They Will Sew the Blue Sail

For Jules Laforgue | Lynn Xu

 Do you see who spits into your eyes? Their hollow smiles

 Hang with sour faces on the wind

Wolf-howl on the alter, their leaning heads, night-effect—

 Odilon! I dream of you! Returning from Tahiti I strangle you

 I wrestle you from my skull a talisman

I am leaving Europe

  Europe! Stinking with carcasses and trades I am slave to

your rooms, your lamplight, the mille-fleur flat silk of wall

I cannot leave you! I am drunk

I am shot in the heart

I am Baudelaire

Rimbaud

 I am Odilon

 Zip myself into the flower-suit blow smoke into the sky