"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir",
Françoise? Upwards of seventy now but I'd
still give you a shot, and forgive the 'Moulin Rouge' Français
but it's all that I've got, except maybe the frog laugh
and an 'ooh-la-la' to that girl who was, and remains,
an insatiable fox, and while it's not a record-sleeve
poem by ol' Greenwich Bob – here goes:
Françoise, I feel thirteen, again, every time I set that
old vinyl to spin, one hundred and eighty grams,
thirty-three and a third to a min, a dusty crackle
and pop symphony, your voice airy and thin, like
a warm July night lacking a trace of a wind,
but I've got but one tongue accustomed to waxing
England, and it can't comprehend what you're sayin'.
And yet I know what it means: it's cobblestone nights;
tea and taphouses and tandem bikes, and rainy afternoons
with bodies held tight beneath umbrellas and bus stops,
and old timey streetlights, and collapses on settees,
wet kisses and lip bites, and the caressing of your body,
laying perfectly slight, and smiles and corrections
When you coolly recite, "Do you want to sleep with me, tonight?"
