SILENCE DOESN'T MEAN A THING II

The Earth has been here for a long time
but under these snowflakes
that froze my mistakes
it feels it could be the end.
Are we so desperately reaching for the end?
Are we so eager to know the end
that we destroy the place that we're given
by solid hands?
That we slay the living creatures
drench them in petroleum
cut them open with a knife and cook them?

Aren't we supposed to be afraid?

Primaveral feelings are at bay
a frozen bay
like the park and the lake.
We haven't seen the sky for five days
instead of it, covering it
a uniform grey mass drifted endlessly
like the released souls of forsaken ghosts
knowing the taste of freedom at last,
these ghosts i soaked like a ghostly sponge
while my lungs absorbed smoke,
lying on the bed and seeing red.

Red
like the sun that finally appears today
that fills the sky with a new tinge and hue
that changes the landscape and my mood,
that hungs hammocks of purple and orange
to the skeletons of the trees that line
the industrial avenue with its fences and trucks.
Red
like the sun i chase while it sets
at the end of another afternoon,
that is leaving way too soon,
like a girl you couldn't get to know
before she had to go back home, north,
It had just appeared
but now must leave for the moon.
So i look down to the wall
that spreads along the industrial avenue,
holes on the wall are like ballroom for birds.

Pigeons are out on the snowless ground
they patiently pace around
fearless of the cars and the sound.

Une interview de Gabriel et moi (Spoken Words and Open Chords)
dans le cadre du festival Humanist Records: [lien] l'Oreille au Poste du 11/3
Merci à Marie et sa collègue @ Radio Campus

"this mess in my head is a mess getting out"

Je lirais quelques uns de mes textes
le 10 mars à 13h15 à l'Atheneum (université de Dijon)
accompagné de mon cher ami Mr Mojo de Lillo à la guitare et autres instruments
(pause méridienne gratuite et ouverte à tous)
Un avant goût sur myspace

THE ADULT CRASH

The cop said "Walk when the green light's on
drive on, drive on, drive on!"

"Stand still" said the photographer
the clothes designer said "more fur!"
"it's murder" said the vegan
"just walk" said the pedestrian
the director said "think harder"
"That'll never sell" said the movie producer
the music producer said "change his voice"
"harder, better, faster, stronger"
said the electronic voice.
"Do your homework" said the teacher
"take what we have" said the employment worker
the hipster said "oh my god that's awesome!"
the artist said "it's already been done..."
God said "stop calling me"
Santa Claus: "d'ya have work for me?"
Jesus ordered for twelve
Judas said "you're a dead man..."

The pope said something in latin
the pop star said something about love
and the audience listened.
"I'm an alcoholic" said Steve
and the audience said "Hi Steve"
The freak said "i ain't an animal"
the conformist: "can't you just be normal?"
the housewife said "wipe your feet"
the diabetic: "that's too sweet"
the white collar got a burnout
and the boxer got knocked out.

The communist said "share!"
the nihilist said "dare!"
The ecologist: "look what you've done"
BP said "come on, it's only oil..."
The protest singer: "it ain't right!"
the pop singer: "does that sound right?"
the rich man said "what's the price?"
the poor man said "where's my slice?"
the capitalist said "more profits"
and the worker said "i quit"
the journalist said "bullshit!"
the editor said "write it!"
the writer got writer's block
the pornstar said "suck my cock"
the director: "don't change the lines!"
the poet said "it does not, necessarly, have to rhyme."

The cocaine addict said "more lines"
"walk it" said Johnny Cash
"the light's not green" said the cop
the rebel said, "fuck you, i got nothing to lose!"
the buddhist and the bum asked
___________________"do you?"

Cité du Soleil, janv 2010

UNTITLED

People were looking at a big bird passing,
______hovering, steady,

In the night, on the carless street
the few people were walking slowly,

The bird was drifting, singing, free.

The streetlamps were reflecting on the wet pavement,
the song and the shadows were absorbed in the cement,

The people were going home,
it was around three,
_____and the bird was me.


----------------

INSOMNIAC HAIKU

Growing hatred for this bed
that doesn't let me sleep.
I glance out the window
in the darkness where i want to slip.


to my very good friend Gabriel

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.