I think I understand you, Baudelaire,
With all your strangeness and perverted ways,
You whose fierce hatred of dull working days
Led you to seek your macabre visions there
Where shrouded night came creeping to ensnare
Your phantomfevered brain, with subtle maze
Of decomposéd loves, remorse, dismays,
And all the gnawing of a world’s despair.
Within my soul you’ve set your blackest flag
And made my disillusioned heart your tomb;
My mind which once was young and virginal
Is now a swamp, a spleenfilled pregnant womb
Of things abominable, things androgynal,
Flowers of Dissolution, Fleurs du Mal.
