Poem: 'JOURS QUIETUDE DANS CLICHY'

JOURS QUIETUDE DANS

CLICHY/ QUIET DAYS

IN CLICHÉ

- after meeting Carolyn Cassady in London,

then going further, to Paris

after four months of chasing, Zoe quits
her husband for a flat in Headingley

now she goes down on me
auburned by dashboard glow
though she’s crying & I know
she’s still with him, only
here to revenge him,
while me, I’m here to
hunt visions of bright nebulae,
she says “you, you’re predatory”,
I say “love exists on
a symmetry of needs”,
doing numbers I’ve told before
and still half-believe, she
listens, nods, breathes,
holds my penis, “yes, but
you’re still predatory…”

I’m thinking Carolyn in Belsize
saying “writers must write,
it behoves the rest of us
to support them”, thinking
of my wife watching TV who
thinks I’m reading poems
in Bradford’s rainblack night

thinking Aragon, Apollinaire, Sartre,
Breton, walking this magic boulevard,
Henry Miller, Jean Cocteau too,
traffic slithering liquid by this tower
on the periferique as Cathy reads
in bed silvered by ten-channel TV
while I’m trapped, aching for
nests of bright nebulae that’ll
radiate out and illuminate Paris
through the Porte d’Italie to
the waitress upstairs in the
Pub St Germaine du Pres
and beyond

Zoe says “you, you’re predatory”,
and I think “yes, I’m predatory
for sensation over edges,
desires between strange limbs,
living ravenous for glaring dreams
that tug like gravity, and
a sensuality so huge it’ll
flesh this screaming void with
constellations of nebulae, and
I ache for them now”

but instead
I remember the revenge poem
Zoe wrote about biting off
her husband’s penis,
I watch taillights slither
through the luminous night
of Headingley, and strain
to catch the scent
of bright nebulae
over Paris…



The full Carolyn Cassady interview is detailed at: http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/carlolyn-cassady-interview.html


This poem published in:
‘COKEFISH Vol.1 no.10’ (USA – November 1990)
‘RAMRAID EXTRAORDINAIRE no.3’ (UK – November 1994)
‘BOGGERS ALL no.5’ (UK – February 1998)
‘URBAN DISTRICT WRITERS no.1’ (UK – July 2007)
and in collection:
‘THE MAN WHO DRANK THE MOON’
edit Pete Presford (UK – March 1994)