Persona Poems

Flâneurs in Paris

Prelude

At the evening of the Origin of Love,

Jove adorned the garish room
with mercury-laden looms and
androgynous marionettes.

His sarcasm and wit entertained
the symposiasts. Who knew the
dinner conversation would lead to
postulations and quarrels about love?

Using wine-skins, the Fates and sylphs
mixed and brewed libations in vessels
for carnival—the table’s deluge of wine
and addiction before All Saints Day.

Dear friends, this hampered their
tellings of our sins, of love that

stems from Melpomene’s tragedy
and Thalia’s comedy (of marriage.)

Muses inspired preludes so that our postludes
do not result in untimely deaths; and overtures
to afterwords to keep our hearts’ rhythms in sync.
This artist’s madness and invention, this sinfonia.    

*

Dream-Lit Quarter

Sundown waves, près du Panthéon

Slimming slurs, breaks, gypsy jazz

12-point bar schooners and champagne

tangled à Le Piano Vache – Sorbonne.

Snapping and clapping with Hughes

as my muse, in a red wine woozy, I pen at

Saint Germaine—Latin Quarter—6^th e.m.e.
with the Seine’s cadenzas as my rhythm.

Baldwin’s night careened, lit like dynamite

on a wood-laden brick stoves, staunched

with coal and sweet-tasting mercurial daisies.

Dews of perspirations, steaming towelettes.

Delany learned French by translating Le Bateau

Ivre, and the Somnambule waltzed at Saint Sulpice
near primrose trees à Jardin du Luxembourg.

S’enlivrer—women seeking their pleasures and zeals.

*

À Montmartre

The harpist plucks

                                                                                                Let it Be

below

La Basilique du Sacré Cœur.

I heard it played a cappella before:
scatter tones in the university courtyard.
                                                                                                Let it Be

Under this holy relic of forgiveness
a küntslerroman, a meraki, & scripturient 
                                                                       

world utters                                                                            Let it Be

*

An Overture 

We dwindle in automaton dances,

performing choreographies line to line,

school to school, and nation to nation.
We are lost in mazes. These nights,

ridden with urban authority. We are 

flâneurs moving inaudibly as somnambules, 

incoherent and neurotic. The prismatic 

palimpsests. The misfits. Under these aloof 

gazes, fortissimo laughs, aimless love affairs, 

transitions and trepidations, we stand as shadows, 

in awe, conducting musical migrations as they meander.