Still Life With Cheap Chipped Coffee Cup

On the cusp of discovery:
this time, not held
by knowledge nor love;
Sustaining,
but barely—this ink now
will not wash; the stain
of your doing will spread—
Awake, painfully. God speaks
tersely, falls quiet. You [She says]
were too eager to drink
from the cup of sleep. Drained
all sweetness
its honey-truth
in one gulp.
You know
the nature of failure:
yours—and otherwise.

Awake, then, still
in the wake of catastrophe:
clarity rattles,
with bitterness rasping
at the back of your throat
where God’s fingers were,
all rose, and all milk;
Gone at present.

Tar trails behind now,
coating your tongue as well as time—
late even in the cracked circle
of dawn.

You cough the loss away.

Mutability

Word for once: Green. Deep. Crystal. Rising
pillar of stone, salt, saltpeter
to lick and lick until the moss
or mold, with fresh taste of damp,
slips a structure (quartz! you cry) into your self –
When mold (the form) perishes mold (matter) erupts,
but slowly. Or is it,
as I once scribed, obedient,
with my water rotting in a cool closed cypher (before it got
all crooked and leaky)
the reverse?
Mold (the matter) finally liquefying & slipping off its mold (the form), revealing it
as alchemy would. And purity
would come out, only.

This was the ideal. Not an option, even though
it had to be, logically. Academically. Administratively.

Teal ink stained the pulp of my fingers. Souls marred, with chains adorned, still the spirit – the form – molding a matter
depicted as molded by its very sin. Rendered as matter, still. Tense fear, not fleeting but scurrying
away whenever my mind tried to pin it down (like recalcitrant eyebrows under the tweezers): that
it does not get further than matter.

Which was what I studied: matter, and optional. When I was persuaded
to pursue this course (alone in the musty brilliance
I could never quite see) I was told
it was neither matter nor a choice:
quintessential, rather, and law.

Yet –
All in all, spirits still carried
their smell like gangrene – the rotten ones,
they who had committed great evils,
and the shades of their ancestors all clung to them,
shrieking and burning and cursing,
accusatory and wrathful and grieving. None of this
seemed too foreign.

I sat on the deserted corridor with my eyes closed. Muttered.
I remembered rules, forms – the fixed ones,
and they who changed,
like the light in spring. The philosophy teacher
towered over me;
said my eyes looked tired. Go outside for a spell. Sir,
I can’t –
I have to make sure
I’ll get out of there. He shrugged
and went away.

Back to the cave. Its long pools
of greendark water, lying lazy down
in the ground. And with mist cloaking all –
the calm damp air which was all
a whole, few noises, all echoes,
distorted. Waiting for the snake
which you know sleeps under the lake. The head
held high, both eyes fireburning,
with silvergold filigree all over its emerald back:

Then, only then, hopefully
molds of all kinds will unite, corroding
your self – form and matter now falling into
a husk of sense: dry peeled skin
with only itself crawling through,
but new.

Miscellaneous Spotted Reveries

Defiance swims in the stillwaters
whose fluid fingers braid skin to silver,
whose weight converts
light into years, a gown
of emerald, purple and gold…

*

The child swirls in laughter
within a grey velvet skirt.
Ribbons of
shimmering blue (pigeon-throated,
whisper women; already aware
of her seduction power).

*

Back in the
wake’s world (minds like foam
agitated, quick to disperse)
the iron bench:
coated in the same severity
as the gates, the shutters,
and your hands too,
if you’re not careful.
(Falsetto lisps: mind your behind!)

***

And all within
the blondes’ contempt.

The Bell

Here. We thought
you’d like to advertise your own death.

I saw a granite bed once,
it flourished with a grace
none can hope
to withstand.

Not you, especially. Not you.
Turn your back
to the light for once and look:

Take the bell. You might remember.
We bought it for you
while we were trying still (such
enduring naivete) to be a family.

You’ve seen to the braided
bread and its sprinkles of sugar. You’ve
stood very still under the tinsel. You’ve
even noticed how the cat’s eyes lined up
with the bulbs of colored light.

In my cell the windows are round. I think
it means I am their pupil.

O the myriad blue bells of spring,
ma folie –

Don’t think I cannot see you there,
liar:
From my citadel I see all,
and you, most painfully –

Padding the bell in hopes
of hiding your way through,
sneaking into the crowd – the public;
faking your body. That is –
Faking being one.

*

They had me pose,
every year, in May, on the bench;
Never did I see
how I’d turned out.

Survival Strategies

Wisteria – as a curse it hangs,

balances its absence – no flower

can grow here – no – no flower

will grow here – of its own

volition.

*

There were the birds – there was foliage –

there was a veil of passion

fruit hiding keeping

venom inside;

the car outside, shiny,

golden beetle – and the flowers –

that is, the flat-strippers;

the polite ones.

They shed their seeds

throughout autumn. I bent

and crouched, chestnut-haired

as September demanded,

keeping them all (seeds of

night-the-beautiful, that were in truth

light-the-beautiful), gathering

the seeds of evermore years and time

unseeding as thoughts –

All in all. One by one. They were dark,

dry, numerous. Warm, even: apologetic. Falling into my tin bucket,

rattling mutely –

all the fragile pinkness of their thin flowers

(sad trumpets of defeat) now

forgotten, forgone.

*

Wisteria again. Its vines thicker

than my thigh, stronger

than my arm. It never bloomed:

it leafed. Until,

once upon a time –

it was blackmailed.

Threatened with death – undignified: poison and shears alike –

if it would not comply; account for its lot

with the beauty it owed (or so she said) –

& thus did the wisteria bloom: once.

A single flower, too high on the arbor,

smelling only of spring rain.

***

On the next year it barred her path

with sarcaustic leaves –

We nodded at each other.

Optometrics

With time clarity erodes

the stone of its core:

this I know

is just how it is with the relative

net of sprawling blood,

which – with no drama, none, truly –

pushes and pulls itself in,

so eager to move it

shakes its anger

into place, committed to the noose,

the river, and all of its

dead beavers. With time,

inevitable;

Vision becomes trouble.

One might say we fancy

ourselves prophets of tragedy, what with

the blindness, the blood,

fate, its twisted loops –

Mostly, though,

engineering does come through. The machines don’t know

the first thing about curses –

much less family. They’ll tell you,

pull it closer til the Beast

turns hazy, or

sunders like a cell. They’ll tell you,

look: the die

has not been cast. Watch it closely,

stay mute and frozen,

through the frosted glass; for

it cannot roll.

How many dots?

How about now?

Do you see it, twinfold?

Of the dice, which is the true?

The die, do you see –

its head on a pike –

The die is die;

one & one – just squint a little!

Esquisse : étoffes

ton jour qui froisse
le peu de mes mains comme soie –
ma peau ton taffetas…

les yeux noirs qui contre
lumière étale –
s’ouvrent en deux, avec au centre

rien que le gris
veloutant
mon assombrie…

Sleeping dragon; one eye open

at the familiar door
recoil

*

a richly rotting carpet
of bright-gold lives
muffles the rustly chain

*

it will not leap
and coil around your ankles;
you will bend to your will
and put it on yourself.

Bypass, Trespass, Begone

The train station, gated
by cemetary walls; the grave(s)
a so/m/ber grey
which is not stone;
granulous, lichenous –
concrete.

And yet: what does remain? Overarching
stairs of an avaulted church –
in the tangle of wires –
no glass ceiling. No greenhouse: weeds.

They did warn
the traveler. Glyphs
abounded, lawful –
decently rusted. The path
you must take elevates; you have
to cross over. Find
the shortcut, abridge
and leap to your goal
at your own risks. If the shock doesn’t kill you,
we will –

People then, in the dull of now,
clad in normalcy;
two decades ended, and they rise,
revealed as yet –
a dead era – gone,
thus definite.

Patterns

wrapped-tight in the grid
of a woolen scarf, as twilight
renounces its grievous golds –

the three young women next door
are laughing; a baby babbling
its brook of blabbering…
the women’s hair is long,
black, shiny; they cut it
to the clean sun of september – they live
in the middle of lines they affix; every day
raises one,
takes another down.

a man plucks
a guitar’s strings; thrice.
one woman wails;

and then – silence.

night, now, makes no mystery:
none at all. it will fall.

Thrillseekers

thrillseekers-2Télécharger

To marvel; to wonder

The glass panels – throughout
spring turns eternal, or fall;
both of them clear, and gilded, and clean,
brighter in the frosted days,
vivid as a clue.

Clues which the library
grew aplenty. You needed only
to stand there; embracing
as though the airy light were water,
with fluid motions of your rounded arms –
taking, bringing forth;

And yet solitude remained.
the benches were crowded; none reading.
They’d brought
their own things.

Sometimes – for you had to remember
people still lived here, at the heart –
a blinding flash
hid the letters from your eyes:

all the glass panels unfolded,
one after the other; light
complicit in the shock.

The old man opened his window,
watered his plants. Stroked his beard,
eyes blinking, winking; not in my direction,
I’d wager, despite the evidence.

All things in balance. Blind
to the signs, I’d stay;
reading, taking in
what I owed;

I did not think that it would ever end.

Sunday, noon

a voice came in
from the square window
pierced too high
into my bathroom wall.

muffled; so much did it care
to be heard that
legibility was but
collateral, in its own
definite plan.

what was it,
that it warned about? I stood there,
rubbing oil into my own flesh,
as if a fight was waiting for me,
and nakedness,
outside, most likely – as if the sands
under a night pyre
wanted to grate my thighs.

one leg
then another. or maybe
the fire would roast my body;
I would only prepare
god’s dinner, obedient
as ever.

yet I remain unskilled. the oil is fragrant,
but beneath –
only bitterness.

the voice
fell silent. no fire remains
to be fought;

on the marketplace – all warnings
faint, blurred,
mechanical.

ENTRANCE (TRY AGAIN)

entrance-try-againTélécharger

Out of the eye’s reach

In the house on the hill

tis morning always.

A woman stands,

wearing blue and white;

always.

Her face I never quite see,

her hair wrung,

resting low on her neck

(a more tender word I lack).

In the house on the hill

tis always morning.

And although I never entered,

never even gazed through its low

windows –

Although as I know

access will always be forbidden;

The woman turns slightly. She’s brewing coffee.

I’d know her less had I been let in. Her towels

always so clean, herself expecting

a knock at the door, with her back

turned

to an outpouring of light.

What she expects

must come from the inside.

