Flowers of Evil

by John E Marks

‘Non Serviam,’ the devil said,

‘I will not serve that in which I no longer believe’.

Lucifer, fallen angel, tried hard to be good

But servitude just wasn’t in his blood:

A pebble in a dream, a breast that heaves,

With all the unresurrected flotsam

Of flowers that leave a cloying perfume in the breeze

Satan has a mind that rhymes

With time’s eunuch

Millennia: battered, no-man-mattered;

Cancelling love’s deceit :

Forsaking clemency’s cheating ways

Not with a mind enthroned in the blue mush of regret

Dilettantes who beget frozen hearts with the whiteness of snow;

O! I never cry and I never laugh and I never kiss and I rarely sigh.

And I cannot die

Devote your last days to the divine fleurs de mal

To austere studies

Fascinate the docile, timid mind of man:

Mirror that which they already know,

Eyes wide with the clarity,

A child suffering in the snow….