Roses Are On Fire

A river of stars a bed of roses still in bud we're but water lilies learning to be rainbows with comet ribbons of light where a thorn of passion cuts bled itself out red in the valleys I find lust is my ground-blanket but it's always bitterly cold. Black ashen as a moonlit cloak I long to kiss the earth. Be one day return to the dust. The smoke engines a star to glow red and orange. I long to be another solitary-seed waiting for its roots to cleave cut a blade of green corn. But I'm like a phoenix born without any feathers looking lost—mystified back at you. Roses are on fire tears perspire—I choke. I wither on the vine always faithful, without true faith, isn't it time this star, my star, collapsed? And joined a river of sand ah, quicksand isn't He, my companion. He's filled the chambers of my sky, He's filled life, my lungs I no longer- remember how once I, too, could cry.