Rimbaud and Verlaine Wrote a Sonnet Praising the Male Asshole, Each Writing Every Other Line

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

“Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.”  ~ Shakespeare writing as a pimp.

Thomas Chatterton painted by Henry Wallis

Perhaps you sleep in garrets or yet worse,

A poet trapped by circumstance and lack

Shaped like a hanging noose.  Its work is terse…

Then you are gone.  Your life a dungeon rack

Is all too slow in killing you and so

You eat some arsenic, though maybe sex

Is why.  Your life was fast then slow, too slow,

Your death too quick.  You lived a poet’s hex,

Adolescent torture written large.

A death like that for Rimbaud would have been

God’s wisdom.  Cleopatra’s fragrant barge

With asps would better have suited this teen.

  But Rimbaud lived too long, his desert time

CHT162719 Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) in his Bed in Brussels (oil on canvas) by Rossman, Jef (19th Century)
oil on canvas
Private Collection
Archives Charmet
French, out of copyright

    With guns a poor extenuation crime.

~ Phillip Whidden