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

Kings and queens of promise

Plus de lecture bientôt, en attendant:

UNTITLED

Bicyle
eat vegeterian
steal
Do it yourself
Think
Love
Act
Promote
Destroy
Rebuild.

BEAT SHIT

HOPELESS

The streets are made of concrete and tar
and bricks and shit
but what are the streets made for?

They're made to walk,
they're made to run,
ride,
roll,
drive
or just stay a whole night
or maybe a whole life.

To get out of night clubs
to wake up drunk and alone
or go to work in the mist,
at eight in the morning,
alone.
To throw bottles,
to throw punches,
to build Mc Donalds or stores
that sell expensive watches
to spit on a street corner
or to watch the buses.

To drag boots at night,
to drag boots all day
and get back to a warm home at night
or just stay.
Stay there outside,
outside of the walls
or outside or society?
To find beat up bicycles
and bring em home and fix them;
to walk around all afternoon
with your girlfriend and get a coffe
or a coke
and talk, talk, talk.
And realize she's not the one,
ride a bike,
through red lights
get arrested.
Go faster than the police.
Ride on the same road
everyday, in the summer sun,
wear two pair of gloves cause it got colder,
see the same dead pigeon.

Where do the streets lead?
the streets of Dijon, of Venice Beach
of San Francisco, of Winston Salem
of Lyon or San Diego
maybe to cul-de-sacs
maybe all to Rome
maybe to roam.



Commencé à 03h32, fini à 03h54.
burn, burn, burn

APRICOTS IN THE WINTER

It is past midnight now
and my shudders are still open to the misty night,
a blinking plastic tube
goes off on a balcony in the distance.
Gray is the sky,
gray is my window frame in cold metal,
the skeleton of trees dancing in the wind,
gray the drops of rain pearling down
like the tears that were in my mother's eyes
coming in the way of sight
between what's in and what's out,
out in the fish tank outside.

Earlier,
I walked up the streets that had been barricaded
and were guarded by men in bright yellow vests
who shone in the night like the hundreds of bulbs
that suck up the energy
to spit the light down or blink,
to burn but not like roman candles.
They are embedded in flimsy plastic shapes
of snow flakes, stars
or raindeers.

A child dashed by and hit my leg,
i looked down,
_________somebody screamed, lights flashed,
a group of women, a flock of pigeons.
People were everywhere,
they walked down, i walked up,
some of them the arms full of goods,
kids pointed, adults held them back,
teenagers ran like juggernauts of impatience,
some guy got off his bicycle,
the ball of wool of his snowhat wobbled
as he stepped down
and he politely elbowed his way in,
a tough guy almost hit my shoulder,
i swear i would've hit him hard in the face...

It was 5 pm and the penultimate thursday
of the last month of the last year
of the first decade
of the second millenium
and the nearby church was opening for a ceremony.
I guess Jesus didn't spend his night alone
even if the shops were still full
by the time i left.

Fallen leaves cracked under my feet
like brand new euro bills.
Snow has melted and only left rust on my pedals.
When it subsists in chunks on the sidewalk
it's black with the shit we breathe.

'tis the season's plague when madmen lead the blind
Merry Christmas consumer.

poème de Noël avec quelque jours de retard