vestibule-vaporeux

the ghosts of the risible staircase float in the drolling haze...

rising above the impudence and converting the scintillations

to daze and obfuscate...

[steaming in obscurum on the Rue du Bac, Paris 75007]

niveau-lueur-nébuleux

a flattened moon hovers over the dry industrial artland...

a maleficent eye unwinking, unthinking, purely jinxing luminance...

upon...

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..." *

[*line from "HOWL" by Allen GINSBERG, 1926-1997] 

[unspinning lunadisc in the Palais de Tokyo, 13, avenue du Président Wilson, 75016 Paris]

entours-trône-estompé

a baconesque pop-pope perches on the punk-pink throne...

what fetish entozoon soon emerges to empyrean calculations,

to slither under the silky chasubles of phlegmatic apparitions...

[alone with Napoleon's tiny chemise de nuit in the Musée Galliera, 10, Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, 75016 Paris]

béate-boîte-brumeuse

Safe in its Glazed Chamber-

Untouched by Mourning-

And untouched by the Moon-

Lies the meek relic of the Insurrection-

Pillow of Satin - and Roof of Stone!*

the Shadow darkly unmoved,
hangs upon its golden Spot;

the Blessed Blood steeps 
in slowly relinquished layers...
curing to soft rapturous Rot!


[*a re-versing of the first stanza of "216", with apologies to Emily DICKINSON, 1830-1886]

[suspended in the Hôpital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, 75013 Paris]

frigos-flûtes-floues

dark dark flowed the freeze fluid...cold colder coldest no more...

art artful in frost free fridges...conducive conduit art-erial core...

[Les Frigos, 19, rue des Frigos, 75013 Paris]

la verte perpétuelle

 

pitted stones sweat blooming mossss...

sleek marble salted by crystal tearsss...

the buried bones split hairs lossss...

a speckled twig falls on your fearsss... 

"et vous qui dormez! autre granit et vieilles roses

qui passez et disparaissez dans un bain pur

sans faiblesse comme sans distance

hautes hautes terres étranger azur

pesez sur elle qui n'est plus

dans le temps ni sein ni spasmes ni larmes

qui s'est retournée sous la terre

vers l'autre plus cendreux soleil."*

[*verse from "La Femme et la Terre" by Pierre-Jean JOUVE, 1887-1976]

l'éminence verte

a jagged thread of sun stitches together furtive shadows below...

the voluminous gowns above enlace in a symmetrical row...

a light wind sways their regal skirts, and l'air varié intersperses... 

softly the courtyard of the palais royal, still undulating eminences...

l'implication verte

in the seafoam greenness of this fugitive corner...

in the darkened carapace of this mantled courtyard...

agile immortals are engaged in mythic play...

boldly implicit in the undercurrent of simulacre...

l'involucre vert

 a whirling man-boy...breaking out of his pod...shaded by notre dame...

paris is his husk...

"this plant would like to grow and yet be embryo; increase, and yet escape the doom of taking shape; be vaguely vast, and climb to the tip end of time with all of space to fill, like boundless Igdrasil that has the stars for fruit."*

[*3rd verse from "Seed Leaves" by Richard WILBUR, 1921-]

l'embrouillement vert

even in death, she is close...

married to his brother, but after his own heart...

painter to painter, talent on talent...

M pour M...

she brushes aside, then lightly upon...

her green eyes darkened in repose,

her white dress splayed,

a wilting camellia on a velvet web... 

[a summer's day at the intimate Cimetière de Passy]

l'endurcissement vert

a stone veil...
a verdigris frost...
a slotted regard...
a faraway heart...
quelque chose demeure un peu sur la montagne...*

[*line from "Beauté des femmes, leur faiblesse..."  by Paul VERLAINE, 1844-96]

 

la porte bleu

whenever I had entered into my private paris, it was through large blue portal doors - a blue of a hue almost too intense for this city of muted colours...

I would have preferred shiny lacquered black, softly reflective pearl gray, a dark rich green, that deep burgundy red or even plain polished wood to this bright voracious blue...

until one day when I came upon this slim and elegantly ornamented panel shied away in an impasse behind Rue Saint Antoine that glowed the same cobalt blue, I then realized how much vivacity has coloured my inner world here in this the most perspicacious town of them all...

l'ardeur rouge

somewhere in paris a shiny red camper van encapsulates the inflamed fervour of a neighbouring nation... the full flush victory of la furia roja charges in all directions - a bullish taunting toro for the enervated les bleus faibles...

[paris-madrid]

the spanish boys dance their nimble steps with the ball in the winds of the Cape of Good Hope...a bravura honed by centuries of natural prowess with a bull under the brilliant sun...
in Madrid we had been witness to the finesse and the flair manifest as instinctive as flurried fingers on a guitar, a goaded Goya with his brush, the lyrical vehemence of Garcia Lorca...all passion play as tarred and  bloodied as the darkest rose...

[paris-donostia]

a concerned or challenging portuguese query on a basque beach - tattooed on a silken skin of sand, the sea a silvery sheet flowing up the atlantic throatline to the darkening tête de france...

where ignominious anti-heroes have returned to choke in a cloud of noxious blue smoke...

[paris-pamplona]

el sol may also rise here, los toros may frolic ferociously on the streets, los peregrinos may avoid such excitable streets, but in Pamplona there are also dangerous stone balls carefully secured with steel bars to a solid wood casing in a hidden alleyway...

perhaps on their secret journey to Afrique du Sud for the fleet-footed spanish armada to conquer all!

[paris-zaragoza]

the cockroaches encroach in this dark alley, following a mythical sailor not far from the salty sea...

but Corto Maltes dances no  more - his mother's gypsy blood having curdled with his father's english gore - and we slash a fateline through Zaragoza before dawn to follow the Ebro to a lost continent of mute stones and secret roses...

eau d'europe

"...'tis some cold, black pool, where in the scented dusk..."* oozes an oily dirge...

"j'ai vu le soleil bas taché d'horreurs mystiques illuminant de longs figements violets...

...mêlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères à peaux d'hommes!

j'ai vu fermenter les marais, énormes nasses où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan!
...eschouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns... 

moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poètes, des lichens de soleil et des morves d'azur..."* 

"si je désire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé un enfant accroupi, plein de tristesses, lâche un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai."*

[*selected lines and verses from "Le Bateau Ivre" by Arthur RIMBAUD, 1854-91]

[alone in a small secret chamber in the Marais, softly scented by Eau d'Europe and the breath of two frenchmen...]

le coffre d'or

a gilded chest distends from that hallowed hall to primitivism on the silvered tongue-river seine...divination primeval in-viscus entombed within, while divining rod of iron inviscous pierces the primal skies above...

were all this gathering of indigenous vestiges an invocation to self-preservation or a mere ablation of vengeful velleities...

[Musée du Quai Branly by Jean NOUVEL, 2006]

mater-adora

behind a pane of textured glass she stands in pale wooden folds with her babe in arms gently shielded by a leafy branch... bathed by a watery light the carved hardness exudes a serene innocuity, a fixated imperturbability, the monocarpous mamaternal eternal...