Roses in Water

"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on
lies will not understand this book either."
--KURT VONNEGUT, Cat's Cradle, 1963.

Roses in water
seeped in history
their essence distilled--
purified for deity.
The blood red rose derives
its name from Damascus.

Clutch your rosary tight to your chest.
There aren't enough beads or
stanzas to meditate on
the world's conflagrations.

Babylon is alive though not well.
The deluge changed nothing. Too bad
God needed Noah's family to sail the Ark.
Could the animals have done any worse?

Portland, U.S.A. is the Rose City.
Qamsar, Iran is the Rose Capitol
of the Moslem world. It supplies the
rosewater used to clean the
Holy Ka'bah in Mecca during the Hajj,
the number one pilgrim destination
on their way to the after life.

Rosewater seeps into the lives of
humanists seeking to make sense of this one
when they're not counting on the next.

Alter ego of Vonnegut
(their honorary president)
attempted to clean his family's
fortune accumulated from the seeds of
civil war profiteering by giving it away.
God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater!

From a lineage of German free thinkers,
the actions of his fascist homeland's Christians
played out in his novels. Billy Pilgrim's nut hut
roommate is Rosewater. Dresden is aflame
in his timeless reality.

War's waged and there's not enough
rosewater to quench the fire. Old allies
arose. Were the Russians irked when the
Chechen President washed the Holy
Ka'bah hand in hand with the King of Saudi Arabia
to seal their unity with rosewater?

Lutheran evangelicals hosted a healing
ceremony in Pennsylvania. Guests were
greeted with a rosewater
anointing of their forehead by
one of three sisters in response to the actions of
razor blade wielding Saudi dissidents and their
comrades on 911. No doubt they ritually
washed with rosewater before turning
to Mecca to pray and board their flight.

Iraqi Jews pour rosewater into
their Baklavah. Israeli soldiers try to
push Hamas out of Lebanon. They
pull out as did Syria,
Land of the Rose, to a
resounding, "¡jamás!" which is never.

Assassination flourishes while
rosewater sanctifies:
Christian, Moslem, Jew.
Whose rose
red blood stains the streets?

Watered roses continue to
claw their thorny way
up the tower of Babylon
seeking the light,
an uncultivated weed
in need of some serious soul
searching or weed whacking.


©polarpaul 2007