Another Perfume Riddle

Welcome to the second installment of my new feature here on Hortus Conclusus, in which a perfume bottle sings a little riddle, and it’s up to you, dear readers, to guess which bottle of perfume is riddling. Which of you will be the first to guess this one, I wonder? This poem is an emulation of Dr. Seuss’s genius rhyme about the Flooboober Babboober bubs in On Beyond Zebra, one of the first poems I memorized as a child:

If sometimes you don’t feel like channeling mother,

put me on, for I smell like blubbery rubber.

I’m no good to eat and I’m kind of a Goth,

(If one says that with color that repels the moth)

Although I am housed with luxury baubles,

I’d prefer an alley where the streetwalker wobbles.

I’m green and I’m amber as well as a powder,

but my signature note sings considerably louder.

If you know who I am, then tell me my name

though my brothers and sisters sound somewhat the same,

I am quite unique; unlike them, I’m no hack.

My name, my dear friends, is ____________!

 

CREDITS: Image of Oedipus and the Sphinx from courtesy of Project Gutenberg