In this category:

    FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
    FICTION & NONFICTION ARCHIVE
    Archive A-B
    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    POETRY ARCHIVE
    Archive A-B
    LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS - art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence
    Art & Literature News
    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    MODERN POETRY
    Berquez, Vincent
    EXHIBITION - art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc.
    Vincent Berquez

New on FdM

  1. J.H. Leopold: Ik ben een zwerver overal
  2. My window pane is broken by Lesbia Harford
  3. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers in The National Gallery London
  4. Eugene Field: The Advertiser
  5. CROSSING BORDER – International Literature & Music Festival The Hague
  6. Expositie Adya en Otto van Rees in het Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
  7. Machinist’s Song by Lesbia Harford
  8. “Art says things that history cannot”: Beatriz González in De Pont Museum
  9. Georg Trakl: Nähe des Todes
  10. W.B. Yeats: Song of the Old Mother

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (12)
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (60)
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (180)
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,514)
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,865)
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,772)
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,615)
  9. MONTAIGNE (110)
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter (184)
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (143)
  13. MUSIC (222)
  14. PRESS & PUBLISHING (91)
  15. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (112)
  16. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (17)
  17. STREET POETRY (46)
  18. THEATRE (186)
  19. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (356)
  20. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (229)
  21. WAR & PEACE (127)
  22. · (2)

Or see the index



  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

Vincent Berquez: Always the coolest of doorway

 

Always the coolest of doorway

It wasn’t necessarily the best of times
or the best of me, the best of wines
or the best of you, the warmest of nights,
the brightest of moon, the nicest of streets,
the trendiest of bars in the smart part of town.

We didn’t have the cleverest of talks,
sit at the best of tables, with the cleanest of napkins.
My pockets weren’t the fullest, as the moths attested.
I wasn’t at my wealthiest, or my smartest,
or wearing the shiniest shoes with the strongest of laces,
chewing with the whitest of teeth in the kindest of moods.
We certainly weren’t coy about our agenda that night.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t know you or I didn’t want you,
or I wouldn’t try or hadn’t had; I wanted what I wanted
and slowly the alcohol took hold and awoke the desiring,
and you could’ve imagined a better seduction,
as the night could’ve been the dullest ever
without wanting to or trying the making of love to you.

But wasn’t the moon the fullest, and weren’t we the closest,
didn’t we feel the passion and violence of the kissing, the biting,
struggling in a moment of an explosive erotic experience.
Didn’t we search for privacy in the dirty streets that night?
Weren’t we two bellyfuls of red wine in the emptying city,
swaggering and swollen, swaying in a London doorway,
hidden from the pace of hectic pedestrians.
Hadn’t we become the most romantic of couples
in our boozy, breathy pairing, as we locked tight together
and vanished completely in a haze of shaky memories that night.

Vincent Berquez
Always the coolest of doorway

• fleursdumal.nl magazine
Photo: VB – The artist and his son

More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Art & Literature News, Berquez, Vincent, Vincent Berquez

Previous and Next Entry

« | »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature