compact disc available

SILENCE DOESN'T MEAN A THING

The students' heads were bent down as i paced around,
the sole of my shoes made a noise i like on the linoleum.
As the kids took a test
i took time to look at the sun
setting towards the hill,
beyond the railroads tracks.
The three classes of the afternoon succeeded
while it was slowly setting,
the sky was turning pink, orange and green.
It finally hid behind the hill
givin' it a golden linin'.

I made sure i caught a glimpse of these last inexorable minutes
and i witnessed the moment the world turns into darkness
watching the universe quietly work its perfect geometry
through a clean classroom window with white plastic frames.

I rode home in the navy night
and the snow started to pile up like ash
as if to remind us that one day we'll have to return.
It covered the roads and the sidewalks
of this same route i take every single day
back and forth many times a day
like a circle, a dead-end loop.
The snow glew in the night
and made everything drowsy;
i wanted to stain it with red
and call back the summer sun
like the King Without Distraction
but i kept following where the bike lane was.

My tires burned their black lips on the cold,
I started coming up with words
______not to feel alone:
Tree roots are covered by tar
pretty soon it'll be too late
pretty soon it'll be too far
open skies above us all
open rhymes to save us all
or what's left of our souls.
Hope must be found
like a silver lining on a cloud,
it dies last but slow
unless we're bound
to what they call Heaven or Hell
after the days of old.
If time is like the virgin snow
let's leave footprints before we go.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE BULLSHIT

The priest gets up from his chair
his uniform is well-ironed and impeccably black,
the square under his adam's apple is impeccably white
like his skin and his hands,
the only human flaws that appear
as he stands before the conference massed up in the room.
He says that God speaks through our bodies;
his when he preaches,
ours when we act the way we should.
Me?
Doubt denies me the right to let go
to these thoughts and echoes
from beyond the pale of reason
where their faith roams free and runs
and their hands praise god, not the sun
but the son,
that millenary misunderstanding
from the war of Images to the war of the Roses
mistaking a solar star for a demiurge
a cross for a horseshoe
coins for icons
with godly heads and devil tails
and morals to restrain.

As they all follow and recite
the rosary in my head
is tangled and intertwined.

Behind the priest are stupid posters
_________________and well-labelled shelves.

ALMAZONE

We have been walking in the rain for quite some time now
but i have decided to go up
the hill to the visit the basilica again and i'll go.

We pass old Lyon and the rivers
and on the bridges i feel like there is water everywhere,
i'm above it and under it, surrounded by it,
and through the noise of the rain i can hear
the stone steps shout and the old walls whisper
climb up and recall the promises of love you made by the river
but they're now forever dissolved in the water and never to be found again.
I remember when i uttered them on a spring afternoon;
the girl's just a memory now, a few stills in my head
since i threw away all the notes and pictures
but i can still feel our arms clutching.
I realize the change of the season on me
as it wets my clothes and soaks my socks
through the holes on the shoes she offered me for my birthday.
It's been raining for the past two days.

We get to the basilica through a bushy and muddy path up the hill,
my friend notes we have no girls with us this time...
we go up the marble steps and push the sacred door
inside, there is a big sacred mess
and the priest speaks into a microphone
to tell the visitors to get out for the mass
as if the place will stop being a stone building to become the house of God.

So we get out through the sides
and walk around all the chapels and dig the statues, the sculptures,
all the old objects, exposed in the exhibit room:
that gold has been glittering since the twelfth century
and that ivory represents the Christ in glory
and some man is fighting a snake or a dragon...
I look at the censers and the portraits of bastard cardinals,
and the representations of dead or dying saints;
I stop for a while to observe the paintings of two sacred hearts
and while a few people pray in the chapel,
I feel my very own.

I lose my friends and go back up to the mass
it's All-Saints day all the benches are full
but a man sees me and makes room, so i decide to sit.
Everybody's listening to the priest's psalms,
with their palms to the sky,
a young woman clasps her hands hard to feel the qualms
of faith
but her phone rings and she reaches in panic in her Longchamp bag
to turn it off.

