Venus in a red dress
a tedious Baggot Street
nineteen fifty three
gathering of ‘the literati’
not my choice of company
until a red-haired
red dress vision
sent my imagination winging
to Venus – as per Botticelli.
if she noticed me,
my bohemian dishevelry,
air of rive gauche poverty,
might have turned her off,
or turned her on…
conceivably.
my eyes riveted to hers,
red-rimmed and raw,
from a life of sorrow, I surmised,
covertly scanning the room.
small talking with a snake of suitors
fat-gutted would-be woman tamers
sharing a naked ambition –
rip her clothes off
surf the tides of passion
churning inside her
until the thrill of seduction faded
and a new objective took their fancy.
glad I’m not like other men
I leaned against a doorjamb
rimming my tongue tip
around a brandy
admiring her deft repelling of
drooling ‘boarders in waiting’
I could make those sad eyes smile
capture her with words
then allow her to fly free,
after a night or two
in bed with me.
I licked my lips
like a prowling panther
eased from the door on to a chair
that, blame the drink, for this,
was not placed precisely
where I reckoned it to be.
brandy splashed the rug
a priceless Kashmiri.
Venus rolled her eyes,
then swivelled her eyes
to the bulbous eyes
of a local Nabob –
a porcine bastard,
rich as Croesus with a chain of hotels
and a fleet of buses.
she flicked her hair
straightened his tie coquettishly.
brief words – an exchange of nods
then arm in arm toward the door.
still sprawled, I called,
“catch yerself on, Macushla!
he’s a first-class bastard…
he’ll feck you like a rutting boar
like he does all his whores!”
her sad eyes shone,
a discreet smile about her lips
she’d landed a big fish at last
‘la dolce vita’ lay ahead.
‘big fish’ was delighted,
another trollop netted
to film and fillet
on the two-way mirrored
king-size bed.
Is this the kind of distress that leaves you lost for words? 😉
Bloody thing – submitted as usual found my text totally missing – waiting for this slooooow site to let me edit 🙁
after 45 minutes of rising blood pressure it relented 🙂
hope it’s only fantasy or if such things happened a simpler life would win you over in no time (my English may be problematic today)
It’s a major reworking of a poem I wrote some years ago. A very moving piece about the beauty of older women whom nobody even notices. One can never hope to find the writer in what is written – we live in a thousand dimensions with a thousand histories – a thousand truths and a thousand lies. 🙂
which poem?
a tanka format from my first book – doubt it’s on here i’ll pm it to you 🙂
in your opinion, what’s the age a woman is an older woman? thanks for the pm
got my wires crossed here – didn’t realise you were asking about Venus – I got mixed up with Invisible Woman. 🙂
Venus is completely imaginary – Baggot Street was the centre of Dublin bohemia in the 1950s – none of the characters are real 🙂
Do you think she realises what she missed? I bet she does – living in her bedsit in Bognor: Slumming in a tatty disheveled negligee, fag between bright red-lipsticked lips, slurping from a chipped glass of cheap red wine, and all the while flipping through the pages of a well-thumbed photograph album that has a lot of blank places….
OI Griff – thats my bird your slagging orf ha ha 🙂
Your description is really ace – if you don’t poem it, I might 🙂
Be my guest! 🙂 I’d love to read your take on it.
Have saved your comment as a doc and will give it a go – just the inspiration I need while editing old stuff thnks, Griff
Griff – I’ll pm you with a quick first draft 🙂
It’ll need lotsa work but at least you’ll see the outline. Many changes will be made 🙂