You or Yourself in Red

By Kevin J.B. O'Connor

If I hold a green rose
Sideways, I am
A strange iconoclast,
A troubadour of colored
Motion, blurring quickly
In the evening traffic smog.
If I stand by the fruit stand
On one leg, I am outcast,
Rejected from the city,
And placed beneath a half-moon
Bridge, beside a dried up river.
I will sit there for a long time
Eating dried apricots and picking
Petals, one by one, until I reach
The stem, the prickled center,
The beginning and the end.