Pity le pauvre Parisian

Sens d’humour excised at birth

but schooled in ridicule.

Langage distorting the mouth.

Monkeys with Mick Jagger lips

condemned to a permanent pout.

With their enunciated phrases from Molière,

their aristocratic scowls.

- Who d’you think you are, Johnny Halliday?

Consider the curse of le pauvre Parisian

Thinking themselves thinner at the café philo

or dodging dogshit in the place du Cliché.

Watch as they set their sharp shoulders

and walk directly into opponent pedestrians.

They disdain apologies as the mark of fools

- Ha! These collisions are not accidents!

Paris! A museum of steam-blasted ghosts.

Suspicious, defending their corners.

Pour le vrai Parisian every joke is mockery

and behind their code of kisses

they languish,

conjugated by their own contempt.

- Ah, tourist! Stranger! Peasant lost in the big city!

What if you should contract their disease?

by David Barnes