Kitschpoesie: Paris
Quickly composed in Place Des Vosges at night
The tricorns shall be hung
On the rack.
Tincups rattled on fish-hooks
Vous avez de l’argent
Phantom-brass signs
Of a city long Haussmanned
Je ne parle pas anglais
Algerians on the search
For their aunt’s scalp
These are
Plashing, eddying:
Slimy black anemones
Spotted from the Pont Neuf.
Chestnuts get slipped on
By the bereted Chinese
A mountain and a half
Can be put back
From all the rock this place
Wears on its Phrygian cap
And it seems like every woman’s visage
Has taken shape
After Diane Of Versailles;
There is a gold dome and a gold star
A golden bridge and a golden light
Descending from a Provençal altar-piece
All the bullion used in those works
Is Europe's sun.
On the Tuileries
We assimilate the
Hedge divisions
Through our bodies
Which want to become lines
Want to become diagonals
Nothing is certain
But my placement
The geometry swallows us up.
The Tour D’ Eiffel
(which I’m yet to see)
Swings its great sickle of light
Reaps sixmillion eyes its way
And calls out to me
Like a sailor lost at sea
Who won’t come home
Because everyone there is gone.
People are kind but you
Are not worthy of their time
There is a plaque on every corner
There is an artist who
Somehow lies stiff
Continents away
From where they fed
On their mom’s tit.
Someone says “that looks old.”
Yes, old stuff
Which resists us
They edified and they edified well
Shall it outlast all the torment
It leveraged
As pay?
There is a face plastered on every wall
Waiting to eat the night
And a porte-cochere
To hide us from sight.