Your Glorious Perfumes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My sense of smell is not real;
I will give you this bouquet, and then I
Will go away and die.
My dogs will wait for me barking like a
Cenotaph in the waves,
The cormorants wonderful as kites
Of little boys,
Your oldest sons who look at you, whose
Love I cannot steal;
And when I will be gone, like Jesus, like
Cars to school,
Then my nose will disappear as if it was lost in
A knife fight;
And you will have good reason not to love me,
A nose less man,
Knowing of the unstopped aromas of your
Boudoir;
It is laughable that we should all go this way,
The baseball players in the red gems of sky;
And I in my golden gem of fireworks,
Brain-sunken now like a gaunt tortoise beside
The black cats hyperventilating beneath your canal;
And you will come swimming like a pungent mermaid,
And I wont even be able to smell your farts;
And I would have other men describe them to me,
But they will be as mute and piss-stain as
Frightened children,
I could easily still friend and hide their plastic rewards
Above the church of my mother’s refrigerator;
And then tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday,
Meet you in the park and see your new
Butterfly tattoo,
And grab your leg like a speech and try to smell the
Flower on your ankle;
But I really just want to smell your flower before
I die,
And am so noxious as to overpower myself for the love
Of your glorious perfumes.