Hell is entering the mind of others and knowing what they think.
Perve
Because she doesn’t like to be teased I tease her.
Political foresight
Short-term self-interest.
Nominal Compression, Catalan-style
Par mariage Mademoiselle Jeannette Jablonowski devient Madam Luc Py
Perfect Marriage
Volupte de commande recontre volupte d’obeir
Et alors
Le songe est le pėre du mensonge
The dream is the father of the lie.
Arletty (via Sacha Guitry)
Quand on s’aime pour plus d’un raison on ne s’aime pas
When you have more than one reason to love, it isn’t love.
Sweating off the fat of civilisation
Mon transpiration c’est ne pas s’agit de peur, seulement je pue.
My body odor isn’t fear. Merely sporting.
Sinistrose d’ete (Summer scare in the headlines)
Lait maternal suspect.
The Shrinking violet
On roulė elle-meme pour cacher son corps.
She rolls herself to hide her body.
Early Retirement
En1912, Pu Yi le dernier empereur de Chine abdique a l’age six ans.
The last emperor of China abdicated aged six.
Reasonable Recklessness
Throw caution to the wind, but make sure you get it back.
Auto-Parenoia
My enemy is me.
Spam
My e-mail is a boite de deception.
Etiquette
On the terrace of the café I eat my lunch biscuits with my sun glasses hanging down to field the crumbs. Prevents pigeons pecking at my feet.
M. Recupero
didn’t (Le Journal : avis d’obseques, juillet 2016).
Politesse
protects one from that flickering look of slight irritation.
Uptight
When I was young and affronted, I danced out of it. Now I stand my ground.
Wisdom
I used to think I was stupid. Now I know it.
A young man’s beard confronts mine
His first, my last.
Coup de coiffeur
Tariff determined by head size.
Philanthropist
I’m not really generous. I give what I don’t need.
Ego, me
When I forget myself and think of another, I’m not only happier but more myself.
Savage Savant
If you knew how ugly you look when your being profoundly intellectual you’d stick to idle chatter.
Appearances
How one looks depends on who is looking.
Scene de crime
Do not revisit.
The inner sanctum of prejudice
‘Islam disturbs our deepest moral intuitions’. Martin Amis.
The greening of Isis
If the terrorists get hold of the oil wells it could well save the planet.
Autofiction
Living back imaginatively
Total Recall
Because I’m self-conscious, I remember almost everything. If only I could forget myself I’d achieve amnesia’s bliss.
Noble
Because I know what I think, I’m party to how virtuous I am in not acting on it.
Le comble
My mind is a vast lay-by of information at the crossroads between going nowhere, and going on and on.
Mariole
I’m not ignorant of what I don’t understand
Another Eden
Tes fesses rond comme le pomme interdit.
Inauspicious origins
Les parents de Charlemagne etaient Berthe aux Grandpieds et Pepin le Bref. He turned out surprisingly well.
Neruda
Le gloire is hostile to repose.
Terrorist Lorry,Nice 14 Juillet 2016
Survivor’s remark, ‘Il gāche notre shopping’.
Summa sentimental
Living alone is an odd number. Living in pairs is not necessarily an even one.
Grogne
Beware of product placement in poems. Sell-by date is a concern in immortal works.
Archibald
‘C’est ne pas s’agit de mechancėte. je suis manque d’education’.
It’s not that I’m evil. It’s just lack of education.
State of morale
Je suis un peu mieux ce que pas mal.
I am a little better than not bad.
Geoffrey Squires
I write poems that shrink the world, and you write poems that enlarge it.
Colette
‘Before I die I’ll see nothing more beautiful than a shy child ready to cry holding out a rose’.
Diderot’s Jacques
‘Je ne la compare pas a une autre femme, mais a elle meme quand elle etait jeune.’
I don’t compare a woman with another, save with herself when she was young.
Bobard
M loved Raymond so much that when he told her a tall story
she reached up and brought it down to earth.
Frank
If he wasn’t polite he’d be boring.
Sur Le Tard (endgame) 1
Waiting to die is natural.
Waiting not to die is not.
Fut Capitaine, 2016
La France etait mener par le gardien de but.
France is led by a goal-keeper.
