Amor et Mulsum

I raise a wine combed glass to a dangerous height

And she takes a resolute but careless bite

Of her bread with brie and drip-laced honey.

I hold it heaven-high so as to toast the sight

Of her black nightshade eyes and the sunny

Wave of each yellow tress and her funny

Ways that belie indifference and doubt

In a smile that first did sit me down and won me.

The swirling wine cleaves to sides and dances about,

Around the inside of the glass and some without.

It heaves with a swing to the rim of the tip

And drips much like the same sweet honey from out

Of coy, supercilious and smirking lips.

I resign to take yet another small sip.

Instead hand and glass like a hammer roars down

Once more, and again, and again, in vertical rips

That fall, explode on, a crash of a crown.

There red wine blood and sweet amber all round

Mingles and merges.  The deed did send

(At last) her lips toward mine. A lifeless head abounds

In a sweet and dry brine. I did kill her then.

No need to sit and wonder could I do it again.

For the very act, seemingly, dared to decree

That with strange mix of sweet and sour, I did bend

Her will toward mine. As far as I might care to see,

I procured that honey from a miserly bee.

On passion's whim, either wrong or right,

I doused with wine the sweet sting that stung me.