Monday, February 1, 2010

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

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