Manet & Titian

This glorious Venus walks into your tea joint from the blind, right side of the cataract, swans past the fire hydrant that has damaged many a knee there, right up onto the Fries platform on the corner. The last part of the passage revealed the extent of her cascading tresses. Would not be surprised if just then the author, unconsciously, like a jockey on his mount, had risen up from his chair in order to take the vision properly…. Wow-wee! You seen it all now, Bud. How many men have looked upon the like? Never before this guy. The long lustrous strands ran like a burbling brook on and on all the way down to behind the crook of the lady’s knees. The bees knees! Blow me down. Double knocking as she strode onward: once against the small of her back and the second time the other side of her mound, waving & flapping. Catching her would have been like trying to seize the breeze; and rooted to the spot didna help any. Initially she had flitted past touching distance, but at that juncture you had no idea what you had before you! Killing not so softly. While she was on the platform at the Fries a man was still  a rough chance if he could gather himself—wits, clear-minded purpose &etc. Problem was the pillar and the corner. If the angel had hung a left there she was away without any possible hope; straight ahead you were not out of the running, maybe catch her up before the shop-stalls. The stabbing pang later was thought of the hotel entrance thirty metres there down Onan past the Cheers. By crickey, she could only have got herself along in there, disappeared up the stairs where her date waited. Nowhere to be seen; not a trace. Had she gone straight up toward the market she could not have escaped, there was no exit point along that stretch. Caught in time she might have been shown the extended portrait gallery of her racial cousins, eventually enticed for a photo and a second arranged for the room where the snaking strands could have been artfully coiled along her torso in the Titian or Manet pose—Venus & Olympia rolled into one. Down on your knees no shame nor hesitation. Congress would not have been required.

                                                                                      Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-2019