The voodooed mirage commences
with a startled curtain,
one mignonette eye canvassing
through pomp and power paisley
old gold monarchs gracing
a rainbow of impatiens
furbishing a jilted bunny cage.

The elegant animation
of an indigo aster corral
refines the nuance of cultivation,
a sobriquet sky brimful
of clinquant constellations.

She deciphers his long-bereft
strapping silhouette within
that haggard henpecked shed
she set fire to in feral flashbacks.

His loquacious gestures
are masked but barefaced,
patent as he plunders
his grotto of crackerjack gems.

He is entombed in ephemera,
lithographic limestone,
hip-deep in artificial autographs
for his echoic eternity,
a poacher of venerable vintage,
perennial black pearls:
Swiss chalet cuckoo clocks
blazoning woodcutters, milkmaids,
water wheels, beer steins;
lumbering French ebony sleigh beds
etched in contoured curls;
industrial art deco geometry;
lampshades of pewter, slag glass,
tortoiseshell, amberina, malachite,
mother of pearl, champagne fringe.

He remains insensible to his archetypes,
his emblematic apparition repetition.

She venerates the vivid tenuous jewels
he liberated from an aubergine hatbox
along a bankrupt sullen strip:

brooches and bangles, amulets and anklets,
cameos and crystals, lockets and lavaliers
in rays of princess perfume, aqua pearl,
coral begonia, jasper orange, fire opal, opera mauve.

By dawn’s first inclination,
he must yield to psychasthenic combustion,
ceasing whit by mote,
from cuticles to fibula to collarbone cleft,
rectus femoris to external obliques of the abdomen:
sandbox meets cyclone.

He will linger infinitely unconcluded,
trance by torpidity,
her treasure-tamer in killjoy khakis,
goldenrod button-down interlined sleeves.