Paris
Dhurries in the shop window read ‘Kismet at reduced rates.’
In the Algerian marketplace the little people are rummaging the left-overs.
The punk has her hair and elders shocked by the green and fluorescent dyes.
The pansy in the café says he’s a coiffeur.
The name itself induces a hair cut.
The sparrow is among the pigeons and gets the better of the battled over French fry – the arch de triomph.
It’s 9:59 and the muezzin is calling in very familiar strains that the sun has set.
The mirror mirror on the wall shivers with the rumble of the trains in the Metro trying almost to predict the way of all flesh.
While in the Metro the trains earthworm their way subterraneously across each other, over and under the Seine in an amazing labyrinth.
The ghastly/lovely center for modern art stands controversially among staid copyrighted Parisian homes a sculpture in tubes.
Futuristic glass domed escalators move immobile people along its caterpillar tracts to observe a George Segal plaster-of-paris woman selling tickets.
Some stiff upper lipper reads first the plastic tag and then goes into paroxysms of delight – ‘Its a Chagall not quite his usual’.
Then gentlemen and lady in hot pursuit chance upon another canvass and in the same unmistakable knowingness remark upon seeing and utterly chauvinistic albeit real depiction of a tribal woman carrying a tribal man, ‘How ingenious, a lady carrying a gentleman’.
People are scurrying towards the Louvre. It’s Sunday, it’s free.
All beat a path to the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and return panting to the cafeteria to satiate the greatly developed hunger.
The magic does not get me.
Outside the Notre Dame is playing a harpist in the shade of the park’s trees.
A small cardboard box collects my franc.
The TGV regurgitates a backpacking crowd all brandishing – Europe on $25 a day – and a Givenchy catalogue.
On the trôiseme étage of the Eiffel tower a woman’s false eyelash flutters to earth.
The woman has lost her wink.
The blacks selling the wind-up pigeons are the most honest-to goodness artists around.
The pigeons do fly,
Right brother?
Half way across the zebra-crossing the couple in embrace decide its time for the five minute kiss.
Lips purse, eyes close and the lights change.
The Hondas and the Porches and the Pandas and the Peugots race on leaving a new tomb to the unknown kissers.
The machines collect the money.
The Mona Lisa postcard is a Leonardo.
The one encased in bullet proof glass – NO FLASH PLEASE isn’t.
Art is for the people.
A red handkerchief attempts to sponge a tear.
The Aeroflot bureau is under perpetual guard just in case all the people voicing – art is for the people – want to defect.
The Electric Boogie does have a defect.
It’s making a scene in the Metro. This train however does not get you far.
Michael Jackson is alongside Marilyn Monroe while the rain forms tears on the Pinochet poster.
A photographer is expostulating on line, texture, form and his concern for faces along a horizon.
The beer falls over and embarrasses his pants.
No orgasm.
In Pigalle the whore has her breasts pinched together by a clothes peg.
While in the bar the pimp has another peg on the best whore house in town.
The street artist’s guild is having an intermission while the emission from the Saab turbo engulfs the gilded statues.
The Italian magician’s assistant has a face painted on his knee.
A Flex draws a smile across his patella while a genuflection can evoke a tear.
The woman’s face is falling like the summer end of a glacier.
Paris is a marvelous stage where everyone has a role.
The performance is a celebration.
