Day 111: On first reading Baudelaire

I scrape the edge of Baudelaire and think,
"Are these the rhymes which I can use to break
This sonnet-crusted cage? It seems to shrink
Its volume daily, folding in the wake
Of larger crafts. They trawl for blasphemies
In French and English, shifting languages
Like young girls trading clothing, ill at-ease
With metaphor -- 'Let each be what it is,'
They say, and strip their poet shirts, exchanging
Their fabric for the fabric of another.
Denuded for a moment, their unchanging,
'Come-hither' skin resembles mine; rather,
I sense the sonnet just below the page;
It rattles in its self-encrusted cage."