Red edit 0.000001 leanne, river grudgingly:)

[tectak]

What I want to say 
is not as important
as the colour of a rose
that cannot see itself, 
yet is red each year
it blooms...but I find 
it difficult.
tectak
2018

Honestly, the most distracting thing about it is how the signature intrudes upon the rest of the poem -- I'd imagine if this were in print, things wouldn't be so distractingly close. Otherwise, looking at this logically, does a blind black man lose his blackness if he can't see himself? Which is an example I put only because this reminds me of a certain, very hilarious Chappelle skit....as well as that tired meme, "What's in a name?", and maybe even that Umberto Eco book I'd never read. And at this point, we've surpassed logic, entering into this poem's weird world: I imagine the third "it" refers to what the speaker wants to say, with my original impression being that the saying is surpassed by the being, but again, I fall into that strange word, "logic". And besides, red is my favorite color, for roughly the same reason that blue is the warmest for certain lesbians, so at this point I don't really care about inconsistencies -- in fact, that seems to be the point. Lovely work.

Hi river, 
 Yep...maybe I should extend the punctuation requirement to a couple of carriage returns after the last line...although I like your take so will leave as is

I watched The Name of the Rose in 1989, Nottingham. Connery was never the same as James Bond after that....Umberto was an (imaginary) friend of mine...I quoted him often and probably still do

If you're a blind black man and you don't know it....are you still black? Well, there's nothing blacker than blind so we are now on a whole new and surreal journey in to the mind of a rose. Have you ever wished you'd never started something?
Best and thanks, 
 tectak