Charlotte Rampling and Botticelli

Garden in Autumn 30 x 42 cm acrylic on paper - sold

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I WRITE POETRY ON AN EMPTY STOMACH (SONNET 4)

I am dreaming again, only wide awake

this time, hanging from a precipice,

a cliff in Austria, say, on the verge

of taking my obsessions too seriously.

A lot of prepositions in my life. Participles dangle dangerously.

But my stomach’s whooping like a moog synthesizer.

So I order a little supper. We’re in a gallery of the Uffizi,

vitello arrosto con patate e Bottticelli; just below my nose

deep red Chianti swirling slow-motionly (sic!) in a broad bellied glass.

Across from me a simulacrum of Charlotte Rampling.

The way she looked in Woody Allen’s first really

bad movie, ersatz Fellini, the one after “Interiors.” Full-blown

narcissist, speed reader of Schopenhauer, cat-eyed femme

fatale, she has my wife in a fit of giggles, maybe a little in love,

and I can scarcely take my eyes off their words.