Love and Smoke

You overwhelm me with your dress
always lifting always falling.
Velvet parting, velvet portiere,
many callers (lifting falling).

Many admirers admiring
your velvet hallways and the silk
faux-Victorian settee
ribboned in scarlet and smoke.

How to compete with a tent so big?

Your dress hung from a tree,
your dress waving from a tower,
and then your dress breathtaking on TV,
the reporter bleeding from her mouth.

All the people line up to see you,
beautiful in firelight, with shreds
of cotton in their fists
and their fists in their mouths.

The smoke is thick inside this tent.
And you, volcanic, spread.
Velvet ash, velvet wish.
Soon we are crawling. We are dead.

.