Metamorphosis

He's a verbal wizard par excellence.
Ambivalent rhetoric does he breed.
As for relationship, beyond question,
He speaks thousandfold louder than his deeds.
An armchair lover, he threw his trump card;
Yet love and war speak unlike languages.
His billet-doux became a coup de grâce,
And his courting lines turned to elegies.
He cannot tell page from stage; furthermore,
Love and hate, for him, are Siamese twins.
He sidled up, bathed in her balm of rose,
Only to take it for rue on a whim.
She said, "Hardly is this a rehearsal."
"Ah," smirked he, "nor is it a proposal."