Then there's one that's written with the letters split out
apart from each other that might sound,
"heavy roses, heavy roses, heavy roses.
White noise.
Roses.
Heavy, white, noise.
Heavy roses, heavy roses, heavy roses, heavy.
The darkness as my wedge, petals like parentheses,
centered clusters, thinking stems,
initiated from after, planning a go.
Their own moon in close up light.
After daybreak, heavy roses, heavy roses
will dominate my lens.
Curve on top of curve on top of curve.
How wet will they still be?
Am I to be a priest?
A voyeur?
A callous murderer?
A cold lure?
No, I am to be the father with clear eyes blinded
by the thin and falling petals of heavy roses out
of a windy night.
I decided whether to re-angle the most prominent rose.
I decided not to.
I decided that if I did trade the shadow for the light,
I might not be able to get it back
and shadow draws out the invisible.
I decided the container was irrelevant.
I decided the background was relevant,
but only if blocked out.
I decided to get even with my subject.
I mean to say on eye level.
I decided Stieglitz was right when
he said it wasn't getting any easier for me.
But then Stieglitz knows how to take a picture
and I decided to prefer my struggle to his knowledge.
I decided whether to save any of my precious film
to capture the Germans if not if,
but when they reached Paris only 30 kilometers away.
I decided not to.
I decided whether to save any of my precious film for Clara
in the doorway, Clara in the mirror.
Again, I decided no.
I decided to remember the rose I drew alongside my initial
as a signature to the mirror.
That time, I did re-angle her wrist and I am not sorry.
I decided that I would rather sleep in candlelight
than in a darkened room.
I decided it should be the candles from my coat pocket
downy with wool filaments.
I decided that the candle light should
evoke a time after guests have gone, after they have
gone with their distractions and the roses come into their own.
I decided to remember the red silk
Japanese lanterns, that Christmas, that first Christmas
in Montparnasse.
I decided that lanterns are like a disguise for roses.
I decided that weight though was the gravamen
of these roses, their truest expression of the self.
I decided that feeling has an overwhelming physical way,
doesn't it?
Not to be confused with sickness,
but just as felt as sickness, a sinking weight.
Heavy roses I will call it.
I decided -- call them.
I give you need and depth swollen as fate.
A simile, pressure like a gaze on a path.
I give you a simile engorged tense as enemy lines.
I give you simile on top of simile, petals, of course,
like tongues.
Petals like pink suns.
Thirsty roses, the gravity of roses after their thirst
has been slaked.
Their smell still rich at young semen.
Petals loosening second on top of uncounted
second, moist ridges on top of the darkness.
By manipulating them, I touch an infinity of cells.
I fight for control through winding,
quarreling at the edge of convulsion,
petals, petals, petals.
Shoulder shape on top of shoulders
shape they drop, continent after continent.
A plotlessness impossible to fathom
toward the scentless aftermath.
The simple death I myself desire.
24 hours later, I shall brush their dried petals
into a crisp little mound.
And with my palm, a mortar and my finger a pestle,
crush them, crush them fine.
By then, they will have no longer
to wait, no longer my heavy roses suspended
between mist and dust."