Folle (2), for Nelly Arcan

It's hard to
believe some
days that this
city goes on without
you isa-
belle
that the
hipsters still
swing around the goddamn
Plateau like they invented
it last week,
that the traffic still just grinds on,
and the crime,
the corruption,
the girl in the funny blue
shirt who might still
smoke there in
Parc LaFon
taine and
make you
suspect she was
waiting in secret for your
lover if only you were
here still to
see it all isa-
belle but you're

not

I was on
something or
on to something one
night outside
Cinema L'
Amour and I
wondered out
loud to myself about you having
been there those times in your so
secret track
suit spying to
know what that
man might
see in his
porno that he
wouldn't see in
you and you sat there through
three and a half films but you
didn't see it still, isabelle,
did you?

Down at Bill
y Kun they still
do coke in the
bathrooms and I tried it once,
I admit
three times actually
like I was
hoping to conjure you
back to us I
had so many things I
wanted to tell you
isa
belle and some nights i
wash dishes down at
Cherrier while some other young woman
sits in the
lone
ly bar
stool that used to
be yours and
Jean Pierre comes in
to the
kitchen with my
cafe au lait and we
wonder about you there
about you
having stared down your
cleavage all those
dark nights of
yours like it was the
abyss or the
grave and so
bent then on
writing your
own end so un
endingly bent on the
writing of your own
private end isa
belle un
til you
did