In the house on the hill

time is spent before it reaches the gate –

tis morning always.

peur feu lieu être

éparse, la pluie

(nous étions seigneurs
nous étions maîtres)

éparse, la pluie
scarce enough as it is

éparse, la pluie
à n’être pas

*

dans le talus le troisième brin
n’est pas celui qu’on croit

*

éparse, la nuit
à n’être pas

*

la peur n’a plus de feu

*

éparse, la peur
monte enmiasmée
de la terre

*

friable

Death/the Maiden

death came unto me a monday morning
in april –
with flowers full, and fragrant;
and i, sitting unwashed at
my plywood desk –
did not greet her as i must.

*

she had the braided hair of a first love,
and her freckles, too;
she wore a scarf of sky-white tulle,
and her striped blouse, too;
supple and light – and cheerful, too!

*

she perched on the cheap desk and picked up a pen.
then, her camera – rose through the air – its cracks – and as it snapped – my picture – she laughed –

never i know did she own any – and lo –
the picture it took held no one; only
a desk, crammed with
accounting books, dirty cups, and the law –

none sitting – death is gone;
no spring breeze will pass me through;

maiden was i not – nor did i stay;

death – i used to linger
in her doorway; death –
never once did she love me.

\ (the gates) /

& betrayal it comes quicker
than you can say it comes
not from nowhere not towards else-
where (which was
my great-grandmother’s
name) it shimmers & blinks

& then but light remains yet
your arms still cast a
shadow if lighter only

& betraying only the swirl remains beloved
believe it for me

april comes lying four years still
in the making
snatching self between claws of
dew like a fresh death

wake in a story unlike your old

Slithering Path In The Between

against the poplars
whose fallen branches tripped
the aspiring smooth

a womanface whose lips beckon
to ideas only

*

alone in her brilliant stillness

*

an omen prowls the red circles
as past years pace around

*

each pattern closing in
every time leaning into
peace

*

the gates wide open thrown with
darkness the soothing
beyond

An Instrument of Focus

you have to enclose it, deeper,
if you want fire to keep –

and keep taking. i’m saying
narrow and narrower;

may the fat of your own bones
jump and grin madly,
enloved by jars of thin eyes –

and nothing ever will smell
of flowers.

Réfractions/Refuse

l’ultime la solitaire gentlewa-
ters of third-capped-thirsts

*

with what but springtime sources
for whom but flowersyou

*

focused only can pierce the through
fire of all things fire
of white with

expire

house rots my food. house stains produce
with bowel smells, and the flies. house
generates flies. house seeps bad breath
onto my plate. house palate and palace and not both. house gnaws at the hinges. house of gnats-hinged-fridge. house not a house. house a flat, but still house in fearful steeps of every step. house molds my meat; house turns my milk. house stays, and house stinks; house prays but spills the drinks. house a fringe. of grease and glue. house a bill long overdue. house that diseases the cured meats. house that will douse but never rinse. house that is ours and festers us. house whose treasure is maggots- ours.

So lonely…

so lonely, the ash tree

my city clad itself

in its clamored quiet

Locus Amor’n’us

golden, and more
as they look up
from their labor

as grows rumor.

Plaything Pretend

the waxen arms of a doll

its belly soft-grilled cotton

smelled like vanilla first

then a hauntingly sharp whiff

of glue acidic and silent remains 

later, I found that grown-ups 

do smell like those things too,

with their heads caved in, half an eye,

and supple feet by shoes

so readily bruised

yet our eyelashes whip the air

in fear of overflowing joy

while the doll keeps its own still

staring into blind light. 

Lesbian Poetry Simulator – Play Now For Free!

[que] la glace [se] terni[sse ?]
l’éclat (…) [disparaître ?] non pas (…)
avec l’ (…)…

(…) des [tresses ?] de mon aimée (…)

---

crossing each (…)
that didn’t appear
yet

---

after careful study of this poem’s remnants, one can only conclude that (…)

---

(moon through spilled windows)

---

… le texte, plus intéressant par sa graphie et ce qu’elle révèle des conditions de préservation que par son sens, son vers maladroit…

“Orgueil de la maison”

sous la lampe la chatte
dévisage la nuit dont elle émane
son échine luisante se drapant
d’un frisson tandis quARRÊTE DE MANGER MA PLANTE IMBÉCILE DESCENDS DE LÀ IMMÉDIATEMENT COMBIEN DE FOIS JE T’AI INTERDIT DE MONTER SUR MON BUREAU !

Onction

enjambant la moiteur
d’un jour par la fatigue mené
la céramique près de minuit
dégage un sourd relent d’été

rien de douleur ne s’éloigne
rien de l’oubli n’accompagne

avec pour seul lotus le parfum
du savon couvrant mes seins.

Undisturbed

gathering gray threads a field somewhere
shades itself in rain’s company
growing greener

in the old country unwed girls
would tie their hair with snake molts
so that pillows squealed
their silky solitude

It did fall(,) silent
in between tree tremors
their light guilt.

________________________________

after Ryan Whelan’s 2020 artwork, Somewhere there’s an open field undisturbed just growing greener, soft pastel and acrylic on canvas. from the series Holding two opposites at once.

On The Very Last Hour Of Drilling Iron

cement-taken in
a mutant city

i feel my limbs deplete
my voice sizzle

on the fat of
plucked childhood
its bland meat.

Mars

mars
à nouveau passe dans son étroitesse
manches étoilées

*

on toujours ignore
comment se fait la mort.

Dishwashers

draining milk from the morning bowl

its landscape withers away –

did the tranquil meadows wait for me?

or is this, yet again,

just poetry?

Miracle de la nuit de Noël

ils ont cuilleré la chaussée, déprise

et peut-être ailleurs ravalée –

reversé la route, nappé

tous ces tuyaux d’orage, puréifié 

nos murs vieux de neuf crépi aux déjà lézardes

*

et le goudron scintille 

cachant sa neige absente. 

Arany in the changing room

a plastic sheet explains 

how to cough; barely legible

under the cracks of this late morning’s

sad light, its white pools. they

quickly (calls the teacher) ought to remove

their shoes, leave coats

hanging on tiny hooks, and spill 

into the gymnasium. Arany

peers through the narrow window and tells her friend

look: i can see my mommy

right in that house over here, drinking coffee. it is all 

yet another miracle – not to see mom from school,

forbidden bird,  

but that joy – as her hastily shed scarf slides down,

and puddles on the invisible bench, its smooth surface, 

so cold, resin-coated – the locked-up bench, that has yet

to be forgotten. 

Degrés

heurtant mon pied
à la marche de l’hiver –
la ville sent le feu
la ville s’embûche.

Mystique

(des chiens sont près
de te baver les yeux)

la messe en deuil
gravit le soir
gravant dans l’air
cette inconnue –

ta voix si claire.

Barthes & Proust pour les universitaires, Roland & Marcel pour le conférencier

Dante (encore un début célèbre, encore une référence écrasante) commence son œuvre ainsi : « Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita… » En 1300, Dante avait trente-cinq ans (il devait mourir vingt et un ans plus tard). J’en ai bien plus, et ce qui me reste à vivre ne sera plus jamais la moitié de ce que j’aurai vécu. Car le « milieu de notre vie » n’est évidemment pas un point arithmétique : comment, au moment où je parle, connaîtrais-je la durée totale de mon existence, au point de pouvoir la diviser en deux parties égales ? C’est un point sémantique, l’instant, peut-être tardif, où survient dans ma vie l’appel d’un nouveau sens, le désir d’une mutation : changer la vie, rompre et inaugurer, me soumettre à une initiation, tel Dante s’enfonçant dans la selva oscura, sous la conduite d’un grand initiateur, Virgile (et pour moi, du moins le temps de cette conférence, l’initiateur, c’est Proust). L’âge, faut-il le rappeler – mais il faut le rappeler, tant chacun vit avec indifférence l’âge de l’autre –, l’âge n’est que très partiellement un donné chronologique, un chapelet d’années ; il y a des classes, des cases d’âge : nous parcourons la vie d’écluse en écluse; à certains points du parcours, il y a des seuils, des dénivellations, des secousses; l’âge n’est pas progressif, il est mutatif : regarder son âge, si cet âge est un certain âge, n’est donc pas une coquetterie qui doive entraîner des protestations bienveillantes ; c’est plutôt une tâche active : quelles sont les forces réelles que mon âge implique et veut mobiliser ? Telle est la question, surgie récemment, qui, me semble-t-il, a fait du moment présent le « milieu du chemin de ma vie ».

Pourquoi aujourd’hui ?

Il arrive un temps (c’est là un problème de conscience) où « les jours sont comptés » : commence un compte à rebours flou et cependant irréversible. On se savait mortel (tout le monde vous l’a dit, dès que vous avez eu des oreilles pour entendre) ; tout d’un coup on se sent mortel (ce n’est pas un sentiment naturel ; le naturel, c’est de se croire immortel ; d’où tant d’accidents par imprudence). Cette évidence, dès lors qu’elle est vécue, amène un bouleversement du paysage : il me faut, impérieusement, loger mon travail dans une case aux contours incertains, mais dont je sais (conscience nouvelle) qu’ils sont finis : la dernière case. Ou plutôt, parce que la case est dessinée, parce qu’il n’y a plus de « hors case », le travail que je vais y loger prend une sorte de solennité. Comme Proust malade, menacé par la mort (ou le croyant), nous retrouvons le mot de saint Jean cité, approximativement, dans le Contre Sainte-Beuve : « Travaillez pendant que vous avez encore la lumière. »

Et puis il arrive aussi un temps (le même), où ce qu’on a fait, travaillé, écrit, apparaît comme voué à la répétition : quoi, toujours jusqu’à ma mort, je vais écrire des articles, faire des cours, des conférences, sur des « sujets », qui seuls varieront, si peu ! (C’est le « sur » qui me gêne.) Ce sentiment est cruel ; car il me renvoie à la forclusion de tout Nouveau, ou encore de l’Aventure (ce qui m’« advient ») ; je vois mon avenir, jusqu’à la mort, comme un « train » : quand j’aurai fini ce texte, cette conférence, je n’aurai rien d’autre à faire qu’à en recommencer un autre, une autre ? Non, Sisyphe n’est pas heureux : il est aliéné non à l’effort de son travail ni même à sa vanité, mais à sa répétition.

Enfin un événement (et non plus seulement une conscience) peut survenir, qui va marquer, inciser, articuler cet ensablement progressif du travail, et déterminer cette mutation, ce renversement de paysage, que j’ai appelé le « milieu de la vie ». Rancé, cavalier frondeur, dandy mondain, revient de voyage et découvre le corps de sa maîtresse, décapitée par un accident : il se retire et fonde la Trappe. Pour Proust, le « chemin de la vie » fut certainement la mort de sa mère (1905), même si la mutation d’existence, l’inauguration de l’œuvre nouvelle n’eut lieu que quelques années plus tard. Un deuil cruel, un deuil unique et comme irréductible, peut constituer pour moi cette « cime du particulier », dont parlait Proust ; quoique tardif, ce deuil sera pour moi le milieu de ma vie ; car le « milieu de la vie » n’est peut-être jamais rien d’autre que ce moment où l’on découvre que la mort est réelle, et non plus seulement redoutable.

