Truth of My Youth

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