North of the earthenbloom ran the land where every rose 
was not a rose was not a risen knot of wreathing prose,
where moonblood oozed holy flesh upon the frozen moor
and every quark aligned in paradox that spliced the past
to futured ossuaries in my mind. The particles of para-time
bred breathless beneath my breast an underland of heartbeats
that struck the sunset dun and strung the broken covenant
across the Arc of time. I felt the crescent's curve carve up
the State of Stalemate, felt the whiteheaded statues turn
their transfixed eyes to the umberland drumming underneath.


Essentially, this poem seeks to refute Gertrude Stein's remark, "A rose is a rose is a rose" by asserting that a rose is not a risen knot of prose that wreathes in rings around the rosie rows amid the knobby knolls where knotgrass grows.