Ainsi cheminant, il se produit tout d’un coup cette évidence : d’une part, je n’ai plus le temps d’essayer plusieurs vies : il faut que je choisisse ma dernière vie, ma vie nouvelle, « Vita Nova », disait Michelet en épousant à cinquante et un ans une jeune fille qui en avait vingt, et en s’apprêtant à écrire des livres nouveaux d’histoire naturelle ; et, d’autre part, je dois sortir de cet état ténébreux (la théologie médiévale parlait d’acédie) où me conduisent l’usure des travaux répétés et le deuil. Or, pour celui qui écrit, qui a choisi d’écrire, il ne peut y avoir de « vie nouvelle », me semble-t-il, que la découverte d’une nouvelle pratique d’écriture. Changer de doctrine, de théorie, de philosophie, de méthode, de croyance, bien que cela paraisse spectaculaire, est en fait très banal : on le fait comme on respire ; on investit, on désinvestit, on réinvestit : les conversions intellectuelles sont la pulsion même de l’intelligence, dès lors qu’elle est attentive aux surprises du monde ; mais la recherche, la découverte, la pratique d’une forme nouvelle, cela, je pense, est à la mesure de cette Vita Nova, dont j’ai dit les déterminations.

Roland Barthes, extraits de Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure, conférence au Collège de France donnée en 1982

(On passera sur les implications d’un mariage entre un quinquagénaire en pleine crise de mortalité et une jeune fille pouvant être sa fille, pour cette dernière, en ce qui concerne la “fin de la vie”…)

Pulpe du doigt…

pulpe du doigt
(là où se grave le soi)
de lessive engluée ;
branches dénu(d)ées
se penchent –

et l’air lui aussi
lave et relave
ô mystère
sans délaver…

I Haven’t Done Algebra Since 2013

éblouie non aveugle

no staring, squinting’s suggested

right at the not-reach

s’évanouissant laissant la soif

& les sourcils fronçant –

……………………….

you might want to hurry

home

isn’t quite what exists.

///////

you might want to hurry

home

existn’t quite what is

/////////////////

((you) ((might)) (want_(ing))) to hurry

(home)

isn’t quite what exists.

Wailing October…

wailing october fog faiseur
d’une puanteur de miel
dans le jour tombe

Pellicule

cette dont on ignore
si la blancheur est neige
ou pourriture

d’un avançant squelette.

Com(me)/mute

such a bright mo(u)rn

arrive le train

such a morne matin

I turn away from the growing sun.

Lunattic

la tisse-poussière

grows wooden

in their grenier

*

what (fire) will madden(s) (fire) (?)

***

This poem is the start of a new project – follow it to its completion on my patreon!

My take on the moon as erotic motif trope

glide bright hide
behind water silks

ubers and deep-friers
indifferent to nuptials

urgently diving
for your slave

Summer Village

… exhales its breath of stone spirit…

Great Dogs

et perhaps freshness viendrait
water on eyelids
and may-être cela brillerait
comme un peu de jour…

Eau froissée…

eau froissée ciel d’été
la chatte-mère sur le flanc
donne à boire round respite
before heat’s eyes – in vain

There beneath the trees…

there beneath the trees
grass comes clearer…

long enough for braids,
and snails hurry through the terrace,
while rain lifts its arms
of gray dampness –

all the way throughout summer.

Fossile d’un jour éclos…

fossile d’un jour éclos
ce qui se voudrait une

…

ah, why try to grasp
vines that let you slip away?

---

night came invisible
her silk on our foreheads.

HAS ANYONE EXPERIENCED SOMETHING SIMILAR / GOT ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PHENOMENON? (SERIOUS REPLIES ONLY)

Why, of course you’re not going to believe me. I mean, only old people find these little shits endearing anyway. I haven’t met anyone under the age of thirty who didn’t think they were absolutely nightmare-inducing. But hear me out – I have some other reason to hate garden gnomes.

It all started when I was about eight. You see, I had a pretty regular childhood. My parents never divorced, we had a suburban house, and my four grandparents were alive until recently. Oh, of course there was some family drama – whose family doesn’t have any? But it never got bad enough that we had to cut ties with relatives. My grandma’s house was as typical as our life: decently sized, with two guest rooms, a big kitchen, a garden with a vegetable patch, a swing for us kids, and a garden gnome. Now before that story started, I had no hard feelings towards that gnome. It was just some weird decrepit doll I wasn’t allowed to play with because, despite looking like a toy, it wasn’t one, according to my grandma. I didn’t pay it too much attention, since there were much more exciting things to do – namely the swings, and in the summer the strawberries ripening, for example.

A bit of a tradition in our family was that I’d spend a part of the summer holidays there with my cousin Lily. We were the same age, being born exactly six months apart (a fact our families loved to bring up at every reunion), and got along well despite our very different personalities, as is often the case with children. She was this fun, extroverted kid who would constantly drive the adults crazy with her questions while I was quiet, a bit of a coward, and very reasonable. Our parents liked to say we “brought out the best in each other”. I don’t really know about that – what I remember is Lily pushing too hard on the swing and falling down once, in a very dramatic way, shattering one of her front teeth. I did warn her, of course – but did she ever listen to what I had to say?

Anyway. Back to the gnome. This happened in the early 2000’s and, as I said, I was eight. I had just arrived to my grandma’s to spend three weeks there before my parents had their days off and would join us. Lily was there already. I got off the car and she ran towards me, screaming with excitement.

“Notice any change?”, Lily asked, her eyes bright with mischief.

“Now, Lily, don’t spoil the surprise”, Grandma warned.

I looked around.

“It’s in the garden!”, Lily shouted. “You’re getting warmer!”

I looked around and approached a rhododendron bush. Everything seemed to be as I remembered. I turned a corner and saw it.

“The garden gnome! You… changed it?”, I asked, confused.

Before Grandma could say anything, Lily shrieked.

“We repainted it! And she let me choose the colors!”

The gnome’s overalls were indeed bubblegum pink instead of their regular denim blue.

“That’s nice”, I said. And really, I didn’t know what else to say. It was a bit weird to see the gnome in that state, as I was so used to its old appearance – its face was more defined, but really that was all.

We all went inside and had a late lunch – it was about 2:30pm.

Now the weird things started right after lunch. Lily and I headed to the garden to play on the swings; she had been given a new bouncing ball by the neighbor and we were fighting over it. Suddenly I smashed the ball while it was in the air and it bumped into the shed’s door. We weren’t allowed in it, as it was full of sharp tools, dust and cobwebs, and so my grandma kept it locked at all times. Except that day, apparently. When the ball hit the old wooden door, it opened, ever so slightly. We stood there, abashed.

“Should we get inside?”, Lily asked.

“If we do so, grandma will ground us and tell our parents.”

“She doesn’t have to know.”

“But she will!”

“C’mon, Annie – just one minute! Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”

“But we’re not allowed”, I replied tentatively.

“Get back to grandma if you want, I’m going inside”, she decided.

That’s the thing with Lily: once she had decided she would do something, there was no stopping her. So I sighed and followed her in the shed – after all, I was curious too.

Now that I think about it, there was nothing remarkable inside the shed, and I can definitely see why adults didn’t want us in there. The sunlight glimmered over metals, all more or less rusty. Mostly there were bags of fertilizer and old garden tools. Nothing phenomenal, really. Lily closed the door and we were submerged in total darkness – there were no windows and no light bulb. I muffled a scream.

“I know what we’re gonna do!”, she whispered excitedly.

“Get out of there?”

“No, silly – I’m getting my glow-in-the-dark marbles!”

“Wait -”

But she was already out. I stood there, frightened. I wanted to get out of the shed, but I could hear my grandma not that far away and I was afraid she’d see me opening the door. So I just… stayed here, praying that Lily would come back quickly. And then it… happened. Or rather started happening. I heard a scratching noise from the outside.

“Lily?”, I whispered. “Quit doing that!”

The scratching continued. It felt like claws on wood. No way that a child’s nails could make such a sound. Maybe Lily had brought some kind of instrument – a fork perhaps? – and was fooling with me. I called her name again, threatened to scream for grandma – no response. And then – I can still hear it – I heard one of the wooden planks being… torn apart. Granted, the shed was old, so it couldn’t have been too hard – but why would Lily do that? My knees gave out and I fell on the ground. And then – how is that even possible? – I saw some light. One of the planks had been ripped off and there was a tiny hole, or rather a split, in the wall, that let light enter the shed. I stared at it for what must have been a few seconds only but felt like whole minutes, and then… something… something was behind the split. Staring at me. It was a painted eye – a black eye. I could not but recognize it immediately. The eye rose up, still staring at me (or at least that’s how it felt), and through the crack I could see the whole shabby face… of the old garden gnome. I opened my mouth to scream and as soon as I did that, it just… disappeared. As if nothing had ever been there, staring at me through a crack they (or rather it) had just created. Finally regaining control over my body, I jumped on my feet and stormed out of the shed – and you may have guessed it: there was nothing outside. No old shabby gnome. No prankster cousin. Just the grass. At that moment the back door slammed and Lily started running towards me. She stopped dead in her tracks upon seeing my face.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s not nice to scare people like that”, I accused her, although I was pretty sure that what I had just experienced was not Lily’s making.

“What are you talking about? I was just inside.”

I told her what I had seen, and showed her the crack – I think she was even more scared than me, actually. It was nice to have her believe me, because I knew no adult would. We went back to the gnome. It was still here, freshly painted, mocking us with its empty eyes, fake smile and pink overalls.

“You sure that’s not what you saw?”

“Yes. I saw the old gnome. The one that had paint peeling off its face.”

She frowned.

“Then I don’t know. We should ask grandma if she has some other gnome laying around. But first maybe check the shed?”, she proposed, her eyes brightening.

“Nobody’s gonna check the shed!”

“Alright, alright! I’ll ask her over dinner then.”

And that’s what she did. As I said, Lily was always good at getting the adults to give her information – she had been so involved in the whole repainting stuff her asking about the gnome didn’t seem to strike grandma as unusual.

“Grandma, do you have another garden gnome?”

“Another gnome? No, dear, just the one we painted.”

“Are you sure?”

She chuckled.

“Yes, of course. I’m not that old, I still know what I own!”

“Where does it come from?”, I asked.

“The gnome? Oh, I don’t really know. It was there when your grandpa and I bought the house. The previous owners had left a lot of things inside. We threw away most of it but ended up keeping a few. For example, the living room’s lamp was from them.”

