Snapshots

[PrinceMyshkin]

so far, still so strong..

I loved the rhinoceros crack! Such a vivid image...

mornin', Uncle Jer! (er, I have no idea what time it over there...)

5 pm, 13 hours earlier than in Manila...

[PrinceMyshkin]

Five white, black wing-tipped seagulls
swoop down in formation
on a scrap of food in the gutter.

They peck at it like attention-hungry politicians
then rise separately, circle and glide
in the air, landing briefly

on suspended electric cables
and the roof of the huge
former synagogue across the street.

[Pendragon]

Thanks and think of this as a test more for my benefit than yours: How do you imagine the man's body, the size or shape of it? I thought of specifying that but try not to overload these snapshots.

Body bent by time,
Whipcord thin, slightly emaciated,
He looks in need of a good meal,
Light playing off the thick glasses,
His cane taps the pavement
As if checking for hollows
Slow walking, but walking...

He was probably just the opposite, but my view!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Body bent by time,
Whipcord thin, slightly emaciated,
He looks in need of a good meal,
Light playing off the thick glasses,
His cane taps the pavement
As if checking for hollows
Slow walking, but walking...

He was probably just the opposite, but my view!

Fine poem of your own and you're undoubtedly right one way or the other! In fact he was pretty stocky which was so much a feature of what my eye took in that I imagined it would convey itself but other than the reference to the rhino, I couldn't see how to cue the reader

[PrinceMyshkin]

Sitting alone at a table
outside The Arts Café
I run over the names of the women
I’ve recently hungered for:

Marie1, Nancy, Margaret,
Marie2, Shen Li, Gita,
Gita, Gita!

Rosary beads in a string
that stretches from here
to the Goddess of Unfulfilled Desires.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Good-looking Eric
and mannish Kate
walk by each week-day morning
with their two young, fair-haired,
sweet-berry sons,
Samuel on Eric’s shoulders,
Henri hand-in-hand with Kate.

[PrinceMyshkin]

These two are the best of buddies,
teachers at the College Français
across the way: the chubby,
balding, wise-cracking Quebecker
and the handsome, soft-looking
transplanted Egyptian.

[Umbilical]

Write a lesbian poem please Prince.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Write a lesbian poem please Prince.

These two are the best of buddies,
teachers at the College Français
across the way: the slinky,
dark-stockinged Quebecker
and the demure, bi,
honey-bunch from Australia.

[Umbilical]

You sure do know how to 'pervert' a poem into something gay. Thank you.

[ampoule]

Sitting alone at a table
outside The Arts Café
I run over the names of the women
I’ve recently hungered for:

Marie1, Nancy, Margaret,
Marie2, Shen Li, Gita,
Gita, Gita!

Rosary beads in a string
that stretches from here
to the Goddess of Unfulfilled Desires.

Oh me, oh my. I love this. Women you have lusted for and rosary beads.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh me, oh my. I love this. Women you have lusted for and rosary beads.

Thanks, Amp, but it's not the beads,
you know, the beads
are all equally round and smooth
and pleasing,
it's the way the fingers caress them
hoping to bring out
the singular essence of each.
*
Snapshot:

Grey-faced Greeks
on the balcony of a restaurant
on Av. Du Parc
address their cigarettes
like the toughest of questions
directed at each of them
by Socrates in the ancient Agora.

[ampoule]

Snapshot:

Grey-faced Greeks
on the balcony of a restaurant
on Av. Du Parc
address their cigarettes
like the toughest of questions
directed at each of them
by Socrates in the ancient Agora.

And I smile and yell up to them,
Kalimera!
It does not matter,
About anything,
I raise my hands and dance
down the street like Zorba.
Oupa! Oupa!

[Virgil]

Grey-faced Greeks
on the balcony of a restaurant
on Av. Du Parc
address their cigarettes
like the toughest of questions
directed at each of them
by Socrates in the ancient Agora.

Good one! Love the image.

Sitting alone at a table
outside The Arts Café
I run over the names of the women
I’ve recently hungered for:

Marie1, Nancy, Margaret,
Marie2, Shen Li, Gita,
Gita, Gita!

Rosary beads in a string
that stretches from here
to the Goddess of Unfulfilled Desires.

Even better one. Love the association to a religious ritual. Great metephor.

Five white, black wing-tipped seagulls
swoop down in formation
on a scrap of food in the gutter.

They peck at it like attention-hungry politicians
then rise separately, circle and glide
in the air, landing briefly

on suspended electric cables
and the roof of the huge
former synagogue across the street.

Perhaps the best of the three. Very strong simile, and while I can't put my finger why, the synagogue adds power to this.

[PrinceMyshkin]

while I can't put my finger why, the synagogue adds power to this.

Nor can I say exactly why I included it. It is there, indeed: a great hulk of a building, uncommonly assertive for a N. American synagogue, and the birds did several times land on it, but there were any number of other details I might have cited from the scene in front of me and yet I didn't.

One of the pleasures for me in writing poetry is the experience of living in suspension for a time between one's conscious mind and one's subconscious, how the former sometimes humbly makes way for the latter.