Pining For Paris

Pining for Paris

my longing is etched long bold letters

pining for Paris & cheap un-taxed wine

cheeses & meats from tripe butchers

they describe unrequited passions for a

tall, angular, red-bearded Poet I met in

an ambiguous little Left Bank theatre

the balm of his velvet jacket still haunts

much like our exchange of amorous sighs

him bare-chested & magnificently mannered

a stalwart protector of my ancient ramparts  

& staunch supporter of my peculiar feuds with

the glamorous daughters of the Latin Quarter

it has been the bluest season summer in Sausalito

without the grandeur & misery of artistic struggles

bound to an up-market houseboat with a warm

wood-burning stove & flinty marble kitchenette

anyone else would adopt this way-to-live-easy

flower-power/beatnik/60’s ethos of peace & love

as a sleepy delight, a passive anchorage, rescue

nestled in a pine-forest inspecting an inlet stippled

with millionaire’s homes perched high on stilts

cormorants floating on calm waters of the blue bay

estuary & seals basking in the glint of morning sun

yet I am pining for Paris’s 19^th century cityscape

crisscrossed with wide abundant boulevards

I miss my hideously imaginative & fraught friends

Mathilde, Guillaume, Ponce, Helene, Tempeste

the fledgling virgins tittering on cold cobblestones

in bright floppy hats waiting on fetching singers

I miss my mouth full of pink marquise diamonds

these ox-eye daises are rancorous to the tongue

I miss chain-smoking, pomposity, & sexist editors

with debauched parsing and lumbering syntax

I prefer the raised eyebrows of the highbrow

two glasses of Bordeaux to quench a squabble

rosy begonias perfectly paired with sartorial feats

to offset waves of elation and despair only the

pulling each other apart at the seams could cull

I want lethargies & stale perfume wafting though

where old ornate & painted ostrich eggs adorned

the lip of a gaudy over-sized bronzed bathtub

instead here I lounge in Sausalito in my wretchedness

writing sexually charged poems about Frank O’Hara

pining profoundly for Paris & it’s seductive bohemia

wine & figs the muse of impressionist painters

once the bloody cynosure of the French Revolution

I long for the heartbreak & the madness of it all

occupying berry-hued café chairs with dusky company

their thick fingers curling around burgundy rimmed cups

give me back my poets,

give me absolute beginners

                the young & the restless

                                return me to my reason.

**

Been pecking at this one for awhile. I've added, subtracted, deleted, re-entered and re-arranged so many times I've lost count. I had this pang from a wee character explaining how, even though she is now residing in a beautiful retreat, she longs for and prefers the mess and drama of her former life in a much different time.

It was fun to write. I am certain, in future, there will be more changes, additions and take-aways, but for now, I blog.

Happy Friday! 

In propinquity,

Nic