Crime Passionnel

Amazing, really-some insignificant squirt
of a five-foot-nothing, past-his-prime
nanny goat of a bloke
can so take the skin off my life.

How many seas of scalding
salt tears have I seethed in
because he raised his voice a mite?
How many Lady Macbeth nights
have I worn the shine off the moonlight
because he didn't write?
Too many furious fights
have I vowed thumbscrew-and-rapier
retribution, and throttled him
a thousand times over
and lopped his limbs off
and left them lying around,
or toppled him over the craggiest
cliff in Cornwall and then inveigled
the lifeguard to look inland,
or found him face downwards
floating and horribly bloated
in some secluded lake,
or flung him on a bonfire
and watched him broil
faster than the fillet steak.

Amazing, really-
what a grip he's got on life.
After a million deaths, he's still
unconcernedly sitting there
and he flings me
that stomach-lurching,
fetchingly flirtatious grin
and-damn the guy-I'm in a
sort of head-over-heels, seventh heaven
of a fool's paradise
(I'm the fool, God knows)
and I drain the lake
and lynch the lifeguard
and that rapier in my hand
is suddenly a red
red rose.