limn this libertine with smoke and orchids;
bind her errant limbs with sleepy vine.
her mien is hesperanthæ, long with st. martin’s summer,
eyes of dusk, features drawn in mulled wine.
a voice of vesper, arousing every spiræa or sylvan bloom;
rust-lit tatterdemalions, holding burning apple branches
on the banks of the Tigris.
all around them were the seeds of glass,
and all within them were asters, their path
was poison’d nectar.
mouths hung with paraffin, fingers still with viburnum,
they flank the Euphrates, floating violets down the
curves of this portrait’s carnal current,
drifting ever further on the lips of gaping lotuses
and rivulets of laudanum.
such is the amaranth of her promise;
this wanton, this wayward one
whose lusty suspiring inspires
laburnum in the hearts of lilies.
datura candida, she resounds an angel’s trumpet
to the star of bethlehem, bleeding saffron
into black bryony.
rend her then, sage + sorrel, laurel, linden, lantana camara;
with burning straw beguile and limn her,
nought but embers and caprice.
