There’s No Secret
After Charles Bukowski’s “Destroying Beauty”
beauty doesn’t work
on a twenty-four hour
schedule:
what exists is never born
for spectacle
how summer flowers
are desolate
most of the year
you who take
a rose apart
and are repulsed
by garden dirt,
fail to see
this rhythm & dance
amongst everything
in the universe,
a most common contrast
& as you call them maidens
disappointed in their bowels
tombstones flicker
my mother’s struggle
held in ashfall arms
stories of my father
& she could wear dresses
catwalk in Milan
but the continuance
in wake of ruin
remains
the most beautiful
memory
this simple rose, with greasy petals,
a pool of cooked swine,
witness what it manages to do,
the enchantment, awe,
rhyme of nature:
this is the brilliance
Brandon Shane is an alum of California State University, Long Beach, where he majored in English. He’s pursuing an MFA while working as a writing instructor and substitute teacher. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Messy Misfits, Mister Magazine, Remington Review, Discretionary Love, among others. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites.
The Marbled Sigh 