My Lady In Red Poem by Simpa Omoluabi

At one end, a rich lady in red
empties a bundle of perfumed wastes
into the drainage... Incarnadine eyes
behind dark spectacles,
demeanour like a rose demeaned, but
truly only a rose can abase itself and then
it seizes to be...

Pity is inspired when the just fails to know
what petals they are...

Some yards down, unknowing to both,
an axe-man flicks the ash of his cigarette
into this end of a gutter flowing with bitter roses.
To such an end my lady in red has had faith
in an affaire de coeur;
this end of petals and ashes, ashes and bones,
roses and bones, ashes and roses.

A fly is tired out seeking mephitis of the rose.
By God, fury in lightning,
a god genially appeases a gladiator.

You do not dispossess a flower by bringing it underfoot,
for it is a gift to mankind
that flowers do not breed worms in their decay,
that they have their way with rottenness.
It is cruel to inflict a rose,
and now o fly you are compelled to know
the rose does not inspire mercy but admiration.

The revenge of a rose
is in the promise of beauty
for the wrath of beauty
is in the awareness of totality.

Copyright © 2011 My Lady In Red by Simpa Omoluabi