I want to remind the priest that i was man-made
and that because many people died for it
or painted it
it doesn't make it true to all
but all these people standing up and sitting down at the same time
to the words like a human tide
make it holy.

The truth is covered like the Virgin Mary
and faith, whatever it is, is beautifully
hidden at the bottom of hearts
it's pure like the last pure thoughts in a lustful girl
it's a tiny spark ready to ignite
but it's raining hard outside.

I will stay a little bit more and walk around,
look beauty in the eyes and feed my soul.

WHEN YOU WALK WITHOUT EASE

At a time when the clouds of fire have been extinguished
and now reflect moonlight in a rare lace of air
I look up as I face a wall
and see a satellite glide
in what's left to see from the inky convex sky
between the concrete corners;
the cosmic device brings a Billy Bragg song to my mind.
Like all the words I read in a day,
like all the shit I hear
the tiny light fades into the universe following its orbit
and leaves only an image on my mind.

That's what I think about as my piss drips along the wall
in a uniform shape, splits into two separate ways
then three and four
and collides with the angle of the ground
to shine, reflected by the lamp posts.

I shook my friend's hand and told him good night
only a moment ago but I already feel alone, in this alley
whose gravel path leads nowhere but to a cul-de-sac.
I remember earlier, among a late night still life on the table,
my friend's beer glass like a clepsydra,
the last drop disappeared and the foam dried
like the one on the sea side
except there was no tide to refill that one,
we were washed out of the appartment
made noise in the kitchen
made noise on the wooden stairs
made noise in the streets
finished conversations and disappeared.

I was going to be stripped down to the sheer energy
that animates my body
the time when my shadow, that tired image of me
moves like a treacherous compass needle and confuses my way.

Lately, I've been feeling like this city's shrinking around me
or like I was in wax museum
or like after the scythe,
still, silent crop haulm;
boring has replaced familiar on the street signs as i name them;
the big streets are too straight
and the wind blows cold in those corridors
the smaller ones not meant for solitary men
and at the end of them, my home, my room to lay my head.



Title inspired from Never had no-one ever by The Smiths
Song reference, Billy Bragg - New England

THE NINETEENTH HOUR

The privilege of the triangular tops of the roofs
is to glow orange, lit by the late afternoon sun
and peer at the last colorful hours of the day,
above the red tiles, the gray tiles, the yellow tiles
and look at the few cats and birds that do what they must
among antennas and the balls that kids have forever lost.

I look at myself in a narcissist shop window
while the lamp posts
with their cold silhouettes against the purple sky, warm up
and get ready for the night.
Some kids are lined up on a rail like silly birds,
golden clouds are stuck between kerosene lines.

I meet my friends downtown
in front of the townhall building,
stone armors and columns
fasces and frontons
glow with a strange light
A strong kid chases a pigeon
around the square
and the bird keeps escaping him,
Asian tourists take pictures of the fountains and people
like they've done for the past three months
while we were sitting on unconfrotable bistro chairs
sipping and talking for days on end.

It is late in the afternoon and it looks like
the sun is struggling not to tip over the Earth,
but like Sisyphus we feel that immense disappointment
and button up our jackets
as the boulder rolls back into darkness.

Victor has a funny story about a guy who broke his shoulder
Mathieu has a new sweater
I have goosebumps on my arms,
we laugh,
we are cold
but all dressed for summer's funeral.

BLACK OCEAN

I have come thousands of miles to stand

on the edge of America,

the end of America

where the route 66 silently crumbles into the ocean

where fishermen curse as their lines tangle

a buoy blinks,

on the wooden boards a fish lies dead in a bucket

his eyes like black beads reflect

the lights that try to confront the abyss,

the Santa Monica ferris wheel illuminates the pier

it shines and dazzles with colors,

a giant eye, wide open

that sees only oblivion.

