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