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"Pour La Petite Mort"

by seanfarragher 

Posted: 16 May 2006
Word Count: 569
Summary: Tribute to the English Movie Star Dorothy Chili Bouchier 1909-1999. She Made 57 films and rejected Hollywood.


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Content Warning
This piece and/or subsequent comments may contain strong language.


"Pour La Petite Mort"
first draft written 1973
when I met her at a party.


1.

Desire stops suddenly in surge and muscled
tight in retort by means of sensations not lies.

We find empty room and a vase with dead roses.
Beauty risks nothing. It was that long sky
with bare clouds that emptied loneliness
for the most part. I am inside your skin with
the terror made morning when glory seeds
picked for ashes burn in one final hurrah.

My movie star had lost her movies.
She begged for the lights again.
I found them in her eyes turning her lips
to breathe my skin for motion to light
my Thames reflected by Turner shows
the patience of love as a fire, and rivers
bound inside leap. We swallow ancient
water. We begin to row time against flood.

My love scenes bear with her that nitrate
dust when exploding bombs leak waste
from kisses from scenes that charmed
and are mostly lost. Her photographs
held in an old brown book show the movies
in black and white as they were made.

She told how she fancied poets, and
wished that she was young again. She
said she would show me how much
poets dream when they love. She said
I want to read you every day, but I can't.

I told her. I am old. I am young.
Now, I am almost as old as she that day.
She died in her 90s but I was bound
in her scent. She said "never write
poems about me. You need to write
about serious human things not just a
woman living on the edge of old beauty."

I wrote many poems for her as if to say
she was serious.

Chili completed my eyes and kept my blank
stare open and full; I was her leading man
for several days. We walked in book shops,
and talked about Turner and Picasso, and
how we both loved Matisse and Joan Miro.

Woman was found again. Chili Bouchier
lived in more than nitrates of old films
now preserved in bomb shelters waiting
for transfer to digital media and her arms
gesticulating wildly live on. We watched
one night, my last night in England
brief flashes of her films she had borrowed
from somewhere to show me her youth.

"We will not let them explode," she laughed.
I will carry you tonight to my time and place
and she did when she described London during
the Blitz, fucking at parties, making love in distress.

If you believe in an outer body and inner mind
with spiritual grace and a partial wink of grift
that are Chili and her mad humor and quips.
"She was a tough broad," she said. I didn't care.

In that din we made love in her small room with
her movie photographs and musk. I bent my light
to her mouth in rows of accidental waves. She had
high stepping legs and barely a wrinkle in her face.

I was not innocent, of course, but in love my mask.
She said "your ego will hold you back but not always."

Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier reigned.

I worshiped more than her imagery but her fragrance
of hands and eyes left a stain of more than a deep kiss.
She said as we parted, "do not come back, you need
life, and I need the routine of my search."



END






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Comments by other Members



Xenny at 13:45 on 16 May 2006  Report this post
Hey Sean

I enjoyed reading this so much. It's a long poem but I forgot I was reading. I have quite a lot to say but not sure I'll say them all now so might come back.

There are some really moving bits in this. The last half (when it became more conversational) I found particularly so. I think it's the combination of the straightforwardness of some of the writing (it didn't feel twisted into poetry, but just put there) and the intensity of the images.

I love this bit:

She died in her 90s but I was bound
in her scent. She said "never write
poems about me. You need to write
about serious human things not just a
woman living on the edge of old beauty."

I wrote many poems for her as if to say
she was serious.


It would have been so easy for this to sound clichéd or melodramatic, but the bits either side of the quote are just right I think. And the phrase 'serious human things' has such a feeling of just being written as it was said that it keeps it away from cliché anyway.

I also really loved

and she did when she described London during
the Blitz, fucking at parties, making love in distress.


and

She had
high stepping legs and barely a wrinkle in her face.


and

Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier reigned.


And lots of bits in fact!

There were just a very few points at which I worried it was getting a bit the feel of cliché, but it was so moving I wasn't sure. And the honest feel of so much of the writing meant that those bits when the cliché fear came in, I was able to say to myself 'but this was just how it was'.

paul53 [for I am he] at 15:14 on 16 May 2006  Report this post
Now then, this is more like it. I have to say that the other poem transferred over to the Flash Group I found myself standing outside looking in because I was not party to the references.
This, though, is great. You should be justly proud of it. Observant, vibrant, sensitive rather than the usual forthright bold.
with
the terror made morning when glory seeds
picked for ashes burn in one final hurrah
could be meditated upon for days.

NinaLara at 20:42 on 16 May 2006  Report this post
What I found interesting is that when I read this aloud the words seemed to take on a pre-war 'clippedness' and a rolling of the 'rs'. I imagine this was completely intentional?

We find empty room and a vase with dead roses.
Beauty risks nothing. It was that long sky
with bare clouds that emptied loneliness
for the most part. I am inside your skin with
the terror made morning when glory seeds
picked for ashes burn in one final hurrah.


This is a film opening, if ever I saw one ... a black and white sweep of a room and the view beyond with a pre-war voice-over. The rest of the poem continues like this, with wonderful pictures and classic voice overs. It is great fun to read and I would love to see it performed.

DJC at 10:09 on 20 May 2006  Report this post
Sean - I have to agree with Paul - I get a lot more from this than some of your others, mainly because it is tied to a person, and your ideas stem from this, rather than from a more abstract feeling about the way things are. This allows you to stay grounded, whilst still espousing your worldview. Good stuff!

Darren

Beanie Baby at 07:27 on 30 June 2006  Report this post
You have written this beautifully and with enormous care and this shows in every word. It is long and long poems quite often put me off - but with this one it was different. Your admiration of this lady is very clear and you have transferred your feelings brilliantly, into a poem that has all the enchantments of a beautiful old painting.
Beanie.


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