And there are those eyes who praise the sun in the day

and wonder when it'll come back

to stop the ten-hour decay,

they look at the wheel and its solar ways

but know it's only artificial,

a consolation in the night

The black ocean's filled with godlessness,

with the reason we write and read

hate and tattoo our skins

with the realization that life is only business,

the true believer's failed races

he who looks at love like devotees at krishna,

he who waits knowing the only thing that'll come is the end

but still eats the fruits of youth,

he who also ripens in the heat on the passenger's seat

stuck in traffic or on a beach bench, alone,

he who ripens and rots, is planted and born again,

who drinks wine, the blood of grapes, not of Christ

until his teeth are crimson and his smile indelible,

he who runs among derelict lives but contemplates,

he who passes the bums' bodies on the sand

like fossils on the black ocean's floor,

he who has buried Hilton's adorers with their stacks of bills

and tequila shots, cocaine lines and death on the rocks,

he who has heeded the irresistible call of the night

but knows that tomorrow, when the sun'll rise

the high school kids of America

will still fight their reflexions under the pier

throwing their white bodies in the sand, burned by the sun

and adorned by skulls

Malibu girls'll walk the sidewalks like the blond ghosts

of an endless time,

the angel-faced teenagers baptized by the pollution in the Pacific Ocean

where float the stanzas i try to find,

the beat birds, the infinite possibilities of words

__and my depression in the summer doldrums.

TRAIN OF THOUGHTS

Somewhere south of Paris
a man with a beer belly
waves at the train,
his loose dog skips on the path,
he holds the brown leather leash with his other hand.
The train follows a canal for a little while,
a straight trench, man-dug at eye level
filled with quiet water that looks like jello,
flat and smooth.

Now it's summer
but it probably makes great ice to skate
in the winter,
my father used to tell me about how he played
on the canal close to our place when he was a kid.

I pay attention to the rattle of the train for an instant
as i put down a magazine
_____Tackatack-tacktack-tacktack...
the only music i hear,
the bass line to the music in head,
that and the air conditionning
that i muffled with my sweater.

Golden haystacks in the fields through the left window,
rolls that stick to the hills.
Truck parts in a yard through the right one
and the bare tracks that keep stretching
and sometimes distort in a turn
although firmly bolted to the ground.

The sun gently sets on France's countryside.
This is my soil that i'm gliding through,
but i feel nostalgia for America's water towers
absent from this moving picture,
that's going to reel for one more hour.
The sun has nothing to hit on its course.
I'm killing time with a four-color pen
throwing useless words on a dogeared train ticket.

The sunflowers are lined up like hopeful brothers,
I am alone in an eight seat compartment.

UNIVERSAL ATAVISM

Our parents' achievements seem like big dots
compared to our lifelines being traced.
The giant Morse code of life
emitting to regions unknown;
the future never shows itself to us.

Our parents, who left colorful gifts
by the christmas tree,
figurines of our heroes
or brand new bicycles,
now hand out consolation prizes wrapped in lies.

I lost all my wisdom teeth to the hand of a doctor.
Only the four ones that hurt are called wise
the rest are to show the whiteness of our smiles
and to voice the sound of anxiety as we grind,

I lost my book of god and took up books of men
the covers and sides were rugged
just like how life should be

and as i read the lines and pages
looking for a better reason everytime
knowing that in the end there's never much time left,
i sometimes feel we are decaying monsters
on our way to a place that has too many names
to be found on a map,
so we listen to the sounds of the machine
looking for our wisdom teeth and a heart.

EPIPHANIES updated

WORDS

Clouds move in groups
slowly like a fleet to the sound of music from my stereo
I put down my pencil
and choose to dig the moment,
bright weather makes things look nice.

Thoughts float in past and future
the written words sticks and stings.

AT A PARTY, EARLY JULY

The source of torments in the mist of sweat and smoke
the tangle of sonic serpentines only stopped by the stone corners,
the sound of words from the brains and vocal cords
stopped by a shrug and a sigh,
The will wandering inside,
the truth of disappointment,
the sharp veracity of the void.

The need for structure and the breaking of it between the pillars,
the speakers have stopped
the grils'll leave, the men'll fight
billions of barking brats
doubled by the devotion of desire.

