The Adventures of Lulu

[Oskar]

You were sex, design and science fiction
stepping out
in a string of burlesque pearls.
Venus
in furs worn on the back
of a decadent Weimar cat;
naturally capricious and perverse.

So very brave and new and recreational.
Sleek deco mistress
holding men in your gaze.
Modernist
and all night denizen
of calibrated quid pro quos.
Falling in love again, and again and


in the Tin Pan metropolis
there’s a dead cat in the Reichstag
and a banker on a ledge.
Pandora,
now is the time
when Emperor Ming the Merciless
comes to claim his throne.