Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

To Scheherazade

                    What the king, Shahryar, might say to Scheherazade

This is what I like best about you:
Your seductive voice,
sweet, deep, rustling with 1001 stories,
to scare away my ghosts,
to lose what I have never missed,
to drown this weakness of skin
and black-bird chatters
on the wisteria vine.

How tentative it all is!
For I, a timeworn, romantic fool
deaf to your orchestrated lines,
play both Romeo and Othello
on fire,
filling our lungs
with the thick stench of
burnt flesh.

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Prompt: Too, too solid/sullied flesh