petals of a white rose

In 1942, Nazi Germany, The White Rose was an intellectual resistance group. Founded

by students, they wrote leaflets that called for resistance and opposition to their government. In under a year they produced six leaflets and thousands of copies calling attention to the monstrosities being committed by the Nazis. In the spring of 1943, three of the most prominent members— siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with Christoph Probst, were captured and sentenced to death by guillotine. They were killed later that day.

It opens with a whisper whirling from the center, a few ripped heart-sleeves, a taste 

of stranger, vapor on verge of the atmosphere… enter chlorophyll and the chorus 

of thorny dissidents, their barbed tongues snipped and covered with trembling 

handfuls of dirt, planted in the trans-atlantic shadow of a previously underestimated

nightmare. It begins with a hushed breath, a sluiced stem, a fresh heap of false starts and stooped shoulders. I am the counter-creature in the chicken coop. I am castle of smoke and fire hose. Hanging out garments on a treble clef, shoring up cracks with a pen, insistently pouring with fragrance of white rose.

They said, We are your bad conscience, inciting violence in the attics of the unaffected. Grace, it seems, is a storm-switch set to kill karma where it stands. When close at hand we witness our habits molt, leaving only husks of our honorifics, complacency thickens into russet-red clots of thought vacancies. Accidents in the rear-view mirror are more intentional than they appear. We say no more complicity. A word demurred— complicity the national anthem, no more stretching our voice for them high notes. There’s a hate crime stuck in my patriotism. Ain’t no one coming for this skin. If our axis be shook and wobbles into war’s irreversible momentum, and I unsheathe my eyes to come face-to-face with conscription, will I consent to assemble in the rows, or will I stretch my voice for bravery like white—

no one knows the outcome. Not a day begins without breaking existential bread. 

Heralding a kingdom once held in the tufts of my breath, it does get exhausting— 

the overstretched armaments, diffusing of the antisocial situation, our trepidation 

and differentiating invigorating a leaflet with words that stem from the underbelly. 

Was there some use for my perennial description? From the folds of a sky-sworn

emblem, out the mouth of a beheaded intention, a hard line materializes. Body knows better to be agitated than adequate. Pawns of royal schemes advance with splintered opinions in tow, bending their hopes in the shape of a white—

lonesome. How to come clean with a vision, when Judgment Day ends with Why?  

Sheet of subterfuge and checkered history clings to the scarecrow’s shoulders, 

but it never wanted to be the hero— it wanted those winged things to dissipate, 

never wanted it to be great. Let arms withdraw from the race. Our glacial inferiority

quickens. Bread-crumb resistance is for the birds, but that won't get you out of bed. You arrange your own audit. I forget what I meant when I said I’d do my best. Even now, at my most mystical, no part or thing parted from this body makes even a modicum of a dent. Most days looking back saw that I couldn't even last to try. Led astray by the finger-crook of winds that blow— caustic, frantic, repudiation of white—

ice floes and moral infancy crumbles with unfazed velocity. Violence in the workplace leads to violence in the marketplace leads to violence in the heart place. Mascara runs like a motorcade. All I wanted was to be a stranger. Not your hypocrite or honest attempt. Not remedial. Not amenable. Not pressed to another body to reprieve this paralysis. Rigid, frigid. I could snap like a glow-stick. When I catch myself praying for a finale as grand as the canyons from which I emerge, even I know that my worst, the underpinned forfeiture of this fateful nomenclature, is still a step from what I was yesterday. It’s gotten so heavy. My metabolism slows. But the holes in this head are dark, delicate beds for white rose, white rose, white rose.