The joy of fear,
the call of the abyss for the end of destruction.

A girl sits on the floor
hiding her panties with her skirt
her eyes brightens and she smiles through her tears.

The warmth of her smile,
the sheen of the bathroom tiles between mudstains.
Among the remains
the bodies have fought and fainted,
the claims in vain that repeat and dissolve in the air
while all the guest disperse on the parking lot,
the vanity of the tangible ,
the veracity of the void.

The dried tongue of the poet
outside the pathetic circus of skulls,
The tentacles of the tormentors on the shepherd's staff,
the power of the verb,
the veracity of the void.

PORSCHES AND BIRDS

Cycling on my way to work

Two Porsches glide past me,
one silver, one red

smoothly adhering to the curves of the road,
the front of the machines swallow the asphalt
and see the stripes succeed under.
The golden crest with antlers and a horse
shines in the sun.

There's a dead bird near the curb.
Once borne by its wings from roof to tree
and anywhere it wanted to be,
once looking down at the World
now looks up at the sky
from a broken skull
or maybe down from higher above,
if there's a heaven for birds.

Father, is there a heaven for men?
Is there a heaven for Porsche drivers?

I hear children voices,
they hold their father's hands
on their way back from school,
it's almost five in the afternoon

I'm still riding down the road
but stop at a red light
on a bridge above railroad tracks.

The clouds are all gone
but the sky's still filled with faith.
I think of a girl, what she told me
and what she wrote me in the cover of a book
_____and as the light turns green
i hear ring in these words the true names
of the Savior.


FOURVIERE/BE YOUR OWN GOD

The last time i visited the basilica i told the priest
and a man that Jesus wouldn't have minded me keeping my hat.

This time i was with a gorgeous girl
We walked down the marble steps
leading to the side chapels
and while looking at a kneeling angel i thought:

If god exists he doesn't exist here
among the decoration
the chalk-white statues and stones
the representations of his son,
the stained glass and arches.
She admired the glory of Christ
with the same eyes
that like ikea furniture.

We sat down on the long wooden benches and argued
about her ex.
Yes Father we had sex
and without God's consent,
and everytime i laid in bliss
still annoited by hormones
it's not Him i praised but her white body
glowing to the candle light.

She wouldn't talk to me for a while
her eyes were fixed on an effigy
and mine on a mosaic representing ships.

I got up and to examine it
as the gold on it glittered.
I looked at the rows of oars, the smoke
and noticed the dozens of drowning turks,
arms stretched to the sky
to implore a defeated god.

I looked at the whole thing
saw the details and imagined the work.
They should’ve tried that at catechism
when they tried to make me acknowledge God’s greatness.

I looked down and saw her two eyes aiming at me
like darts at the cork
blue and round
from the rows of benches.

She asked me why some angels
were looking down
and why some looked happier
and she translated some words in latin for me.

She was the most beautiful thing among the sacred mess.

A smiling lady opened the doors telling us to be silent
and we entered the chapel of Mary during the office to see
all the people lined up in silence.
Their voices suddenly raised in unison and died out
as the feeble ones were still whispering
their words of hope and faith.

I was looking at candles in a box

i remembered that prophets and followers are wrong
i looked up and the smile on the lady's lips had not gone away,

I put the candle down in the box
and realized that
like when old people look at vanities
the truth lies on the thin metallic layer
behing the glass of the mirror
and knew that all the while
_____Ariadne's thread was running through us saying:
_____untie me from this post called today.

photo by Korina

VACATION OF ICARUS

I haven't seen any plane crossing the sky
for a few days, tought i
while having a break in the park

no glistening aircrafts that reverberate sunlight
and smear the sky with kerozen lines,
no diurnal shooting stars
in which you wish you were,
wrapped in free blankets
and going somewhere.

I remembered looking at the planes leaving from LAX
µduring a perfect summer afternoons
in the water, thinking
I need to find a way to stay here
but everyday of that blessed summer
the planes still defied the Pacific Ocean
with their bellies full,
they drew the same angle with the Venice pier.

