My verses twist and ignite into flames

like my heart that better in the river’s

viscous flow than in the brook’s gentle grass

is unwound:  Oh! for as the water bursts

freely then drains from the mountainous rock

chasm that destroys it rolling against

the tropical sedimentary stone

amidst logs and blunt edges before splashed

into streams.  Now spilled how will

it like a trained dog, play submissively

in a garden decorated with flowers,

or in a goldfish tank swim happily

just to love a lady doused in perfume?

I’ll flood the perfumed palace with curses

my verse would savagely enter the jeweled

cabinets where bards and abbots sew silk

into tender cinquans and pleasing rhymes

with silver needles. And supine ladies

seated on fraught and disheveled sofas

would lift their feet from the soft rugs–

then the water charging, convulsing

as all that is false expires, humbled

kisses a cast-off slipper and by great

spasms of its own persecution dies.