Affiche chipie
PUB (licity) SVP
Listening to Bach
‘There is a calm for those that weep’
The downfall of desire
Les chutes de Viagra
Viagra (or love life when translated from the Gaelic)
My friend Yann Scott was proscribed Glinkx for a cancer, and reading les effect indesirable he decided not to take it.
Les sagesses d’Aldo
‘Souris, souris, mon pote et tu verras une jour ca te portera bonheur’.
Smile, smile and one day you will be happy.
Rare species for sale
The birds were trapped with glue.
Sur le tard 2
The grandchildren grow, the grandparents shrink.
Linguistic chance
So long, s’eloigne (distance yourself).
Le plus joli mot en francais est enjoliveur (hubcap)
Le plus moche est myosotis(not a medical condition but a flower,
forget-me-not)
Daech
is Isis in a hurry. ‘Claimed responsibility for an attack on a cemetery in Iraq, killing three hundred gravediggers’ (Le Monde).
Andre Citroen
When his ammunitions factory in Quai de Javal, Paris, moved on to making automobiles it was the beginning of the death of the planet. Hitherto it was merely human beings.
D’amour fou
If you were capable of hate
You wouldn’t be in this state.
Passive smoking a la Shakespeare (Cymbeline)
‘Laud we the gods and let our crooked smokes climb to the nostrils’.
Brexit
The Dunkirk spirit in reverse
EU response
Le mot de General Carbonne*
French copperplate
Loop on the ‘b’s and ‘t’s with a cap on the back of the head
Worming a Resurrection
Cemetery compost nourishes life.
Pop art according to Philip Guston
‘Social realism for the rich’.
Dog Fight
Dog-owners of the world unite. You have nothing to lose except you leads.
Animal magnetism
I've now lived here thirteen years in this house. The cats in the garden know me, and the dogs on the street. The neighbours think I’m English.
Ted Hughes
What a sad end to a great Romantic? His last lover was a property developer from Putney who made him take up golf.
Blue First Letters in the Dark
C)INE (T)HEATRE (V)AUBAN
Madame Moucheboeuf
When I remember her I try to forget the flies and cow-dung
Ballet versus Brutality
When I was young rugby players danced. Now they stamp.
Yeats and WB
After Maud Gonne chided him, ‘Don’t be silly Willie’ he always used the initials.
The Talking in my Head
Lacan says that the unconscious is structured like a language. I think it’s the other way round, and language is structured like the unconscious. Maybe subconsciously sometimes.
The Wimsatt Fallacy
The intention of the author cannot be known. What you don’t know you can ignore.
Bon Sens par Machavelli
‘Good practices need good laws to maintain them; and good laws, so they are observed, need good practices.’
Word-sonnet
Why do clients in banking adverts always look cow-like? Because they are being milked.
Mon pėre la melomane
‘Don’t believe in images. Better to listen than to imagine.’
Lucas non Lucenda
Lucas Gonzalez Amorosino is not the answer to Munster’s underachieving rugby team. What it needs is fifteen Murphys.
Political Faut Pas
Ordering instead of a Perrier a Vichey.
Pedro of Podemos
‘Under Capitalism democracy is always incomplete and contingent.’
L’Amant Chinois de Marguerite Duras
‘Quand ton famille est la, tue ne m’aimes pas’.
When your family is here, you do not love me.
Hereclitus
The first and last law of emotion is it changes.
Un Grief (complaint) without translation
Quand un(e) Francais(e) parle l’anglais avec moi, j’entende avec patience justque je comprend. Je n’est jamais corriger le prononciation. Des fois j’ai offre un douce prompt.
En revanche les francais(e)s pour la plupart s’arrete le conversation et corrige mon ecorche. Je trouve ca impoli. Mes approximations sont pas mal.
Nom de la Port
Once upon a time the people of P-V were called the lovers. Now they’re called the no good.
Chant le chanson
de Cote de Vermeille. Les farfelos aviant un bouffe delirante dans le boue de Stade Catalan et les visitors finient comme des feuille morte.
Translation supplied by Google.
Duo dans la rue.
Un chat crie aux oiseaux s’asseyent sur in ligne electrique. Les oiseaux replique avec des pipiement.
A cat mews up to birds perched on an electric wire. The birds tweet back.