Elizabeth Willis, p.3
AFTER BAUDELAIRE
Who owns your skin or makes your mind? To drive is an accident and an answer waiting to happen. What is happiness? Not sun or sky, and never Plato. A breeze to sweet-talk drunkenness, a song inking up the night. Or the poem scratching its ring against the roof, stalled out in its own country, where they like you for the perp. Your words are the lyrics of a song that never reached them. Don't think twice, take this job. I am a lineman in a ring of fire, but the verses are missing. Remember the Alamo? Your embassy is burning. You'll have to make it up to them or erase your way out.
Who owns your skin or makes your mind? To drive is an accident and an answer waiting to happen. What is happiness? Not sun or sky, and never Plato. A breeze to sweet-talk drunkenness, a song inking up the night. Or the poem scratching its ring against the roof, stalled out in its own country, where they like you for the perp. Your words are the lyrics of a song that never reached them. Don't think twice, take this job. I am a lineman in a ring of fire, but the verses are missing. Remember the Alamo? Your embassy is burning. You'll have to make it up to them or erase your way out.
