Cover-up

Lush, volcanic and redolent passion fruit
Rip apart already torn lime-colored seams,
cough-up soft, glistening black-studded interiors
to release a perfumed ripeness
that Coty could never replicate or capture,
only attempt to stuff nature’s muffled voice
into pear-shaped rose decanters.

Scents of patchouli, verveine and lilac
stir, pace and circle like a testosterone-injected pit-bull
at the bottom of stone-encrusted crystal
refusing to crawl and creep slowly to the edge,
to walk the red and white striped plank.
Refusing to jump into the chamber of experience.

Existing solely to fill the gaps,
to conceal the putrid stench,
camouflage the intoxicating smells:

a rotting apple, yellow pools that sway in broken brown eggshells,
moldy discarded bread crusts, shriveled red onions,
slabs of rejected fat still shiny with grease,
orange cigarette butts caked with dust, shredded ConEd bills,
wrinkled and stained Sunday papers, crusted beige prophylactics,
ripped toilet paper soiled with red kisses, rusting banana peels,
coffee grains and plastered white pieces of fettuccine
that give the black plastic an interior design,

all of it neatly concealed,
held together with thick dark Glad easy-tie bags.
Evidence covered and closed,
only the scent remains.