We exchanged a silent look. Really, there was nothing more to ask about. When grandma asked us what we had been up to that afternoon, Lily made up a story on the spot – she had always had a talent for making stuff up – about our dolls being pirates fighting for a treasure (that was composed of her marbles). I suppose grandma believed her, as she didn’t ask any follow-up questions.

The rest of the holidays was peaceful. Sure, I had some nightmares about the gnome, and Lily and I still tried to elaborate theories about it – but mostly we played and argued. I’d not say we forgot about it completely: it just wasn’t our number one preoccupation anymore.

Still, I felt some kind of relief when we left, in addition to the habitual sadness. Hopefully I would stop dreaming about the gnome.

When we arrived home, after a five-hours long drive, it felt like waking up from some confusing, stressful nightmare. At that point I was pretty sure I had imagined it all. I mean, I’ve always had a rich imagination, and the sudden darkness had scared me so much I might as well have hallucinated the whole thing. Plus it made no sense I had seen the old version of the gnome – this was probably because I wasn’t used to its new look yet.

Anyway. My dad took my suitcase to my bedroom and I started unpacking. There were, neatly wrapped, all kinds of things I had taken home from Grandma’s place – a new doll, two books, various shells and funny-looking rocks, as well as scented paper. Under all that were the clothes, always the least exciting part of unpacking. I grabbed a pair of socks and felt something hard inside it. I unwrapped it, excited – my grandma often hid some tiny toys or a 10$ bill in my packages and suitcases. When I discovered what it was, however, I felt as if I had been thrown into a pool of icy water.

In my hands, staring back at me, was a plaster fragment – of an eye. The very same eye I had seen spying on me through the crack: black and shabby, with its paint peeling off. I dropped it off like it had burned me and it fell on the floor with a dull sound, where it kept staring at me. I felt hot tears rising under my eyelids and stomped on it, hysterically, until the gnome fragment was unrecognizable; I then managed to overcome my fear and gather the broken pieces. What to do with them? My first impulse was to throw them in the garbage can, but I quickly resolved against it – my parents could see them and get suspicious. Besides, I didn’t want this thing to stay in the same house as me. So I opened the window, made sure no one could see me, and threw the shards into the overgrown garden of the neighboring house (vacant at the time).

I sat on my bed, restless. My first thought was to call Lily; but at the time, cellphones weren’t as usual as they are now, and I would have needed to use the landline, which my parents would have known about since they insisted on listening to my phone calls. Now that I think about it, I should definitely have told my parents about the whole thing – but the childish fear of getting yelled at, maybe grounded, for entering the shed, as well as involving Lily, held me back. And I knew my parents wouldn’t believe me anyway – they’ve always made fun of people believing in anything even slightly supernatural and constantly told me to “stop lying” when, younger, I told them about my imaginary friends and their adventures. No, I thought, the safest thing to do now was to try and forget it all. So I didn’t tell anyone anything, finished unpacking, and joined my parents in the living room to watch some TV.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I don’t remember my dreams but I think I didn’t fall asleep properly before dawn; I was woken up by my mom around 10:30am. She entered the room as usual and opened the blinds.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty”, she said cheerfully, “your kingdom awaits you!”

I mumbled something unintelligible.

“Come on, do you see what time it is? You need to get back to a normal sleep schedule for when schools starts again.”

She walked towards my bed and stopped. I was facing the wall, but could feel her presence behind my back. She grabbed something placed on my nightstand.

“Good lord, what’s that? Annie, why do you have to keep such useless trinkets all the time? And what’s it supposed to be?”

I turned over. At first, I couldn’t see what she was holding, being blinded by the sunlight. Then it became clearer.

It was the gnome’s eye.

“What’s wrong?”, she inquired, seeing the look on my face.

“Don’t touch it!”

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s, uh, mine. Lily… gave it to me. She… has the other half. It’s a cousin-best friends kind of thing.”

“Oh, okay then. If you say so. Anyway – get up before it’s too late for you to have breakfast.”

The whole day was a blur. It was clear I needed to get rid of the gnome’s eye – goodness, this is one ridiculous sentence, isn’t it? But it was also clear it wanted to stay in the house. To mock me, or… I didn’t even want to think about it. So I figured we needed to find a compromise. After hours of febrile thinking, I found what appeared to be the best solution: putting it in the attic. Nobody would find it weird to have some old broken thing up there, it would still be inside, and hopefully it wouldn’t come back to watch me sleep. I shuddered. When I asked my mom if I told keep it there, she looked surprised.

“Don’t you want to keep it at arm’s length? To remember your “cousin-best friend”?”

“If I do, I’ll keep playing with it and it might break. Look, it’s really fragile.”

It was the first time I lied to her with such conviction.

“Well, it’s your stuff, you can keep it wherever you want. Just don’t touch anything in the attic. I know where everything is stored and don’t want you to mess it up. Also, you could hurt yourself. Oh and, I don’t want you sneaking around there all the time, so if you keep it in the attic, remember you won’t be able to go play with it anytime you want to. Understood?”

I nodded and went back to my bedroom. I grabbed a shirt and used it to hold the eye. It was still staring at me, and although there was no particular expression to be found in it, I recalled the gnome’s face, constantly laughing for an unknown reason, and it felt like it was deliberately taunting me. I unlocked the attic’s door and turned on the light. It was a very regular attic in a very regular house, really, but not being able to hear my parents downstairs while being alone with the thing made me uneasy. I looked around, trying to find the perfect spot, and noticed an old suitcase we didn’t use anymore as its wheels were jammed. What decided me to drop it in that particular suitcase was that it got a lock – that was, fortunately, open. Obviously, I didn’t delude myself into thinking the lock would prevent it from doing whatever it wanted to do, but it was still quite reassuring to hear its clicking sound. Placebo effect, probably. I locked the attic door behind me, gave the key back to my mom, and for a while, that was it.

Of course it took some time before I could sleep normally again – to be honest, I’m not even sure to this day my sleeping pattern is something we can call “normal” – but the eye seemed to accept its new place and never showed up again. I avoided the attic on the pretext of being afraid of spiders and, as years passed, I thought less and less about that adventure. Actually, I almost managed to convince myself (once again) that I had made the whole story up – after all, my childhood was pretty boring and I could’ve used the thrill. I even wondered for a while if it could have been a psychotic episode, but nothing similar happened to me afterwards and the research I did on the question revealed that psychosis often starts manifesting during late adolescence or early adult years. Anyway – I also never told anyone this story before, and I would have kept things as they were if it weren’t for what happened last month.

I graduated last June. I found a job after a few months of job hunting – I admit I got lucky – and decided to move out. My parents initially wanted to leave my bedroom as it was to make sure I would feel welcomed when I’d visit them but I convinced them to use it as a spare guest room, which was lacking. I started packing my stuff. At the beginning, it was easy enough to determine what I’d take with me, and what should be thrown away; but eventually I stumbled upon some items (mostly toys) which, while having too much of a sentimental value to be simply thrown away, would be a waste of space and energy to take with me at my new place. I asked my parents for advice – should we give them away?, and they told me I should simply put them in the attic, at least for a while. Who knows, I might start a family a few years from now, and then I would be glad to still have my old toys to give to my child!, they reasoned. I felt uneasiness crawling up my skin at this idea but agreed, as this was obviously the best option. Had it been only a few years before, I would simply have asked my dad to move the boxes to the attic; but he had unfortunately hurt his back when I was still in college and thus wasn’t allowed to lift heavy objects or bend for too long. As for my mom, I knew she’d have made fun of me for still being scared of the attic – our relationship isn’t that great, if I’m honest, and I’d rather have faced the attic and whatever was in it than give her more reasons to call me a coward in front of people. I know it’s childish, and I’m not really sure how we even got there in the first place, as we were pretty close when I was younger, but it is what it is, right? So, long story short, I ended up taking the boxes to the attic myself.

I unlocked the door and turned on the light, looking around to see where I could leave them – I had hoped there would still be enough room in the front so that I wouldn’t have to get too close to the old jammed suitcase but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. So I started walking towards the end of the room until I could see the suitcase.

The light bulb was too weak to properly light the whole room, but I could see that something had been placed at the top of the suitcase. I sighed, relieved – it was clearly too big to be the gnome’s eye. However, as I still needed to find a spot for my boxes, I kept going. As I approached, I could distinguish a silhouette in the dim light of the attic. A silhouette that looked humanoid, with a pointed hat. I let go of my boxes. Overhanging the suitcase was the old garden gnome, intact, with its blue overalls and its paint that was flaking off, grinning, and staring directly at me.

I don’t exactly remember how I got out of the attic. I left the boxes where they had fallen down, locked the door, and didn’t tell my parents anything. Now you might be wondering why I am telling you this, you who are total strangers, when I kept quiet for so many years and didn’t even tell my relatives what happened. Am I crazy? I don’t think so. As I mentioned before, I’m not showing any symptom of mental instability, whatever that means. I never have, really. No, if I’m telling you the whole story now, it’s because I need advice. Should I tell my parents about all of this? Letting them know they most likely have a haunted garden gnome (if that thing really is a garden gnome) in their house? I’m conflicted – on the one hand, I of course don’t want them to get hurt, and who knows what that thing is capable of – but on the other hand, I don’t want them to freak out (maybe for nothing) when they’ve spent the last fifteen years unbothered. And before you tell me to get back there and destroy the gnome – given what happened when I broke the eye and threw it away, I’m not sure that would put an end to it; actually, I’m afraid it would only make it angry and craving retaliation. I’m also afraid of it following me to my new home, obviously. I’ll keep you updated. So, yeah – in need of a few tips and opinions about all this, please.

TL;DR: I’m apparently being haunted (?) by a garden gnome since I’m 8. What should I do?

Short stories are back… but they’re not what we’re used to!

Hello everyone!

I personally hate summer. It’s hot and makes me sweaty. So, in order to send some chill down our spines, I decided to take advantage of the free time the holidays grant me & try out some new writing style – namely, horror.

I’ll post new stories regularly, and you’ll be able to find them all under the “Summer Horror” tag!

Enjoy your summer and see you soon!

 

Becoming chimère

Part in the rising waters agé
The frail bark ploys it all

*

Les champs de la neige s’éloignent
L’oubli keeps you floating
A single tree on the mud shore
With a disemboweled rope
De pendu il y a (de) cela trois morts

*

Si léger light eats you up
Déjà

Ever noticed how poets love insomnia?

