Cicisbeo

Poefusion's Friday 5 ought to be renamed Increase Your Word Power...

And there he came, the playboy cicisbeo,
swinging through the city streets all night
like Jupiter as seen by Galileo
capturing some lovely satellite.
An asteroid, a monadnock unrooted
on the earth: she flashed across his line
of sight and left him there flat-footed.
Friends agreed his punishment condign.

Never mind Odysseus's claim
to Polypheme that "no man" was his name:
just suss it out. No man is an island,
soft-shelled crabs cannot survive on dry land,
hearts that hide inside a shell of stone
may die without their exoskeletons.

cicisbeo, condign, monadnock, suss, exoskeleton

Collection available! Knocking from Inside