Can these murdered
roses face rage
from the pastel haze
of entryway Nirvana?

When contradiction changes
or disintegrates thought,
immutable miracles
might be imbued
beyond the common sought.

The dead red roses float
in symbiotic sacrifice
to long dead religions
and a joyous old South.

The new South seduced
by reanimated myth
reproduced to promote
frenetic fevered pleasures
in revisionist
seekers of false history.

A self-destructive,
cultural specific,
neurotic guilt, is causal.

Is there somewhere, hidden,
in forbidden and abandoned land,
a grisly, gated city sealed and shut
by rusted nails?

Standing where citrus fruit rots,
in the sultry dusk of time?

Eden,
forsaken city
of ruination;
failed Garden of God.