belle monde, oh!                                          

I remember that the 2nd time I saw Breathless I had the sensation during some of the most romantic scenes of perfume wafting its way towards my nose from the world being depicted on the screen.  After moments of simply accepting this sensation in a half-conscious reverie, and a moment of thinking that this was a very interesting delusion, there was a moment of realizing that the odor I was experiencing was not engendered out of proverbial Thin Air, i.e. was not imaginatively fabricated, but actually was a sudden awareness at certain moments of all the scents that individuals near me in the room had in fact dabbed upon their persons.  This whole circumstance was rather entrancing, though generally speaking I set my face against the whole world of cosmetics, enticements, Personal Care Products.  But then again, I really do want to experience things from all perspectives, rather than fall into what Orwell referred to as "smelly little orthodoxies".

Poems on this page © Stephen Baraban 2005-2006

 

Stephen Baraban, born in May 1955, grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, and attended SUNY, Buffalo, where he studied with Robert Creeley and Olson/Blake scholar Jack Clarke.  He has had poems in House Organ, Home Planet News and Intent, among other publications.  He is living again in the New York area, inspired by cinema and various other art forms in addition to poetry.