I haven't seen any plane in the sky
thought i
because icelandic dust is flooding
Europe's skies
a fact that would have saddened Kerouac's own road eyes.
Eyjafjallajokull woke up from an untimely sleep
µto spit ashes not knowing
that since the last time he's been breathing,
Google's Earth had been spinning,

We usually never hear about Iceland
but Eyjafjallajokull's rocky lungs,
older than old,
needed to breathe.
Why he drew a breath on that day of April 2010
nobody knows,
or maybe some scientists and their probes

He shook the schedules
of a French businessman, a Danish mother,
a Spanish sister
and made airport refugees,
they sleep on carpetted floors
with airline company logos
with nobody to sing their story,
only the newsmen who film
forgetting sympathy.

I've been snoozing,
leaning my head against the wall
the dog is playing with that same stick
that it won't fecth
and the Boze is still playing music
on the steps.

I just saw a blinking aeroplane in the night sky
it glides and blends kerosene with ink.
The dogs still chews
and everyone is out to get booze.

signals (updated)

SIGNALS

Get lost and be guided

Obscurity wouldn't be that green,
yellow and red without the signs
that read Holiday Inn and McDonald's
and the lamp posts
paving the windy road
to the entrance of the deserted mall.
They make the bricks of the steps look brighter
almost pink.
The green bulbs planted
in the grass make it look greener and phosphorescent.
A tailless cat with no direction trots
and passes them.

They can turn my blood cold
but not this one,
it passes by with its disguting
anatomy and dirty hair,
it mews and disappears
on the parking lot of the hotel.

Silence is not really silent either,
the white speakers above
the sliding doors of the entrance
play elevator music.
Cheap chords and howling saxophones
swell on repetitive choruses.
I remember that i heard
Neil Young played
through those same grids once,
at the time i was working there.
I realize i was tapping my toes
on the rail.

Then,
in a second,
the speakers start blowing a siren.
An instant of silence,
An instant of noise...

After that an announcement
to evacuate the shopping center.
Just a test of the system:
it is late on a sunday night,
everything is closed
and there are no ghosts between these walls.
The music resumes with african bongos.

I sit there,
the security camera is watching me,
a half-globe embedded
in the pearly white of the plastic roof.
I am looking at the city:
a black sea with hundreds of buoyants lights
well-anchored underneath
but pitching in the distance,
shy and undetermined to fight obscurity,
they are parallel sisters to the stars,
the millions of burning icebergs
and silver nebulas,
are separated from them only by some clouds
and the rotundity of the world.

A transparent wrap rolls and
twinkles at the lights,
three quarters of a price tossed on the steps,
it rolls towards the trash can
as if it had a plan,
moved by the breeze,
_____the breath from the giant lungs
_____of the cosmic fish.



Goes out to A.

ICBM

A few words about my friend Andy's new magazine : International Chatterbox Magazine. An all DIY zine about reflexions, music, poetry, society, politics and reviews with an international perspective, with photos IN COLOR!

DOWNLOAD
ICBM blog

More words from me soon i promise

BRAUĐ

The plastic tubes of the sign
above the bakery across the street
are arranged so that they read
PAIN.

Pain means bread in French,
from the latin panis
but when it blinks red
through the morning mist,
my eyes, corrupted by English
can't help but seeing the meaning
an anglophone beholder
with english speaking eyes would.

It lightens up around 7:15 every morning
and starts throwing spasms of aching red
that immediately dissolve in the fog
for an instant
until electricity spurts again
through the tubes.

Sometimes i'm still in bed,
when the baker has been up for four hours,
sometimes i'm eating flattened croissants
from a plastic pack from
the grocery store at the mall
and when my tired eye
looks at the clock by the window
it sometimes meets one of the throbs of light,
sometimes i stare at it
and it makes me smile to think
of the kind of shop this sign would
advertise for in an english speaking country.
Another language
Another clerk
behind the old register
without ads for baby-sitters
and people giving away kittens.