Emptying lakes of sleep
To think I used to bath in waterfalls
To drown

*

Nothing in the city
Predatory cicadas circling my ceiling I
Wide as the world
Awake(s)

Lucid to the bone
Perhaps

Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe

he who plays the viola
recalls of years long lost
in a single long note

*

a young woman, dead for decades
bows slightly
and takes from the still life plate
a fruit

(Poem from January 29th, 2020, that I forgot to post)

A Very Obvious Allegory

she passed us in a frenzy
black robes where we’d expect white
eyes punctured
throat sewn tight
she passed us in a frenzy
and hollers through the corridors

the palaces cry for help
heavy marble busts abashed
won’t tell the dust (off)
that she left

only she could knead the cries of pain
roll them around
but she’s passed through
and cannot cry –
she passes us in a frenzy
cold breeze of night
under children’s windows
who meet her once
and go quiet –

*

and still it seems
that rivers flow…

The end of a project… and its beginning!

(french below)

I am very glad to announce you I’m done with my latest poetry project, Goodnight, listeners! It’s a collection of poems composed and told by a radio host during its live show that airs on Wednesdays between 2AM and 3AM. Mostly an exploration of what night, memory, desire and identity can mean… with a plot!

To read the completed book, as well as my 4 other books, you can suscribe to my patreon or send me an email (carmine.g.denis@gmail.com)!

It’s not over, though: Goodnight, listeners is meant to be a podcast so, while that might take a while, you can already listen to the playlist! it’s meant to alternate between songs and poems, starting with the poem (poem n°1; song n°1; poem n°2; etc), although you can of course listen to it the way you want to.

I’ll keep you updated about the podcast!

love,

Carmine

***

J’ai le bonheur de vous annoncer que mon dernier projet de poésie en anglais, Goodnight, listeners, est terminé ! Pour celles et ceux qui n’en ont pas suivi le développement sur patreon, il consiste en une série de poèmes composés par un présentateur radio pendant son émission en direct, qui passe entre 2h et 3h du matin le mercredi. Il y a (en quelque sorte) une intrigue et les thématiques principales tournent autour de la mémoire, de l’identité, du désir et de la nuit.

Pour le lire, ainsi que mes 4 autres livres (un en français et trois en anglais), il vous faudra soit vous abonner à mon patreon (prix libres !), soit m’envoyer un mail (carmine.g.denis@gmail.com) afin que nous puissions en discuter plus avant.

Mais ce n’est pas fini ! Goodnight, listeners se propose de devenir un podcast : cela peut prendre du temps, donc en attendant vous pouvez écouter la playlist dédiée au projet sur spotify,  idéalement dans l’ordre (poème 1 puis chanson 1 ; poème 2 puis chanson 2 ; etc.), bien que vous puissiez évidemment l’écouter dans l’ordre que vous voulez.

Je vous tiendrai au courant de l’avancée du podcast!

Carmine

The Unexpectable

Watchman watchman during dawn
What have you seen that’ll make us frown?

*

Rocks
My sister
Rocks started floating
And a stray star went dull
And the milk plate went sour

*

Watchman watchman during the day
What have you heard that’ll make us stay?

*

Streetcars dance in noon’s shadow
And said shadow rejoices
But make no mistake
Grab its hand and get poisoned

*

Watchman watchman during the night
Have you smelled the latest blight?

*

I smelled it first, o my sister
Its heart of rot, its bones of white
It ate us whole like grains of salt
O my sister
Your shawl is loose on the great walls

What did you taste
When death went live?

*

Watchman watchman dusk has risen on the horizon
Leave the tower, and carve some rest
Out of the night that crawls quickly
Feel its hot rain on your fresh corpse.
– Haven’t you heard?

O my sister, ’twas me traitor
Who let it enter.

La poésie du mercredi (#85)

Je m’éveillai, c’était la maison natale.

Il pleuvait doucement dans toutes les salles,

J’allais d’une à une autre, regardant

L’eau qui étincelait sur les miroirs

Amoncelés partout, certains brisés ou même

Poussés entre des meubles et les murs.

C’était de ces reflets que, parfois, un visage

Se dégageait, riant, d’une douceur

De plus et autrement que ce qu’est le monde.

Et je touchais, hésitant, dans l’image,

Les mèches désordonnées de la déesse,

Je découvrais sous le voile de l’eau

Son front triste et distrait de petite fille.

Étonnement entre être et ne pas être,

Main qui hésite à toucher la buée,

Puis j’écoutais le rire s’éloigner

Dans les couloirs de la maison déserte.

Ici rien qu’à jamais le bien du rêve,

La main tendue qui ne traverse pas

L’eau rapide, où s’efface le souvenir.

Yves Bonnefoy, La Maison natale,

La poésie du mercredi (#84)

UNE PIERRE

Matins que nous avions

Je retirais les cendres, j’allais emplir

Le broc, je le posais sur le dallage,

Avec lui ruisselait dans toute la salle

L’odeur impénétrable de la menthe.

Ô souvenir,

Tes arbres sont en fleurs devant le ciel,

On peut croire qu’il neige,

Mais la foudre s’éloigne trop sur le chemin,

Le vent du soir répand son trop de graines.

Yves Bonnefoy – Les Planches courbes

Let’s give time awell-rounded character

Just in time
To see the sky torn apart

*

What justice will it bring
If not the only glimpse of clarity
That makes you say
“Ah, storm
I see you now”?

“I Got Published”, 3rd edition

Hi friends! The 2020 issue of Plains Paradox is out! You can find my poem “Whitsundying” on page 87! It’s such a beautiful project and I am very glad to have had the privilege to work on it…

See you soon!

The sapphire bird…

the sapphire bird
why does it sing
and why does it sound
like a crying spring

Embodied grief of bodies…

embodied grief of bodies

I am a cathedral

 

gargoyles sing away, away

stained glass does nothing

but lets the light through

 

my lover is a spade of grass

she digs deeper and deeper

but saves the desperate worms

 

embodied alas at long last

who can stand

where beauty was?

oh wondrous day – the start of a new project

oh wondrous day

I went out all night walked my way out of town

and stars were many, and trees verily

bent down and whispered to me

things my mouth is embarrassed to say

(too many teeth, so little tongues)

I went home to the woman spinning wool

in our room, singing

a song of faith (and the knight

swore his love was enough to sustain him

and he ate lilies

and the lilies were venomous

and oh no the knight died)

oh wondrous day

soon my lips will be sewn tight

and no humming will escape

but I’ve been out all night among

trees who wore their bridal attire

for the first time in tree history

I bathed in a cold spring

oh wondrous day

my lover’s lute glimmers in the light

at spring’s death all dressed up

I’ll be nothing but a wife

oh wondrous day

J’ai cru paraître…

J’ai cru paraître ou du moins comparaître
Dans un jardin tout droit hérissé de statues
J’ai bien cru vivre ou du moins y rester
Les temps sont mous de la grippe en été

*

Et on rampe rampe rampe
Sur la Voie Lactée

Just so we’re clear

just so we’re clear
so clear the light won’t even
have a body to cross

just so we’re clear
bag of bones spilling on the countertop
hello I’d like to borrow this
take a coin
take a pill

just so we’re clear
the transaction isn’t complete
and I’ve seen my mother smoking
eyes closed in the backyard

just so we’re clear
somebody sliced my tongue
and my nails have grown long

just so we’re clear
I am no obstacle anymore
and dawn will bend and not see

The traveler clears time…

---

the traveler clears time
bushes of forgotten tears
useless crystal

*

oh what i have seen
countries where deserts meet the sea
salt plains and nobody to lick ’em
forests where vines intertwine with fate

*

and with a machete
he fails to set his mind
ablaze like the summer trees
and cuts right through
his childhood self

*

mind dried clean and polished
like a wedding shoe

With a crystal wand I tear apart…

With a crystal wand I tear apart
Waters and earth, and trees
Seep through cores birthing lava
Explosions in the ceiling
And the season’s wine is spoiled

He leaned towards me, the mage
Very first man of a deathless eye.

First loves in the sun

Watering my rotting garden when
A single hand-sewn patch of sunlight
Washed over me with joy

*

Oh to be a single particle
Of pollen up in the air
Middle-school children laughing tearing
Grass apart I didn’t know you’d die
I just kept ripping the grass apart
(Of me won’t dry out)
And poured it all on your hair
Bitter tea

*

I never ate my sorrows like I did with yours

A funny story that horrifies

how old were you when you first turned
to stone? your eyes made up
of snow-white goo
and strangeness dripping off your sex?
how old were you when reflections
suddenly didn’t matter anymore, when every quartz
and amethyst and pebbles at the sea
came in, whispered,
“it’s alright, it’s alright”?
how old?

As ladies of the past…

as ladies of the past

took flight in the mistaken mind

I lay my arm on the warm stone

it’s March, like a fresh fall

of light, the leaves

the not-yet leaves

leave a bitter odor in the air –

once upon a time a boy gave me

a branch of pink flowers he broke from a tree

as I walked home from school –

and at the time I didn’t know

anything but the lady of the hill

(I should have given offerings

to bribe her mercy) I didn’t know

and put the branch in a glass of water –

blueberries stained our summer fingers

with nails as black as the plague

for spring is diseased

and, stillborn, will choke us soon.

Mon livre est terminé ! / My book is finished!

(english below)

Bonjour tout le monde,

mon dernier projet en date, “Drunkenness of the Tide”, est terminé ! Il se compose de quatre parties, et se concentre sur quatre figures littéraires (Galatée, Ophélie, Cassandre, et Méduse). Si vous voulez le lire, vous pouvez vous abonner à mon Patreon pour le prix que vous voulez (même 1€ par mois !) et je vous enverrai le pdf de tous mes livres, soit quatre en tout (Tessons, Melted wax, still cold – still wax, Whitsundying, et Drunkenness of the Tide). De plus, tous mes poèmes hors livres sont sur mon Patreon, certains gratuitement !

Au plaisir de vous y voir !

***

Hello everyone,

I’m really glad to tell you that my latest project, Drunkenness of the Tide, is finished! It’s a book focusing on four literary figures, Galatea, Ophelia, Cassandra and Medusa, and I’m quite proud of the result. Patrons will receive their free pdf copy of the book soon! If you want to get yours, you can support me on Patreon, for any amount you wish (even 1€ per month helps!). You will also get to read all of my pieces that don’t belong in books, as well as my previous books (one in french, Tessons, and three in english, Melted wax, still cold – still wax, Whitsundying, and Drunkenness of the Tide).

I hope to see you there soon!

