The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Ray Greenblatt serve as the inaugural Mad Poet of the Year for 2021.
WHAT IS FRENCH?
by Ray Greenblatt
It’s the lips!
Brigitte Bardot B . . . B . . .
Moi . . . Moi . . . Moi . . .
She stretched her lips around the world
spurring every cosmetologist
every plastic surgeon,
want to be more hippy
which Mother Time would provide for free,
reconfigure your boring navel
into a mandala,
but Botox became as common
as Bromo-seltzer . . .
It’s the lips!
Bent toad of a man
Monsieur Hercule Poirot,
spats and monocle
gleaming gold watch chain a yard long
with a sapphire fob like a third eye,
mumbling beneath his moustache
mysterious mantras . . .
magnifying glass
and pursed line of lip
to discover recherché clues . . .
It’s the lips!
To read Marcel Proust aloud
“A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu” . . .
inside a cork-lined study
and at the same time
inside a white chateau
surrounded by a bright black spiked
fence of wrought iron,
Swann reading
”Les Trois Mousquetaires” . . .
while the elite munch madeleines
lisp café au lait . . .
It’s the lips!
Baguette on the back of a bicyclette . . .
to break the warm, crisp bread
and taste fresh, pure, fragrant softness;
brie warm in the sun
dribbling over the table
a la Dali;
blood of the vine
bloodline of the country
tasters sloshing Malbec, Muscadet
to measure vintage, body, je ne sais quoi . . .
fois . . . bois . . . foie gras . . .
It’s the lips!
I have been fond of France and things French from the time I was a youth. I like the literature (Camus, Daudet, Montherlant), food (especially the wine and cheese), cinema (Truffaut, Chabrol, Malle), classical music (Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud), art (Monet, Braque, Vuillard), Paris, the lush countryside, etc. I studied French throughout high school and took a minor in French literature in college. But I especially like the sound of French; I frankly admit that I love to watch a woman’s lips when she speaks French!
Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.