Fortuitous Poem by Mary Robinson

A rest might be an idea.

There is too much eating
There is altogether too much sex, dancing, carousing, reveling.
All of it goes for far too long.
There is powdered sugar dust on everything.
There are twinkle lights burning every day of the year.
Funerals, Jell-O shots, fishing, swearing, barbecues
Back-door gigs, vats and vats of jambalaya.
There are too many houses and sidewalks
Disappearing under weeds and vines
And in yards that look impenetrable,
Too many neon signs, too much on-the-stoop drinking,
Corruption, and Technicolor clothes,
Too much Crawfish shucking,
And Catholic everything, too much stale beer,
Too many heroin junkies shooting up on the balconies,
Too many big houses and trees snapped off,
Too many steel billboards bent to the ground,
Too much Andouille sausage, and second lines,
Too much money, and debauch, and cars parked all crooked.

Fortuitous Poem by Michel Houellebecq (trans. by Gavin Bowd), II

The project had a historical relevance,
It was quite an accurate reflection
Of the art world at a given time.

There was indeed,
A sort of dividing up;

On the one hand,
Fun, sex, kitsch, and innocence;
On the other,
Trash, death and cynicism.

Fortuitous Poem by Michel Houellenbecq (trans. by Gavin Bowd)

They celebrated the event at Chez Anthony and Georges…

The restaurateurs like celebs…
And the celebs, in general, love restaurants;

Olga opted for a gazpacho a l’arugula and semi-cooked lobster with yam mash,
Jed for pan-seared scallops and baby-turbot and caraway soufflé with its Passe-Crassane pear emulsion.

Anthony came to join them for dessert
Wearing his kitchen apron
And brandishing a bottle of Bas-Armagnac Castarede 1905.

The finale of prune and rancio
Was the typical example
Of a mature eau de vie
Long on the finish,
With a note of fine old leather at the last…

Olga breathed in at length
And with delectation,
The bouquet of the Armagnac,
Before wetting her lips.

She was adopting marvelously
Well to France,
It was difficult to believe that she had spent her childhood
In a block of flats in a Moscow suburbs.

“How is it that the new chefs,” she asked after her first sip—
“I mean the chefs who get talked about—
Are almost all homosexuals?”

Fortuitous Poetry by Wilfrid Sheed, II

Music is not produced
By whole groups,
But by one genius at a time,
And it may be significant
That the two families
That gave us
Irving Berlin and George Gershin
Both fled Russia
On the same great wave
Of czarist pogroms,
Only to find American black people
Not only singing
About a similar experience,
But using a Hebrew Bible
As their text.