Kindergarten

Oh the crystals broke
In my chamber of wood; no shard
Is left for me to nurse
Til blood greets me – I put my hand
Under running water, no shard
To put blood out of its torpor
To pour it like coffee
On the sink’s teacup –
Oh the crystals broke
My broom’s delight
To gather it
Whole still intact still somehow destroyed
Oh the crystals broke

A poem that waited five years to be written

as one climbs cranes…
not to reach the controls, muscles
bent and high on caffeine –
as one reaches the highest point of the machine
with its war paints of red and white
and much to the surprise of its husband
and son, the machinist
as one climbs cranes…
maybe, up there
the sunset
will last a little longer; maybe
the streetlights won’t light up your way…
as one climbs cranes…

Cold song

… and sun is sudden
over the river…

there is a space between the ground its grass
and its frost mantel

I’m the waking point
of winter

Souvenirs de l’hôpital psychiatrique

Note : Je suis entrée à l’hôpital psychiatrique pendant l’été 2017, sur ordre de ma psychiatre. Ces notes éparpillées, sensations et ennui, ont été écrites entre 2018 et 2020.

Comment arriver là ? N’interroger que la manière habile dont s’imbriquent les feuilles mortes de la surface – les gestes, le ton, les diverses salles éclairées au néon, les formulaires et les dossiers – serait s’aveugler. Non, la marge de l’hôpital psychiatrique, celle qu’on plaisante et craint, relève autant de la prison que de la maison de retraite. C’est sans doute la violence qui nous rapproche, taulards, loques, et tarés : remise en question du système ? Manque ou trop-plein d’autonomie ? Violence, en tout cas, que la société nous attribue – de la violence du corps décrépit, celle du temps, à celle commise contre la propriété ou le(s) fondement(s)de la société, en passant par celle, ambiguë, qui se situe entre-deux : il est bien connu que les fous, c’est violent, à l’intérieur de leurs têtes détraquées, et à l’extérieur sur les corps des autres. La société, construite pourtant pour la survie de ses membres, n’aime pas ceux qui en sont trop « dépendants ». Pas de vieux, donc, inaptes à se nourrir, à se laver, à s’occuper d’autrui ; pas de malades – qu’ils en soient là à la suite de maltraitances extrêmes, d’une condition avec laquelle ils sont nés, ou pour toute autre raison – dont on ne peut pas raisonnablement attendre la même productivité que celle des non-malades ; pas de malades qui nécessitent des soins particuliers, donc ; pas de criminels qui, comme beaucoup d’internés, sont poussés dans leurs retranchements par une vie de négligences sociétales, et qui nécessiteraient – comme les internés traumatisés – des excuses de l’État, et des soins particuliers. (Mais alors, les criminels sont des victimes ? Qu’en est-il des pervers, ceux qui agissent par amour du mal ? Ils n’échappent souvent à la prison que pour finir à l’hôpital psychiatrique ; mais la plupart d’entre eux se fond parfaitement dans votre société. J’ai des noms, si vous voulez.)

Maison de repos. Maison de redressement. Sympathiques euphémismes, lieux pour tordus épuisés ; mots dont la proximité même explique le vide, car, qu’importe l’endroit – asile, hôpital, prison – le personnel qualifié, tout-puissant, applique la même stratégie : apparemment, le moyen ultime de redressement et de repos, c’est l’ennui. Capitonnés dans l’ennui, l’eau tiède de la télévision et les informes uniformes, notre supposée violence est censée se diluer, ou se heurter sans bruit contre les parois de votre indifférence. Le vide : en laissant cet homme hurler et frapper dans les murs toutes les nuits depuis des mois, vous lui apprenez – à lui, et à tous – qu’il n’a rien à attendre de personne ; que la détresse est inacceptable…

Suivent des notes sur ma propre expérience de la psychiatrie, ou l’apprentissage de la déshumanisation institutionnelle. Faites-en ce que vous voulez. Avant que de commencer, retenez bien ceci : je me fous de votre opinion de « bien-portant ». Je me fous des bonnes intentions de ce psychiatre de vos amis. Et plus que tout, je me fous de votre défense d’un système qui vous arrange, en faisant pour vous le tri des dégénérés…

***

Le trajet en ambulance, grotesque – j’ai l’impression de jouer la maladie. L’ambulancier, jeune, me demande sèchement pourquoi je vais à Ville-Evrard. Sans savoir que j’ai le droit de ne pas le dire, après avoir passé des heures à répéter mes histoires à des gens compétents qui hochent la tête au point que je ne sais plus ce que je raconte, je bégaie que je suis suicidaire. Il m’engueule.

« Quel âge t’as ? »

« 19 ans »

« Et t’as pas honte d’aller chez les fous à ton âge ? »

Là T. a tenté d’intervenir. Puis :

« Mais il faut pas être comme ça. Y a des gens qui ont des vrais problèmes tu sais »

Je bégaye un « je sais, pardon »

Le reste du trajet est principalement silencieux. En arrivant :

« Fais attention. Ici ils te donnent des médicaments pour t’assommer si tu fais des problèmes. »

Je ne dis rien et acquiesce.

L’hôpital est une sorte de complexe proto-urbain dans un parc. Différents pavillons qui portent des noms de régions françaises. J’appartiens au pavillon Auvergne. Tout est calme. Je ne sais pas à quoi je m’attendais. Je me dis que ça pourrait être pire. Ça fait penser à un sanatorium du XIXe siècle. La porte est rassurante. Je suis accueillie par un infirmier blond à l’air gentil. Il insiste très fort pour que je commence par prendre une douche, mettre un pyjama et manger. Je suis propre et n’ai pas faim, mais ne veux pas le déranger. Apparemment, ça lui tient à cœur. Il ne veut pas laisser entrer T. L’infirmier me dit que « je la verrai après avoir mangé et pris une douche ». Est-ce qu’ils vont le faire attendre tout ce temps devant la porte ?

Il me pousse dans un couloir qui paraît sombre après les arbres épanouis dans la lumière du soir. La porte se referme. Je suis debout dans ce couloir comme un poteau de viande avariée. Il ouvre une armoire et en sort quelque chose couleur épinard. « Ton pyjama », me dit-il. Il a l’air d’être très content de me donner son pyjama. Aussi, une serviette, quelque chose qui fait office de gant de toilette, et des sous-vêtements en filet éponge. Perplexité. Je n’ose pas lui dire que j’ai apporté de vraies culottes dans mes affaires. Il me dit qu’il va à la cuisine me faire réchauffer le repas du soir. J’ai envie de lui dire que ce n’est pas la peine, mais il est tout guilleret et j’ai peur que ça le fasse crier. Il y a des soleils et des étoiles peints sur les carreaux de la porte vitrée du réfectoire. Peints avec ces kits pour vitraux que les enfants ont et qui décorent habituellement les vitres des salles de classes. Je repense à ceux que j’avais faits à neuf ans et ça me donne très envie de pleurer.

L’infirmer, qui s’est présenté mais dont j’ai déjà oublié le prénom, appelle quelqu’un dans une salle que je suppose être la cuisine. Une femme sort – la cuisinière – et me regarde de haut en bas, les poings sur les hanches. Elle s’adresse à l’infirmier :

« Alors c’est elle la nouvelle ? Pas trop folle, j’espère ? »

J’ouvre la bouche, décontenancée. Elle retourne dans la cuisine. L’infirmier ne réagit pas. Il sourit et me demande si je veux commencer par la douche. Ça semble être une question rhétorique. Je dis oui.

La salle de bains est quelque chose d’horrible au carrelage gris et visqueux. Tout est rouillé. T. m’attend dehors, il faut faire vite. Je ressors, mon pyjama parsemé de taches sombres aux endroits collés à ma peau encore mouillée. Il est immense. L’infirmier me félicite comme si je venais de recevoir le prix Goncourt. Je me sens très enfant et très adulte à la fois.

Je passe au réfectoire. Il y a des épinards et une omelette. Épinard dedans, épinard dehors. La cohérence c’est important. Je n’arrive pas à manger. L’infirmier revient et me demande si j’ai fini. Je dis que oui. Il prend mon plateau et débarrasse. Ça me gêne, je lui dis que je peux le faire, il sourit, me dit de ne pas m’inquiéter, et demande si je veux manger mon yaourt. Je dis que non. Il me demande s’il peut le prendre. Je dis que oui. Il le met dans une poche de sa blouse et me sourit comme si cette fois c’est moi qui venais de lui décerner le Goncourt. Ce type m’inquiète.

Il y a une vieille femme au regard flou dans la pièce, devant. Quelques fauteuils et une télé. Un sac à main est posé sur un des fauteuils. Je ne sais pas si c’est une patiente ou une membre de l’équipe. Je lui dis bonsoir. Elle s’installe en face de moi, s’en va. Bon.

L’infirmier blond revient. J’en ai enfin fini avec ce qu’il voulait de moi, alors je lui demande si je peux dire au revoir à T. La nuit est définitivement tombée entre-temps. Il me dit de venir avec lui, mais on ne retourne pas dans le couloir. Il ouvre une des portes vitrées – ça semble être le parti-pris de l’hôpital, les portes vitrées – et sort dans une sorte de parc. Il y a des bancs tout autour du bâtiment. Il s’assied et me fait signe de l’imiter. Il a un sourire très doux.

« Votre amie est partie. »

« Comment ça ? »

Il sourit toujours. J’ai sept ans et les adultes me trahissent à répétition. J’ai de nouveau très envie de pleurer.

« Vous m’aviez dit que je pourrais lui dire au revoir. »

« Elle a voulu vous laisser une bague avant de partir. »

L’herbe sent ici comme partout ailleurs.

« Mais vous comprenez bien qu’on ne peut pas l’autoriser. »

Je hoche la tête lentement. Je suis seule, alors, pour un temps indéterminé.

***

Un autre infirmier arrive. Brun, jeune aussi. Il se présente. J’ai la très nette impression de vivre un quiproquo gigantesque. Il me dit qu’il va me montrer ma chambre. Je demande si je peux récupérer mes livres. C’est le cas. Envoyer un message ? Non, désolé. Ce n’est pas contre moi, mais dans les murs, pas de communication. J’ai douze ans et fouille dans mon cartable dans les vestiaires du collège. J’ai dix-neuf ans et toute mon humanité tient dans deux livres de poche fripés. Je récupère ma bouteille d’eau, Madame Bovary et les poèmes de Jaccottet. Je suis docilement le gentil monsieur dans le couloir carrelé qui paraît beaucoup plus sombre.

