The Last Living Rose

Goddamn' Europeans!

Take me back to beautiful England

& the grey, damp filthiness of ages & battered books &

Fog rolling down behind the mountains,

on the graveyards, and dead sea-captains.

Let me walk through the stinking alleys

to the music of drunken beatings,

past the Thames River, glistening like gold

hastily sold for nothing. Nothing.

Let me watch night fall on the river,

the moon rise up and turn to silver,

the sky move, the ocean shimmer,

the hedge shake, the last living rose

quiver.