Wonderful! Perfect lighting on this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
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Wonderful! Perfect lighting on this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
This is great!! Very vivid!Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
Hey Shou, have you noticed all these women who post here that they love your poetry?? :p We love you, Shou! :)
A man with a scowl
as hefty as the 300-odd pounds
he carries around with him, bullet head
and dark, dark beard,
heaves his way up
the three concrete steps
into the café
A young guy approaches the cash,
his lower lip
underslung by a tuft of hair
as wispy as a butterfly’s fart
Deborah at the café
turns out to speak Hebrew,
broke up with her lover
that morning.
After we’ve exchanged
the basics of our lives, she tells me:
“I’ve travelled half the world.
That was easier
than what I went through this morning.”
I like this one. I understand this feeling of overwhelming sadness, which is very well expressed here.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
I take a seat at an outdoor table
next to Joseph, a fellow Jew,
and we launch into a discussion
bemoaning Israeli treatment
of the Palestinians and of
Jewish chauvinism.
Just beyond us a light wind
trembles the leaves of the trees.
A young girl, thin as a twig,
clack-clack-clacks her way
on stiletto heels
at the end of her even thinner legs
It used to be that when things moved the picture blurred. Amazing what these new cameras can do. Those last two lines made me tremble.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
Thank you, P. There's a saying in Yiddish I mostly deplore: "It's hard to be a Jew!"Quote:
Originally Posted by ampoule
Truth is, for some of us, It's hard to not be a Jew! I do try to take a holiday from it from time to time.
Love this one! It could be a description of my niece. Lord that girl is thin and all legs! Getting married next month at 21. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
For a moment or two
this St John the Baptist holiday
there is no one and nothing outside the café
but the sun that picks out every detail of the street,
the low and sometimes impatient
susurrus of the passing cars,
the voices of Nathalie
and a couple of customers
through the wide-open windows
and the leaves that may be murmuring
their quiet, matutinal prayers
I would not be able to frame this picture because it moves. I love the way it comes to life, the way mornings do.
An almost alarmingly pregnant woman
goes by, her abdomen
like Kilimanjaro on the horizontal
As someone who has been pregnant every other year for the past decade and a half.... I LOVE this one! Belly like Kilimanjaro, indeed!
Count yourself fortunate that it didn't resemble Everest and that neither Hillary nor Sherpa Tenzing were in the vicinity!Quote:
Originally Posted by _Shannon_
:lol: That's so you!Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
A woman comes into view,
like a cross between Mother Goose
and the lead locomotive,
her height accentuated
by the train
of parti-coloured
goslings trailing after her.
“Bonjours, les bébittes,"(bugs)
I call out to them.
Some wave at me, some smile, some
look puzzled. “Nous ne sommes pas
des bébittes," one blonde, curly-headed kid
calls out to me.
“Non?” I say, astonished.
“Non,” he continues, “nous sommes
des humains, des enfants!”
Come to find out!
A turbanned black woman
in a brilliant floral print dress
teeters on chicken legs
across an incurious street
I understand now! It was "les bébêtes"! Nothing to do with les bibites! :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
You Franch! You speak a language all your hown, eh?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweets America
A child the size of a sweet
jelly bean
rides on the shoulders
of her massive papa
bouncing up and down
with every step he takes.
A tiny, ancient Chinese woman,
whose footsteps are like small,
cautious bites of an over-rich food,
pauses to sneeze
and I watch in concern
lest the force of it
take her straight up into the air.
A young Khassidic woman,
wearing the sort of coarse cotton stockings
meant to make her legs
unappealing to strangers,
hurries up to the school-bus
that has stopped for her, and I note,
with pleasure in equal parts
lascivious and anti-religious,
how shapely are her legs!
Oh Prince! Sweet jellybean child, small footsteps, cautious bites, such images I love. I just hate to keep saying it over and over, that thing about being amazing.
And lxxiv, I'm reminded of a woman jazz singer in a smokey bar playing the piano and watching the antics of Rock Hudson with Doris Day and she adds to her lyrics, "You dawg you." ;) :D
This is such a beautiful and well wrought image.
Wonderful! You're in GREAT company! The last time somebody called me that - maybe 6 years ago - it was Pat S. who was at the time a prominent official at FBI headquarters, and because of her androgynous first name I had initially assumed she was male.Quote:
Originally Posted by ampoule
A young man sits at one of the outdoor tables
with an older male friend.
A young woman appears
from around the corner
and he leaps up
and the two of them move into a kiss,
pull back maybe all of an inch
then move in for another one.
From this angle I can see
the dimple deep in his cheek
and the way her eye crinkles
with the whole of her love
An elderly man in three-piece suit,
open-necked dress shirt,
carrying a furled umbrella
like a jaunty walking stick,
pauses at the trash bin
outside the restaurant,
looks expertly in,
retrieves a half-eaten bun
and carries on along his way.
To feed the pigeons, I hope? I hope the poor guy wasn't that badly in need of food!Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
I find this an interesting manifestation of the difference in your and my take on life! There was nothing in the scene as I recall it that could objectively disprove your hypothesis but though I hope I haven't tilted the picture one way or another, what you suggest did not even come close to occuring to me!Quote:
Originally Posted by Pendragon
I DID think there was something a touch furtive in the way he paused before looking into the trash bin, a slight tensing in his back or shoulders in case he was being observed, but that could easily have been my projection as to how I would feel if I were in what I imagined to be his situation.
Gosh. You see it all in Montreal, don'cha?Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
A turbanned black woman
in a brilliant floral print dress
teeters on chicken legs
across an incurious street.
You seem to like my take on your snapshots, so I'll give this one a go. Your mention of "chicken legs" brings to mind a stout figure in the dress, the legs viewd below seemingly to fragile to carry the woman, and out of proportion with the upper half. That gives the image of a chicken. :wave:Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
a man marches by
as if impatient to encounter the enemy,
his mouth set
like a land-mine
Reminds me of what you say about me sometimes!Quote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
About your mouth, or---?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweets America
Five old friends
around a wrought-iron table
outside La Croissanterie
and Lalu, their waitress,
19 and worthy of a black-belt
in pleasantness
The next table over,
this lonely moment,
a woman with jet-black hair,
sun-glasses California-style
on top of her head,
a solitary mole on her neck,
sits immersed in her Journal de Montréal.
'Give me a word,'
I’m tempted to lean over
and say to her: 'Any word...'
I will give you a word......Pierian Spring. Okay, so that's two.