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.

BLACK OCEAN

I have come thousands of miles to stand

on the edge of America,

the end of America

where the route 66 silently crumbles into the ocean

where fishermen curse as their lines tangle

a buoy blinks,

on the wooden boards a fish lies dead in a bucket

his eyes like black beads reflect

the lights that try to confront the abyss,

the Santa Monica ferris wheel illuminates the pier

it shines and dazzles with colors,

a giant eye, wide open

that sees only oblivion.

And there are those eyes who praise the sun in the day

and wonder when it'll come back

to stop the ten-hour decay,

they look at the wheel and its solar ways

but know it's only artificial,

a consolation in the night

The black ocean's filled with godlessness,

with the reason we write and read

hate and tattoo our skins

with the realization that life is only business,

the true believer's failed races

he who looks at love like devotees at krishna,

he who waits knowing the only thing that'll come is the end

but still eats the fruits of youth,

he who also ripens in the heat on the passenger's seat

stuck in traffic or on a beach bench, alone,

he who ripens and rots, is planted and born again,

who drinks wine, the blood of grapes, not of Christ

until his teeth are crimson and his smile indelible,

he who runs among derelict lives but contemplates,

he who passes the bums' bodies on the sand

like fossils on the black ocean's floor,

he who has buried Hilton's adorers with their stacks of bills

and tequila shots, cocaine lines and death on the rocks,

he who has heeded the irresistible call of the night

but knows that tomorrow, when the sun'll rise

the high school kids of America

will still fight their reflexions under the pier

throwing their white bodies in the sand, burned by the sun

and adorned by skulls

Malibu girls'll walk the sidewalks like the blond ghosts

of an endless time,

the angel-faced teenagers baptized by the pollution in the Pacific Ocean

where float the stanzas i try to find,

the beat birds, the infinite possibilities of words

__and my depression in the summer doldrums.

TRAIN OF THOUGHTS

Somewhere south of Paris
a man with a beer belly
waves at the train,
his loose dog skips on the path,
he holds the brown leather leash with his other hand.
The train follows a canal for a little while,
a straight trench, man-dug at eye level
filled with quiet water that looks like jello,
flat and smooth.

Now it's summer
but it probably makes great ice to skate
in the winter,
my father used to tell me about how he played
on the canal close to our place when he was a kid.

I pay attention to the rattle of the train for an instant
as i put down a magazine
_____Tackatack-tacktack-tacktack...
the only music i hear,
the bass line to the music in head,
that and the air conditionning
that i muffled with my sweater.

Golden haystacks in the fields through the left window,
rolls that stick to the hills.
Truck parts in a yard through the right one
and the bare tracks that keep stretching
and sometimes distort in a turn
although firmly bolted to the ground.

The sun gently sets on France's countryside.
This is my soil that i'm gliding through,
but i feel nostalgia for America's water towers
absent from this moving picture,
that's going to reel for one more hour.
The sun has nothing to hit on its course.
I'm killing time with a four-color pen
throwing useless words on a dogeared train ticket.

The sunflowers are lined up like hopeful brothers,
I am alone in an eight seat compartment.

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!

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