Gordon Ramsay (ROUND 7)
Let’s workshop this poem that imagines Gordon Ramsay as a groomsman who struggles to rein in his Gordon Ramsay-ness and keep still, even during the marriage ceremony itself.
scent of the day: Iris Noir, by Ensar Oud
This gives an ambergris glow like a lot of the ensars—the various aged-wood Vietnamese ouds, wet-clay-meets-apothecary-camphor Hainan Oud and nectarous-meets-coastal-breeze Nha Trang, imparting (in concert with the rest of the composition at least, like the sweet-green mimosa-jasmine combo) the feel of a non-spicy high-water-content raw green pepper (bell pepper) being diced on a slab of driftwood./ it also has a fruity glow (peach, raspberry) like several of the Ensars I have: Cp Raspberry, funkberry (so this sort of blurs in with them). /
There was a dark growling meanness at the beginoign that surprised me—and perhaps my Iris Galia Trifecta, from what I can see one of Ensar’s most polarizing fragrances, will keep me in the clouded nighttime melancholy that I felt in the first five minutes of this one. / After the five minutes, though, everything gives in to happiness: the night sky clearing of its clouds and I picture a man on his back beholding the stars in a chill that is not distracting to his placidity—he is nearby water, like in the case of most Ensar scents. /
In the language of avatar, so I am now starting to see, Ensar seems to be a water-bender (musk and ambergris and fresher ouds) whereas Areej is an Earth-bender (more typical dark ouds and antique wood and mustiness) and Prin is a fire-bender (smoke, incense, spice, animalics, aldehyde buzz) and Bortnikoff is an air-bender (elegant florals and citrus and tea-tinkle diffusion)./
*I worked all over today—added even more Istvanian sexual innuendo and humor, especially at the end.
Gordon Ramsay The groomsman—too much of a gravity well as it is (tall and blond, British, famous)—could stand still neither for the vows nor for the life of him. Tweaking his pocket square, his boutonnière, (even wetting his thumb to address a cowlick, the best man’s, as the organ unveiled the bride)— his body buzzes “Not good enough!” neuroticism, the amperage: hummingbird. Live-wire fingers wring the back of his neck, bent and rolling its high-stress sinew—bloodless to red to what warrants a “Bloody hell!” Caffeinated calf raises as if warming up for the squat rack, crepitus spastic against the pregnant pauses of scripture (“Each will be like a hiding place from the wind”), send the eyes of the priest and the groom himself, crossing paths, on a flash hunt: the source clear, clear as raw pork, to the bride’s skeletal “Meemaw” (too severe on manners, too much her own master, too manhandled by the roving fingers of death— infinite in their spare-no-bell-or-whistle foreplay— to succumb to the sorcery of celebrity’s ring), her spine ramrod-straight in the front row. His digits, twitchy as Inuit boarding-school boys in the nastiest dreams of a switch-drunk nun (a yardstick deep in them, and ultimately in her), jazz drum his outseams, the thuds of worsted wool signaling (with their broken staccato) for backup. His face, crumpled like a disgruntled gargoyle, churns every which direction downward (once, twice, even at a wristwatch that is not there)— churns and yet fails to find final focus beyond the Heraclitean fire, the endless fidget, itself. In the red-herring reprieve of noses blowing, his bleached brows—as if to make the flower girl, mouth hung in curiosity over his bulge, giggle the spotlight onto her, buying him more time— pump with micro slapstick, their cheeky eloquence prelinguistic: “Can you believe they expect us to stand here, still, this damn long? Madness!” Hand gestures of disbelief, curbed mid-flail (but still as if to a bad ref call in Game Seven), come complete with thigh slaps and sighs— gusts of agitation. Motor tics upon motor tics mount until the go-to phrases of misdirection (“Oh wow”), the toupees of vocal Tourette’s (“There it is! Unreal!”), find themselves blurted (“He’s taking the piss now!”) at an edging climax (“Wakey wakey big boy!”) where we are called— in a stratagem of complicity-making, sedimented under layers of his muscle memory—to bust out our very own toupee: laughter, its surge meant to assuage our own discomfort as much as his, spin-doctoring the trainwreck of social tension— enough nail-digging cringe to hematoma arms, shred tights—into something perfectly normal, even charming (as if it were all just rehearsal)— our collective catharsis scissoring the man free (well before the reception where, between dances with that one flower girl glued to his hip, he will jab his index finger into the circling guestbook camera as if in a Kitchen Nightmares back-alley rant), free from the fear-made-formal noose of the bow tie. “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”