The Final Rose

 

In a place neither inside nor out,

a nounless silence of no thought,
not even a thought of silence,

the final rose is burning
its black hole through your retina,

pressing a turquoise pineal kiss

on the back of your skull.

The fragrance drifts through umber petals

the way a soul exits a crinkled body,

except that the soul is only
a description of itself,

but the scent of withered rose is real,

un-predicated on its name.

We say, "In the beginning,"

but this place is before the beginning.

We say, "was the Word,"

but why assume it was a noun?

"In the beginning," then, "was the Verb,"
neither of the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.

Please, no pronouns either.

Perhaps there are no objects at all,

and the act of worlding is thing-less.
Perhaps the cosmos we can speak of

is only our thought about it,
every concept a shield,
the earth a blaze of sweet destroy 

to cauterize our lips and singe
our lenses with wonder.

But what of Jesus, Mary,
the Virgin, the Lamb? Perhaps
they weary of their disembodied stains
on a cathedral window, fixed
in a catechism of glass.

They long to dissolve in the beams
that pass through them,
to pierce the eye and liquify the mind,
quickening our ancient glands
that once flicked out the world,
ineffable as a poison tongue.

They would have us forget their names
so that they might clothe their loving
in luminous verbs like "to fall,"

which is, in fact, how you arrived
in this place of the final rose,

where things, nouns, certainties

must perish in terrible fire.