"La Boheme" [by Lizzy McDaniel]

Poet you have the soul of a millionaire
you are two oboes coupling in the cold heart of a Passion
an incurable leitmotif
you lick the rim of my singing bowl
you dust your garret with colored powder
you are lit from every angle
you simmer in your youth
you are a good monkey
you are the best part of being short (as in a war)
you are a blush in Staindrop church
you don’t bite except—
you keep a door open so we can touch you
you pick a bombshell bouquet
you leave a grand piano on the lawn
you build a Memory Palace and watch it collapse exhausted
you abandon yourself like the subject of a sentence
you practice octaves for fondness shame and giggling fits
you leave the melancholy womb to serve your people
you prefer philosophy to perfect health
you schedule Belle Heures
you are a generous mood
you “chantepleure”
you kid the lyrics
you steal spring and misplace a portion
you forget to breathe in your sleep
you don’t want to breathe without words
you praise the air’s legs
you wear the sun as a skirt
you restore the peacock’s vanity
you puff like a rheumy chimney
you take a chisel to antique faces
you are ethically dazzled
you are I don’t know what and what I don’t know
did you ever love me?
you are the end of doubt

-- Lizzy McDaniel