« Pour la première nuit, avant que le médecin décide si tu es en danger ou pas, tu es en enfermement ». C’est la porte en face de la cantine. C’est pire que dans l’imaginaire collectif. « Je te fais confiance. Les toilettes sont à gauche. Tu ne fais pas de bêtise, et je laisse la porte ouverte. D’accord ? ». Je dis d’accord. Je suis d’accord avec tout ce qu’on me dit. Je ne sais pas ce que je fais ici. « Tu vas attendre ici le médecin. ». Je dis oui. Il s’en va. La fenêtre a des carreaux opaques jusqu’à environ un mètre quatre-vingts du sol. Au-dessus on ne voit que des arbres. Pas de lune. J’ai posé ma barrette et mes livres sur le rebord de la fenêtre. À ma gauche le trou des toilettes à la turque. En monte la même odeur que celle de la chambre médicalisée de mon arrière-grand-mère. Le lit ressemble à un brancard. Il n’y a pas d’oreiller, seulement une espèce de plan incliné en mousse recouvert de plastique souple. Pas de drap. Pas de couette. Il fait tiède dehors, mais le carrelage refroidit la pièce. Pas de lumière non plus. Il y a peut-être un interrupteur, mais je n’ose pas le chercher au risque de me faire remarquer. Il n’est pas tard mais tout semble complètement mort. Je tremble. Pas pleurer. Je ne vois que les lumières des panneaux « sortie de secours », au néon, dans le couloir. Je suis assise recroquevillée sur le « lit », sans rien pour me couvrir que l’uniforme épinard. Il y a des menottes attachées aux montants du lit. Si je suis gentille on ne me les mettra pas. Si je coopère. À quoi ? Je ricane toute seule en repensant à mon poème sur la psychiatrie. J’avais peur que ce soit trop cliché, mais la réalité va au-delà de mes attentes. C’est peut-être une sorte de don de prophétie. Je me balance sur le « lit » en me récitant quelques passages du poème. Rien qui soit dur aucune armoire. Mon hôte mon hôte qu’avez-vous fait de ma compagne ? Pourquoi mon hôte chez vous ne peut-on pas penser que la tristesse a les bras doux ?

J’essaye de dormir, mais il fait trop froid. Le type d’à côté cogne contre la cloison et hurle à s’en décrocher les poumons. Apparemment c’est normal, personne ne va voir ce qu’il veut. Un temps indéterminé se passe.

Je suis soudainement prise dans un filet de lumière crue. Je suis un animal dont on a arraché le haut du terrier. Plusieurs personnes en blouses blanches se tiennent devant moi. Je ne me souviens plus de tout ce qu’ils disent. Ils parlent de ma sécurité. C’est pour ma sécurité que je suis punie de mes hallucinations en étant enfermée dans une chambre froide, sans oreiller mais avec menottes, et avec un voisin qui hurle en frappant les murs. Un des médecins parle – menace ? – ledit voisin. Ils me demandent si j’ai besoin de quelque chose ; je demande une couverture. « On va vous apporter ça. » Ils s’en vont. Au dernier moment, l’un d’eux se retourne et me dit, « Au fait, on va reprendre les livres. » Ils sourient tous. Je tremble. Je demande pourquoi. Pas de réponse. Ils prennent aussi ma barrette. Je la demande. Ils me disent que je ne peux pas la garder. Sans elle, j’ai mes cheveux dans les yeux, et je ressemble d’autant plus à un animal pris au piège. Ou à une folle. Je vis dans le grenier comme un animal et je fais peur à la gentille et jolie gouvernante. Ils emportent Flaubert et Jaccottet. Je demande, la voix cassée, si je peux garder ma bouteille d’eau. Ça oui. Apparemment, ils craignent plus le suicide par ingestion de papier que par noyade dans 75 cl d’eau. Ils éteignent et s’en vont.

Je reste seule, la bouteille d’eau serrée dans mes bras. Le type crie toujours. C’est un cri inarticulé. La détresse à l’état pur. Je commence à le comprendre. Si je n’avais pas aussi peur des menottes je l’imiterais bien.

***

Je suis sortie de ma torpeur, frigorifiée, en entendant des voix dans le couloir. Personne n’est venu m’apporter de drap. Aucune idée de l’heure qu’il est, mais il fait un jour terne. Panique. Aucune idée de ce qu’il faut faire. Une infirmière entre, me demande si j’ai passé une bonne nuit. Je dis oui. Elle me dit qu’il faut que je prenne une douche. J’ai droit à de nouveaux sous-vêtements en filet éponge, mais pas à un nouveau pyjama. Est-ce que je suis censée le demander ? On me dit que je verrai le médecin aujourd’hui. Ça semble être la seule personne qui ait des droits sur ma personne. Je suis gentille. J’ai l’habitude.

***

Je me suis assise dans le réfectoire à la même place que la veille au soir. Un vieil homme barbu aux yeux flous – comme ceux de la vieille dame – s’installe à ma droite. Apparemment, je suis la plus jeune. Le silence est complet. Chacun regarde son assiette, son couteau à bout rond, son verre. Soudain un homme se met à parler, très fort, et comme s’il était déjà en plein milieu d’une conversation, à la table d’à côté.

« Tu pries beaucoup toi. »

Le type en face de lui dit :

« Je médite. »

« Tu t’appelles comment ?

– Bilal. »

Bilal marmonne sans le regarder. L’homme a la quarantaine, peut-être moins. Il continue :

« Médine. Tu connais Médine, Bilal ? J’ai ma maison là-bas. C’est là qu’il est mort le Prophète Bilal. Et là-bas à Médine les gens ils font que prier que méditer comme toi Bilal ou comme le Bouddha, que méditer sur la mort du Prophète du matin jusqu’au soir… »

Je n’ose pas le regarder, de peur qu’il intercepte mon regard, mais enregistre mentalement ses paroles. Au fond, l’hôpital est une expérience, et l’écrire me permettra peut-être de m’en éloigner, de conserver ou d’arracher quelques lambeaux d’humanité ? La cantinière passe avec un chariot. Nous distribue du pain, du beurre et de la confiture, comme dans les hôtels. Demande à chacun ce qu’il veut : café, thé, chocolat. Je voudrais un thé mais personne ne semble en prendre, donc je prends un chocolat. Je n’ose pas regarder autour de moi ; mais quand même, je suis frappée par la moyenne d’âge. Il y a une jeune femme blonde, qui semble être à peu près du même âge que moi, mais la majorité des patients est septuagénaire.

Après ce premier repas, les choses deviennent floues. Et pour cause : la temporalité n’existe pas, à l’hôpital. Les téléphones sont interdits, les montres aussi, apparemment – en tout cas personne n’en porte, à part le personnel. Les lieux sont séparés par fonction. Le rez-de-chaussée, où j’ai passé la première nuit, est composé d’une salle de bains, de la cuisine, du réfectoire et de la salle de repos ; en face, les chambres d’enfermement. Mon voisin – j’ai vu, une fois ou deux, son visage écrasé contre la vitre, rempli d’une avidité telle qu’on dirait que toute sa force vitale s’est canalisée dans ses yeux et sa bouche, absorbant le spectacle de l’extérieur – est dans une chambre double, avec un sas, dont il ne sort jamais malgré son désir apparent. Les infirmiers lui apportent ses repas directement et verrouillent la porte derrière eux. Suivent les toilettes, carrelées de gris, qui ressemblent à celles de mon université, un encadrement de porte surmonté d’une horloge – la seule – qui regarde vers la porte extérieure, puis deux bureaux pour le personnel, et un escalier qui mène au premier et seul étage. Il n’est pas interdit d’aller regarder l’heure, mais on s’expose à des regards ou des réprimandes de la part du personnel. Et puis, pourquoi regarder l’heure ? On n’en a pas besoin. On est coupé du monde extérieur, littéralement. Le temps mécanique, mathématique, n’a plus cours. On est engoncé dans une durée totale, jamais interrompue, à peine rompue par les repas et l’heure du coucher – on est seul avec soi, dans un désert temporel, et je comprends soudain ce que les auteurs voulaient dire lorsqu’ils parlaient du Purgatoire, cette vaste étendue perpétuelle et grise dans laquelle errent les âmes en peine.

Socialiser semble être le seul moyen de faire passer le temps. Je rencontre un jeune homme de la vingtaine persuadé de pouvoir contrôler le vent. L’homme qui parlait de Médine est un détraqué sexuel. Il colle Marie-Hélène, la jeune femme blonde, qui est là pour les mêmes raisons que moi, et la touche sous tous les prétextes. J’essaye de faire le chien de garde mais sans grand succès. Je ne sais pas quand j’aurai le droit de récupérer mes affaires – livres, un carnet, un stylo. Je m’enlise dans une gangue d’ennui, chenille bloquée dans la phase chrysalide. La seule distraction est de jouer aux cartes. Je n’aime pas ça. Je voudrais bien rester avec Marie-Hélène, mais les autres la collent.

Ils me demandent si j’ai un copain. Je réponds que j’ai une copine. « Moi, dans mon pays, les gens comme toi, on les brûle », me dit le maître du vent. « Ah ouais ? Ben moi, j’aimerais bien goûter un morceau avant le barbecue », rigole grassement le pervers. Je m’en vais à grands pas. Marie-Hélène essaye de me persuader de revenir. Je refuse.

Je suis appelée à voir la psy. C’est une femme de la trentaine avec une épaisse natte noire luisante sur l’épaule. Je répète ce que je n’ai pas arrêté de dire depuis ce qui me semble une éternité. Je suis accompagnée dans son bureau par un membre de l’équipe. Plus tard, je les entendrai rire des patients dans l’arrière-cuisine, alors que je cherche un téléphone.

Ensuite, les événements semblent s’arrêter. Nous sommes des animaux. Dormir. Manger. Se laver. Il faut faire son lit au carré le matin et se laver les dents avant de manger, ce qui me paraît absurde. Le rituel le plus important est la file d’attente pour les médicaments avant de manger le midi et le soir. On en apprend un peu plus sur les autres. Ainsi, mon voisin de cellule de la première nuit – j’ai eu droit à une vraie chambre la nuit suivante – déclare, d’un ton très humble – ce genre de ton qu’ont les mendiants dans les livres – que, s’il crie, c’est parce qu’il se sent seul la nuit ; qu’il ne voit jamais personne ; qu’au fond, il est gentil. Les soignants lui disent qu’ils passeront plus souvent, ce qu’ils ne feront pas. Je lis furieusement, depuis qu’on m’y a autorisée. S’absorber dans le travail. J’ai obtenu le droit d’avoir des visites. T. vient me voir. Se rend compte du vide de cette existence. Je ne sais pas quand je sortirai. Nous ne parlons pas beaucoup. Je n’ai pas grand-chose à dire. Je rencontre une dame âgée qui garde sa brosse à cheveux sur elle de peur des vols et qui peint le soleil. Juste le soleil, tout le temps. Le jardin où nous avons le droit d’aller a un arbre dont le tronc semble évidé.

