Gordon Ramsay
Let’s workshop this poem that imagines Gordon Ramsay as a groomsman.
scent of the day: Kam Kyoryo, by Ensar Oud
First day wear.
Another banger with salty aquatic ambergris ethereal vibe like Pink Papua (one of my favs) and especially Blue Kalabar (because of the blue lotus), except here there is a strong green presence (cypress, artemsia) to give the blue lotus more of a bend toward what we get in Irian Green. / What is most unique here is the aromatic bite of juniper berry (distantly reminiscernt of Rake and Ruin) plus and smoky funk (hyraceum and oud) / these ambergris heavy Ensars blur for me—I need to spend more analytical time with each
*First stab at a poem I need to dedicate to Aaliyah.
Gordon Ramsay The groomsman—enough of a show-stealer as it is (tall, blond, famous)—could stand still neither for the vows nor for the life of him: adjusting his pocket square, his boutonnière, the not-good-enough cycle of neurosis whirring with hummingbird voltage; his fingers pulling, wringing, the back of his neck, rolling with tendons, into a mean rash of red; caffeinated calf raises as if in preparation for the squat rack, the resultant crepitus insane against the scriptural pauses, darting the eyes of the best man as well as the priest on a path-crossing hunt (the source clear— all too clear—to the bride’s grandmother, her spine ramrod-straight in the front row); fingers drumming his pant leg as if to signal, in the growing panic of Morse code, for backup; wrinkled forehead of a disappointed gargoyle, churning every which direction downward, churning but failing to find any final focus beyond the endless Heraclitean fidget itself; eyebrows, in the temporary reprieve of noses blowing into tissue, pumping wild comedy— the eloquence prelinguistic (“Can you believe it? They expect us to stand still this damn long? Madness”)—for the sake of a nearby flower girl, as if to get her to giggle the spotlight onto her; hand gusts of disbelief, curbed mid-flail but still as if court side to a bad referee call in game seven, complete with thigh slaps— gusts of agitation. Motor tics upon motor tics mount until his go-to phrases of misdirection (“Oh wow”), his toupees of vocal Tourette’s (“There it is. Wow!”), find themselves blurted (“Wow. Hell of a point!”) to the edging climax (“Come on now big boy”) where we must dig into our pockets—the stratagem of complicity sedimented under layers of muscle memory— for our very own toupee: laughter, a surge meant to soothe our discomfort as much as his, twisting the train wreck of social tension— enough fingernail-digging cringe to hematoma arms, thighs—into something whose normality increases the louder our collective catharsis winds him up into finger-jabbing freedom from the claustrophobia of the bow tie. “I now pronounce you, husband and wife.”