The Genii In The Bottle

Animals must go berserk when they sniff my room- So many scents, so many bottles- It must smell like a thousand armageddons Flowery spices and attar of rose Orange blossom and civet musk Oppopanox and oud wood All the ambers and vanillas The older stuff thickened now with age And darker colored than when it first arrived All of it my rare treasure And my older body, childbirth wise, briny, Turns the scents inside out Rankles them, puts them off Even my nose is out of tune nowdays Nobody knows the secret of why I'm still clinging to all these old friends It's so simple it makes me want to laugh: All my memories are bottled up inside Those fragrances, sachets and potions How can I ever throw those away I can't distill them out of the scents You can't throw away pieces of yourself Even parts from the long lost days And the clutter does add a certain exotic richness; A heady, wafting incense always straining To escape from the containers- My secret wish fulfilling Genii.