the
women and their perfume
and all their hair
and their small fingers you want between
your fingers
tied in knots
their gentle skin
and their perfume
when they walk past
and you want to drink it
and you want it rubbed off on you
you want to be inside it
where they keep all their bottles
on the dresser
with the lotions
and the powders
and you inside the bottle
sprayed onto their bodies
when they walk past
wearing scent
wearing perfume
dripping from their hair
and from their bodies
such fine fingers
such fine fingers
i want those fingers
between my fingers
i want that scent i want that
smell
on my own skin
on my own body
from your body
i want to be beneath it
i want to be inside it
when you walk past wearing perfume
looking fine
looking decent
looking like something special
i want that scent
i want that perfume
to touch that skin with my fingers
to taste that perfume
to wear that perfume
your perfume
on my skin
and on my pillow
i want your fingers
between my fingers
because
that hair and
that perfume
when you walked past like it
was nothing
i started aching
and their small fingers you want between
your fingers
tied in knots
their gentle skin
and their perfume
when they walk past
and you want to drink it
and you want it rubbed off on you
you want to be inside it
where they keep all their bottles
on the dresser
with the lotions
and the powders
and you inside the bottle
sprayed onto their bodies
when they walk past
wearing scent
wearing perfume
dripping from their hair
and from their bodies
such fine fingers
such fine fingers
i want those fingers
between my fingers
i want that scent i want that
smell
on my own skin
on my own body
from your body
i want to be beneath it
i want to be inside it
when you walk past wearing perfume
looking fine
looking decent
looking like something special
i want that scent
i want that perfume
to touch that skin with my fingers
to taste that perfume
to wear that perfume
your perfume
on my skin
and on my pillow
i want your fingers
between my fingers
because
that hair and
that perfume
when you walked past like it
was nothing
i started aching
Lance Parfum "Rodo" -- Alphonse Mucha
Algernon Charles Swinburne's title character in his novel "Lesbia Brandon," written between 1859 and 1868 but not published until 1952 because of its alleged pornographic nature, killed herself "by inches by opium and perfume." American and British newspapers in the 1890s commented about decadent, bohemian Parisian women injecting perfumes such as patchouli into the skin and blood stream in order to perfume the body. The lance-parfum Rodo was patented in 1897 by la Société Chimique des Usines du Rhône, in Lyon, which manufactured pharmaceuticals and synthetic perfume ingredients. When liquid ethyl chloride meets warm air, it vaporizes; the perfume was developed after an accidental spill of violet fragrance spilled into ethyl chloride. Like the earlier Kélène lance chlorure d’ethyle, which preserved ethyl chloride in portable, single-use glass or metal tubes for use as local and general anesthesia, the lance-parfum was a portable projection system for perfumed ethyl chloride, which was released automatically when the seal was broken. Rodo was manufactured in a variety of scents, including heliotrope, hyacinth, lily-of-the-valley, and Peau d’Espagne. It is possible that they were the basis of the newpaper reports of eccentric fin-de-siècle usage, such as subcutaneous perfume injection and perfume drinking. Lance-parfums were heavily marketed at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, where users reportedly suffered intoxication, hallucinations, and cardiac trouble; the products were outlawed in the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteA half century earlier, Walt Whitman, self-obsessed as always, had written
I celebrate myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. 5
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.