Rose With No Petals Poem by Jesse Ellsbury

I saw the past destroy itself and rise again as the future, guttural, drowning, in smog and regulation, the pastoral trees finally breathing free
while the cars smoke on tobacco-black streets, past the lights searching to bring down anyone going too fast or thinking too slow.
In the middle drive those who don’t deserve a license, running at the right speed, predictable as the air we breathe,
arriving on time, a dead heartbeat or chime while those without cars are exhausted by the fumes of hearses driving by.

We still inhale, we still see, and half of us pray for obscurity, for the darkness that lets us imagine that somewhere the sun still shines
on people who deserve it, for we surely didn’t, and those of us with a heart pray the sun shines on those who have earned it
and we wallow in the darkness and romp against each other, each of us taking what isn’t ours to our brother,
we help our own, and with what we have left, buy things to keep us company on the road to death without a thought for who is dying
from starvation, loneliness, and crying, we smile in secret and bury reality beneath rosy truth-coated lies.

But the petals on the rose have been shorn, and we offer each other wilted stalks that are nothing but thorns
and smile in secret while they prick their hands, saying “it worked when we got it” while we get back in our van,
selling one’s souls for wealth doesn’t require the Devil when you spend every day stooping to Satan’s level,
all it takes is one unkind move and we will have tainted ourselves more grievously than when Adam ate the fruit
from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as if nobody knows the future is the Bible’s sequel
and we proceed like King Saul trying to protect his throne when someone’s evicted from their home,
and when we see the poor boy David begging for food and freedom, no one thinks of asking him to rise and lead us,
as if he could do worse than republicans and democrats, each desiring to take voters from the other half.
Both are corrupt, and each is guilty of what they accuse, the ones who cannot cover it up are the ones to lose.
We thrive on competition and to us it’s a game, but tell that to the ones who can’t afford to complain.
Like David sitting on high in the alley with his drugs and gun, he didn’t choose this lifestyle; it was given him by us.