We're Not in Paris

We’re not in Paris so much as we’re in
our story about Paris.

Lost in the nightlessness of midsummer’s eve,
in the lost arrondissement of the honey moon,
every cobblestone Rue de Debauche
murmurs like Baudelaire’s L’homme ivre d’une
umbre qui passes—Men, crazed with shadows
that they chase—

every Musee des Arts Mort enshrines works
so famous we can’t see a face, a mountain,
a flower any other way—
it’s like God himself was an impressionist—
haunting us as we stumble through our
second sleepless night.

It is the dream of lovers.
It is the story of women who wash
their faces in tonight’s fallen dew,
hoping to become more beautiful—
their beauty the passé partout to the only
thing that really matters.

What art will hold them?

Whatever croissants the boulangers bake,
whatever oldies the metro musicians cover,
whatever promises the sidewalk sex workers dangle—
snap the photos and pass them by.

We breathe out the slow le sigh of Sartre’s ennui,
dissolve into the anonymous crowds
along the boulevards,
write our own billet doux to Paris
over petite dejeuner in the morning.

French Cathedral Ennui

Kneeling, I feel the sun come through my high
windows, long shadows fall around my feet.

I rub my face on the sky, trying to wake up
or find comfort in some old worry.

Fallen angels peel off my walls like flecks
of dead skin.

If I could slowly melt away—a dune
flattened by the wind—stop like a clock
whose parts had worn out, end like a song dying
in the throat of its singer.

Hands keep shoring me up against the rising
tide of some old fear.

I want to bolt my doors and keep them out.

My back aches from the infernal dampness
of this region and five hundred years
of arched meditation.

My God—to stretch out on this rocky ground.

Fear of life keeps my head pointed upward,
the heaven of a stony design on my face.