Issue 4:1 I Poetry I Betzi Richardson

Two Poems by Betzi Richardson

Paris, extreme

pariah: Virginia Woolf wrote and I believe her: it’s very, very dangerous to live

                                    even one day

parietal bones, parietal lobe: the funky, affordable 19^th: work-a-day Parisians, smoking,

                   smoking; African ladies in full tribal regalia, carrying their babies wrapped sarong

                                     style; Lebanese businessmen, a Hasidic fellow cruises by on a bicycle;

                                                       the usual full assortment of street folk: bums, winos, skinny kids

                                                                         doing drugs; and economy class American tourists;

                                                                                          it’s a mix

paripinnate: O gentle zephyr! May at its balmiest, and then the rain

Paris: a band called Sainte Chapelle and the Catacombs

parish: Notre Dame: Big Mama and the Gargoyles

parity: O, o, oh, the poor dollar...

Parkinson’s: a cigarette slung out between two lips; the sexiness of the image,

                  Serge Gainsbourg et. al., and we’re caught in the perennial Mirror Stage,

                                    caught and caught and caught

parliament: Barack Obama can call me “sweetie” any time he wants

parlous: benignly beautiful, unflooding water; an aqua-tinted Seine and the surprisingly wide and lovely Canal St. Martin

Parmenides: way of truth or way of opinion; if what we focus on we get:

                                                      Matisse, Matisse, and more Matisse

Parnassus: La Cimitiere Montparnasse:

                  Sartre, de Beauvoir, Baudelaire, Beckett. We read the first three pages

                                    of Godot (I took the part of Estragon) then, with persistence

                                                      we found Vallejo (the map was wrong) and placed

                                                                        a good-by stone upon his grave

parody: Tristan Tzara: babe, it’s you and us against the vulgar herd--

paronomasia: the labyrinth is easy, threaded by color and number:

                  as usual, you just need to know who you are,

                                                                                                         where you’ve been,

                                                                                                            and where you need to go

paroxysm: Sichuan and Myanmar via the BBC, Mrs. Dalloway proven

                  very, very correct–and yet-because, the party

                                    must be planned and spawned

Paseo Miramar

Below me an ocean feels to my eye

like a huge sheet of gold leaf turned blue.

Piercing, winter cold

shaded with poundings of wind on water

smelted, poured, polished,

stretched to a thinness of breath

by winds from the North,

hammers on thousand mile waves

no, swellings toward waves.

Dark cerulean anvil expansive

burnished by a mid-morning January sun.

Reflection burnt final, golden haze

painful bright focus inside the ellipsis

of glory and light spilling

shattered and spent, tempered with sadness

about nothing but movement,

anonymous grief, a time of containment.

A sky that has banished its clouds.

Coastline scalloped.

City behind, to my left, immobile.

Rarely seen islands emerge in the distance.

Capricious horizon to offer things one day

and obscure them the next,

but it's through the periphery

possible mysteries appear.

I stand on the outlook,

warmly clothed, hardy,

balanced in cold and exertion.

Only illness defeated can know

this luxurious strength. Apart from

yet with, the others - I'd've

never made it this far on my own.

A pleasure green,

the gift of unexpected rains,

has flung itself over these hillsides.

Like the water now flowing from underground streams

I am free amidst this extraordinary peace.

Strange calmness of soul

in its moment

of fleeting

delight.