SCOTNEY
Piano and Friend
Castell Alexander
I hide on the
red stairway;
listening,
jealous
as you press
grave garnets
and bells
from the keys
of a piano.
In ochre light,
your fingers,
glimpsed
through an
open doorway,
play softly,
not for me,
but the mistress
of false hope;
you bend,
a slight form,
as outside
shapely
clouds float
past thin,
numbered
chimneys.
And monkeys sit
elsewhere
in this elegant,
twisting
house,
engaged
in poetic combat;
spilling ink
over ivory combs
already stained
and misused.
In the kitchen,
dragons sift
through chocolate
and coffee
preparing mugs
for tall
invaders with
pancake smiles.
DOWNS
Friday
warm pavement
and a woman
dressed
in lipstick red
kneeling
uncomfortably
by the
window
of a restaurant
desperate
to read the novel
she browsed all
week on the tube
glances
sees a man
from years past
search
at a newsstand
his face lined with
sad intentions
and a thin
grey beard
lost in the crowd
of the young
and tipsy
glances
up
both unable
to find stars
in the dizzy sky
FOOD.
“I started the car and drove on into Wisconsin, looking for a motel and a restaurant where I could get some real food—something that would squirt when I bit into it and run down my chin. That, of course, is the way food should be.”
The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson
ALL I REALLY WANNA DO
IS, BABY, BE FRIENDS WITH YOU
Thoughts on Paris, two years past
From my apartment above a pizza kitchen in Sorengo
I died
and
went to Paris.
You were there, pondering cheese and printing presses. You treated me to foie gras, served with a side of guilt. We enjoyed a long meal, ending with a longer wander.
Well, mademoiselle, I’m very drunk right now! You exclaimed, collapsing on the pavement.
I kissed the bellhop on the cheek.
I lied; it was he who carried you to the lift.
Mist in a graveyard – the next day, after a lie-in and several coffees, we visited
the greats in untimely earth.
On this street, construction. On that street, the mediocre architecture of a bored afternoon,
a hot afternoon on the Seine.
On this street, something beautiful
and in this house, the wallpaper drinks
drinks
drinks the combined memory of
Wilde and Borges.
Running through the enthralling, offensive, disaster that is Paris – away from you.
Laughing.
Stop.
You’ll lose a hand in the attempt to sketch a masterpiece by Leonardo Da Vinci in the style of Pablo Picasso.
Doesn’t matter, already dead, I said.
A long sip of coca-cola sprinkled with lemon and laden with ice, sleeping on the couch of a café that has seen
better writers
and better times.
Together again.
Socks blown away on a blue midnight.
Coursing through the windows and chimneys of
Paris.
I envy them
and dissolve.
