Crisp air of your essence,
clarity of its bouquet,
overwhelms all sense.
You mock my ardor,
but I will not surrender.
God was hardest upon
the most ardent.
I love the chase as much as capture.
I know both sides of rapture.
In your arms cast down or
taken up is equal pleasure.
Lurid house-fronts line the banks
as tourist boats glide lifelessly by...
Songs never heard as shopkeepers
toll waterways and patent every hue.
Smiles shine brighter than
freshly minted coins.
Every boy and girl a budding
Bounderby or Hetty Green.
This cashbox Venice that banished
Santa Claus centuries ago...
Where Soarin' Graveyards died hated
and Jens cursed with his last breath.
My breath is a menace I'm told,
whether indoors midst vents
or outside under towers.
There is no refuge, no Prince Galahalt
to slay invisible, variating, Dragons.
Overburdened Angels of Mercy
stoically vent about those
they've lost patience with and euthanize.
I look out between blinds and see
well spaced lines of bodies in masks
under Sun's kind light who look
like variants of the Stoic Angels
knowing the tales and tailism are endless,
a terror induced enclosure without escape.
