History has a way of looking at us from different directions.
come here and
observe how our neon-lit signifier of beauty, love, passion
the garden Rose
has naturally spread out some very prickly features
so well-shaped and sized and nicely aligned
by accident or design causing maximum harm
to anything approaching a fully hands-on inquiry.
next stand back a little but
be slightly more specific, and ask
from which side of the triangle of time
has
this contrast combination
of barbed flower
stemmed
did the pretty rose strike out its defences
specifically
to shield itself from the up-close spine-pinching intensity of our strongest predilections
or is there hidden beneath the petal-surface beauty of our passions
a darker side to our love
as significant favour for the rose was developed
not prior to the becoming of, and not in spite of
but precisely because of and in more or less daytime awareness of
its thorny double life?
then, finally, with both more open and more closed angles of the eyeline in mind
make demands to know what difference it would be, overall
if difference at all
historically
how would
the warning-sign rosiness that our garden Rose should carry now anyway
change
whether its sharpness arose because we can love things into extinction
or that our love a little more prior to itself than that conceals behind its flower-head first appearances an almost-rooted need for painful contradiction
that is
how would either of these truths save anything
or anyone
now
anyway
?