Parfum

Fumigators were the 16th-century version of salespeople on Valentine’s Day.
The role came from the Latin fumus, to smoke,
and pleasant-smelling smokes were classified as perfume,
thus, dooming the pesticide paramours to a perfectly pleasant position peddling scents of love.
The Greek mistress of seduction royally cloaked herself in this molten sex,
but perfume today is more than just a means to seduce and destroy.

Marc, Calvin, and Tiffany conspired around the cauldron to destroy
our noses on a fresh summer day.
Had us truffle hunting for crisp and fruity, flirty and spicy Sex
sprays to spritz high above factories of smog and smoke,
their solution to billow love
into the atmosphere and swathe the globe in the Perfume

House Effect. It is predicted that when sea levels rise (even more), so will the Perfume
Potentates. As their cursive decrees, we must destroy
all knock-off neon tubes of Infinity, Peace, and Love,   
and install a floral filter into our drinking water so that each day
we may serve our toast with a glass of Eau de Orange and a packet of smokes,
just like the French do after sex.

Speaking of French sex,
nos mères will birth rose-tinted bébés, each ascribed a distinctive perfume
that squeezes out after the placenta, but not before mama has had a balcony smoke.
Alas, the marketing campaigns will destroy
Fresh Air competitors. To prepare, you should sell your shares in facemasks. In only one day,
their moats will be brimming with the aromas that we love.

Young girls who concoct potions in their gardens will love
an apprenticeship with the Compound Houses, that pays in sex
and has them synthesizing Putrescine into strains of Vanillin during the day.
Only Queens can brave the lab’s most concentrated perfume,
foretold to destroy
the wrists and napes of girls, slashing through them like a red candle in the smoke.

Gabrielle Bonheur’s Honey and Tar N°5 will eventually dominate and smoke
treacle across the sky, slathering our throats in this petrichor of love.
Gills in our nostrils, only O2 will destroy
this lurid smell of Eternity, Harmony, and Sex
that boils in a crystal beaker as our perfume.
Each spray is the same as yesterday.
​
To the fumigators, who smoke bouquets into our lungs, orchids and lilies mingling like sex
in a bed of base notes, I’ve mastered the trade of love from your perfume.
On a fresh summer day, I aim to destroy.