I recall standing outside a Walmart
one night in America and saying to Brian:
"Look at all these people, the potential
but why do they want to ruin my world?"
It made him laugh and then as we entered
looking for i-can't-remember-what
i though of a poem that
could have said something like this:

Look at those colorful glucides,
all those poor peasants running for
plastic hot dogs and frozen wings,
drawn by the only light in the night,
they have plastic tubes
inside their bodies and inside their heads
containing copper cables
and messages they radiate
to each other
in a range that can't barely reach
the metallic structure of the roof,
let alone the sky...
across the alleys they push Sisyphean carts
to the clink of cans and the beep of scanners,

While we throw timeless sand
at the eyes of our misery
sitting, silhouetted by the sky
at the top of a dune,
we shoot fake bullets with real guns
and make dry ice bombs,
we dance with knives to a familiar tune,
we blow up fuses on a saturday night,
we laugh at ourselves at the corners of the World;
in the dazzling temple they pray:
Our father,
give us this day our daily pain.

Written for Andy's ezine,
i'll put the address to it here when i have it

DERIVE TETRALOGY

Dedicated to my friend Brian Harper

DERIVE

I was walking the poorly lit path boarded by trees
that I walk when I’m restless
and I want to escape the loneliness of my room.
It was very late at night.

I had left the blaring signs of shopping centers
and their smell of fried food
and the sight of the golden city lights
on a dark canvas of running blue and green.
The trees congregate along the sidewalk
to form a dark screen
and an abode for animals.
Squirrels and birds,
I suppose, since the branches rustle
when I walk by sometimes
Street lamps are evenly scattered on the side of the sidewalk,
their attempt to light my way is futile
but it's ok since there is nothing to see
on this path.
Joggers sometimes and potential assaulters.

I just wanted to walk off my obsessions
I was not even thinking about
how much longer I was going to walk
but my mind got lost
and suddenly I was walking streets with no name
feeling even further away from home,
feeling the distance of the ocean between this continent
and the one where my home stands,
too far to smell the salty breeze
but at once all I missed came hitting me like wave.

My friends, the way they talk
French food, words that don't make sense here
even when they are disguised in an English costume,
taking walks alone
but in my neighborhood.

This is a token of home, a parody.
And it is not funny.
I was following along the bushy side of the sidewalk
punched with holes of clarity
and staring at it.
It seemes to form a celestial-size screen showing nothing
but the picture of loneliness.

A car drove by, a bubble of light made of steel and glass
and I saw the face of its driver looking at me
emotionless,
i caught a picture of him
with his two hands on the wheel,
was he going home or was he escaping?
It was a sign of hope
like when a UFO marks a crop field
and proves we're not alone in the universe
but then I thought of myself in front of my computer screen
opening empty email inboxes many times a day,
recalling words said by ex-girlfriends,
entire paragraphs which don't make sense.
I looked down
the grey squares of concrete succeeded under my feet
as the Masonite tiles of an hospital ceiling would.
I avoided interstices, as usual.

I tripped on a slanted edge
my eyes focused and I saw a parking officer
walking around his booth,
he readjusted his beige uniform as I approached
and my words broke the silence:
“Good evening”
he stepped ahead and replied
he asked me some questions about myself,
where I came from.
We talked a little more since
at this hour no cars need to park
and when the silence settled
he turned around and left
leaving nothing in front of me
but that picture of loneliness.

DERIVE II

My thoughts became asphalt.

At the end of the line,
the one i drew with my bicycle,
________i found a table.

Under the big yellow M
that shone in the night
to lit only solitude
________i sat there.

Outside, aligned,
the tables were all deserted,
the city too,
below
________between the lamps,
hundreds of shimmering lamps.

I wrote a few lines
under the eyes of the cameras,
that kept watching just in case.
At a Mc Donald's, i wrote
on the cold metal
of the silent mall
________i wrote.

Some tourists were smoking cigarettes
outside the adjacent hotel
danes, czechs, germans, poles?
They threw the red butts on the floor.
One last puff and i was alone
and finally,
________i was home.

