weeping family,
Hand them a dead son’s Dog-tags in a room that reeks of
Red red Roses…
bourbon, cigarettes and syllables 