Crib Notes for the Marquis de Sade

Establish a premise concerned
exclusively with cruelty,
then deconstruct the first article of faith
with philosophical questions and extreme
examples that become the norm.

A writer’s modus operandi:
orgasm and feast and sleep,
replenish the feral mass
a virile physiology
devoted to lust and vomitus.

(Ask the devil a question and prepare
for honest answers).

Plump hedonism weighs down
the verdant limbs—
a ripened berry, sickly sweet
reddened brightly with raw
clitoral excitement.

Born into the inheritance
of swollen ideals and engorged
fatherly paragons: death
undoubtedly is a flaccid affair.

by Phillip M. Roberts