DERIVE III

I hung up the phone like i would seal a coffin
and the sun appeared in the corner of the window frame
in a tiny explosion
to hit the corner of my eye.

The faraway globe of fire
was cut in a quarter and projected a rectangle
on the table,
it reminded me of the way
that timeless universal light would reflect on the floor
of the appartment i lived in as a kid,
it would, on rare sunny days,
project a patch on the brown carpeted floor
and i'd lay down and stretch on it
and feel the soft and warmed up
material under me,
it was itchy on the bare parts of my body.
The patch was big enough for only me
and looking up through the window
i would stare at the sky.
A sky that was, and still is, anywhere
in the world.

The buffalos of imaginary cowboy games
would run across the room and off the balcony
to go meet wild things in the sky
and images of plastic dinosaurs and figurines
would sublimate on the blue.
I would get warmer,
still lying like a Gulliver surrounded by milions
of carpet bugs
and the brown patch under me
would feel as soft as a patch of sand
and a sober day-dream of youth
would produce more images in my mind
and make me jump over the buildings
ridiculed in size by the ones of real America
but giant enough in the mind of a provincial French kid.

My virgin mind would dally longer
while my body rested
on a day's brightness
until my mother yelled at me
between two squeaks of the ironing table:
she told me not to lie there.

According to her
there was something degrading about the floor.
C'est sale.
I never understood what.

Now i remember thinking about a girl
and wishing she was next to me,
looking at a portion of sky
but from the bank of a pond
through brown sunglasses and a polluted mind
some fifteen years later this past summer.

That's on that day i realized
looking at the sky, provided you cut out
a small portion with the blade of your iris,
allows you to be anywhere you want,
anywhere in the world
but at some point black angels always come down
and caw to remind you
that you're down here
with the rest of us.

DERIVE IV

I tried to steal a CD
but on the very end of my homerun
the guard looked at me in a way
that made me throw it back in a box
full of books on sale.
I was downtown and aimless
so i thought:
let's go to the mall.

I started to follow the road.
That same road i followed everyday to go to school
when we still lived in our old house.
I went through the same neighborhoods,
the rich and the poor
on a copper-colored bicycle,
i didn't see dead pigeons but a dead owl
brown and yellow
concrete against skull
and a flattened teddy bear
on the long Stalingrad avenue.
Avenue de Stalingrad,
Stalingrad Straße.
I saw a KFC sign too
and when i knew i was going to pass the back
of my old house i looked away,
straight ahead at the wet road
not thinking of anything at all.
I think i shed a tear.

I went up the gravel path and the mall appeared
like white sails on a grey sky
the façade of the Mc Donald's was lit
and surronded by empty balustrades.
The place, my place,
that can be so quiet, was packed.
The glass doors vomitted the crawling
and ever-moving ants of saturday afternoons
on the regular and flat stairs
of crimson concrete.

The rain started to fall on the
human ebb and flow.
I tied my bicycle to a post and went in.

The solitary crowd was dense inside,
they moved on the shiny tiles.
I wanted to cut through like a chainsaw,
instead i patiently went along
humming loud enough
to make heads turn.
I stagnated for a moment on the rolling stairs
...instead of a shell
but before i began
i was bored before i even began...
and entered the grocery store.

I walked in the alleys, looked at the CD shelves,
the clothes, the bakery, the dead meat,
the toys and picked a small bottle of water.
I stagnated again in line for ten good minutes,
i even let a old women cut in front of me
...learn to love me, assemble the ways
now, today, tomorrow and always...
I payed my 21 cents
and left the place for the rain.

...my only weakness tadadada
I opened my bag to put the plastic bottle in
and let a few drops fall
on a brand new CD case.

I. écrit en oct.-nov. 2008 en Caroline du Nord, II. écrit en juin 2009, III. et IV en janvier 2010 à Dijon,

Pour un peu plus de lecture et comprendre le sens non scientifique de "dérive" voici un lien
La théorie de la dérive, Guy Debord, 1956