Le temps s’est comme arrêté. The clock is for the public only. Je comprends pourquoi, une fois qu’on entre, on a du mal à sortir. Marie-Hélène est là depuis trois mois. Elle a le droit de s’habiller normalement et d’avoir quelques affaires. Il est si facile de se laisser couler. C’est le principe même de la dépression, qui fait ici office de fonction officielle. D’abord, on se lève plus tard. Puis on ne se lève plus du tout. On manque un cours, puis on ne remet plus les pieds à la fac. On se laisse distancer par le groupe, en pensant qu’on pourra le rattraper une fois ses forces reconstituées. C’est, évidemment, faux. Il faut d’abord atteindre le fond avant de remonter. L’hôpital ne fait pas exception à la règle. Dans cette atmosphère ouatée, aucune responsabilité n’existe. Plus de demandes du monde extérieur. Plus rien à part les repas et le sommeil. On pourrait penser que ce repos fait du bien ; c’est faux, car il endort. Et le retour à la vie normale est d’autant plus difficile, après un temps considérable passé dans les sables mouvants de l’hôpital.

Marie-Hélène vient me voir. Nerveuse, elle me dit que le type de la quarantaine, en plus de la toucher sans cesse sans son accord, lui a dit qu’il viendrait cette nuit dans sa chambre. Il faut savoir que, dans les chambres normales, les portes ne sont pas fermées et le couloir est mixte. Très inquiète, je la persuade d’aller en parler aux soignants. Ce qu’elle fait.

Quelques minutes plus tard, je la vois pleurer. Sous les yeux d’un soignant impassible, elle entasse pêle-mêle ses affaires dans un sac poubelle. En trois mois de séjour, elle a eu le temps de s’acclimater à sa chambre. Que se passe-t-il ? Elle me dit qu’on lui a ordonné de changer de chambre – elle sera maintenant en isolement, avec pour toute compagnie une vieille dame démente de 92 ans. Le prédateur, lui, peut rester dans sa chambre confortable. Furieuse, je vais voir les soignants. Un mur infranchissable. Je proteste. C’est injuste. « Tais-toi », me dit le soignant. « Tais-toi ou on te donne assez de médicaments pour te calmer ». Horrifiée, je m’écarte. Marie-Hélène pleure toujours.

Quelques jours plus tard, je demande à sortir. Ils veulent me garder. La psychiatre, que je n’aurai vue que deux fois, essaye de me faire rester. Calmement, j’annonce mes arguments. Comme je suis entrée volontairement, ils n’ont pas le droit de me garder sans mon consentement – ce qui est déjà bien.

Je suis partie par un bel après-midi d’été. Les arbres ombrageaient le chemin qui serpentait entre les différents pavillons.

On se serait presque cru à la campagne, dans tout ce silence et ces ombres.

Radio

goodnight, listeners

to you, driving alone across the fields

it’s 3am, a fresh new

Wednesday just began – and you,

lovestruck teen, who cannot sleep

(looking at the stars

like they do in the movies)

and you, mother of two

with a mewling baby in your arms

goodnight, the sun

is all the way through the planet

and the wheat is growing nicely

goodnight, listeners

I’ll let you wander alone in all that cold

while citizens sleep

and cats awake

goodnight, listeners

take music as your last rites

smooth your wrinkles

comb your whitening hair

goodnight, listeners

goodnight.

Story of a street

My street for sure
Got strange castles
One made from ice
(So you can lick
The walls, water
Crawling up your sleeves)
One made from sand
(Itchy, it makes you blind
And scratches your eyes)
One made from snow
(You can’t see through
Its frost windows)
But the most pleasurable place
For sure is ours
Smelling like fish
And cabbage soup
Regular walls
Regular beds
We’ve got a cat
That meows through walls
As if seeing
The Great Corals…

In the psych ward…

In the psych ward’s gardens is a tree
With a hole in the middle –
The windows are slightly opaque
And it doesn’t smell like flowers –
At night the exit lights glimmer
And the empty tree stands intact
With luscious leaves and nesting birds.

Ligne 7 gothic

An alarm goes off and you find a seat. It’s all perfectly suspended in a bubble of lightning – you sit down. Your stop is at the end of the line, the bait to your fishing rope of a life. The other seats, mostly deserted, seem like they’d rather be speaking. An alarm goes off. Quite odd, all of this, when you’re the only fish you gut (asphyxiation is much too cruel). You come closer. To wherever.

An alarm goes off.

Lake

When Spring comes back
With its baskets of dew
I’ll sit near the lake
And watch the hours
Pass away

*

My shadow frolicking
In the still waters.

Adolescence

(We see a figure, crouched, or is she
Stretching? under opaque rain, or is it
Snow already?)

*

Mud on my hands
Love is inside the stadium
And sweats doing cardio

I let the wind
Punish me
But there’s not enough of it
For rain to cleanse thoroughly

*

And someone cried out,
“What are you doing out there?”

We dash through countries…

(…) we dash through countries
at night, wake up in the fields
we’ll bleed out in
at sundown (…)

Dog of my dreams…

dog of my dreams

I’ve been roaming the streets at night

holding the scarf I wore all week

so you can tell me

with your ever-so-meaningful eyes

what I smell like

*

I call you

by the name you don’t have

*

and it sometimes seems, lost dog of the fog

that my shadow growls

with hunger

*

I suppose

One of my poems got published!

Hey everyone! I forgot to tell you but one of my poems, “Stabat Mater Dolorosa”, got published in the Fall issue of Rumble Fish Quaterly, an American magazine! I’m really proud of this poem, go take a look at it!

Best wishes and see you soon for more poetry!

Carmine

Frozen puddle

G. requested a poem entitled “frozen puddle”. Here is the result!

***

In some other
Quality of time there is
A school’s playground
With a leaky gutter
Crystalline winter

One morning, one miracle
Out of space this town is
Bound to if not higher at least
Other hands
It snowed all night
And the gutter froze

The early child
Looks at love

Soon boys her age
Will shatter the icy
Gutter

But at least once
Having seen it
Mourning
As the sun elevates

(Scent of smoke
In the air)

C’est l’hiver demain

red leaves

in rain puddles

*

still falling, through the night,

the last night, I am,

too

*

elle est là

et elle appelle

 

_____________________________

 

inspired by this song 

Misty November morning…

misty November morning

I light a candle
and make some tea
to keep me company

winter will be without

______________________________________

read all of my newest poems on my patreon!

December 24th, midnight minus a minute

in the glass train station
all gathered
in their finest clothes
dining off expensive china
at candlelight

*

I walked miles in the snow
following the railway
to meet them

*

all dead
sitting at the table
only the wind sings
a Christmas carol

*

the girl in black velvet
black hair and eyes
white teeth and skin
won’t pass the salt

*

at the corner of my eye
always

_________________________

Read this poem and many more on my Patreon! (patreon.com/carminedenis)

On the way home

letting black air

wash off the light

of wasted days

___________________________________

Friendly reminder that you can read all of my other poems on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/carminedenis). You can read a few new poems and/short stories every week, in a pay-what-you-want system. See you there!

Pandora

Can you see what’s in there?
Buttons, pearls, some broken necklace
still glowing faintly, like a year;
a pair of eyes in your face;
– What’s next? You,
stepping into the casket,
up and down the stairs, raising like dew
in the winter cherry basket –

 

But what’s more? You, my dear;
into the water, come,
into the purple sea.

Oh domestic September…

Oh domestic September,
Tamed month of rot-
-ating light over buildings –
The women are there writing,
On invisible leaves,
As I’m drinking in the middle of the city
At the throat of some older woman
Who spits water – winter and summer
And the women still write, some sigh
The dying day will soon decline –
Domestic September, ready yourselves
To put your head in its tranquil sunlight
Bathing.

 

***

 

You can find all of my newest poetry on my Patreon! Only 5€ per month to have access to every poem, story, and poetry pdf I wrote. See you there!

To you, dear readers

(You can find the french version of this post below.)

Some things are changing here. But before I announce them, I’d like to thank you. I see you reading and liking my poetry and it warms my heart each time I get a new WordPress notification! Some of you follow me since I created this blog in the summer of 2014, and it really means a lot. I started writing poetry at 16 and after exploring different kinds of writing, I can finally say I wrote some books that are worth a read.
Your support, even after these two years of silence (2016 – 2018), due to my mental health and personal reasons, has encouraged me to write more and better. So, to all of you, whether you’ve been reading my work since 2014 or occasionally take a look at this blog – to everyone: thank you for your support!

Now, what is changing, you may ask? Well, long story short: I’m 21 and a student, and although I work part-time as a tutor/teacher, my finances are… unstable. I spend a lot of time perfecting my craft and am in need of a little help. I think my work is starting to pay off, and thus would like a little bit of support! This is why I created a Patreon, that allows artists and entrepreneurs to get some financial help. On Patreon, you’ll be able to commission me, submit prompts for poems or short stories, and have access to the pdfs of my completed poetry collections.
I’ll occasionally keep posting on here so to allow non-patrons to read my poetry but the vast majority of my work will be on Patreon. You can find it here!
For 5€ per month, you’ll be able to access all of my new poems (the older ones are free to read), and for 10€ to submit prompts for stories and poems. Commissions are open, please contact me (carmine.g.denis@gmail.com) to discuss each project further!

So, here we are! Thank you for reading this post and I hope we can meet again on Patreon!

Carmine

***

Les choses vont changer, mais permettez-moi avant tout de vous remercier. Je vous vois lire et apprécier mes poèmes et chaque notification WordPress me réchauffe le cœur ! Quelques-uns d’entre vous me suivent depuis la création du blog en juillet 2014, et cela compte beaucoup pour moi. J’ai commencé à écrire de la poésie à seize ans, et, après avoir exploré plusieurs styles et thématiques, je pense que j’ai réussi à écrire quelques livres qui valent la peine d’être lus. Votre soutien, même après les deux années de silence (de 2016 à 2018), dues à des problèmes personnels et à ma santé mentale, m’a poussé.e à poursuivre dans la voie de l’écriture poétique. Donc, à tous, que vous fréquentiez occasionnellement le blog ou soyez un lecteur de la première heure (et tous les cas de figure entre les deux) : merci à vous, merci infiniment.

Alors, quels sont les changements ? Eh bien, globalement : j’ai vingt-et-un ans, je suis étudiant.e, et malgré mon job à mi-temps (professeur particulier de français), mes finances restent quelque peu instables. Je passe beaucoup de temps à travailler mes écrits, nouvelles et poèmes, et un coup de pouce financier ne serait pas de refus ! C’est pourquoi j’ai créé un Patreon, qui est un moyen de financer par abonnement des créateurs qui n’ont pas encore de plateforme assurée. Sur Patreon, vous pourrez accéder à tous mes nouveaux poèmes (ainsi qu’aux anciens, gratuitement), pour 5€ par mois ; pour 10€, proposer des sujets de poèmes et de nouvelles ainsi qu’accéder aux pdfs de mes livres. Vous pouvez aussi me commissionner (prix variables), en me contactant sur l’adresse carmine.g.denis@gmail.com. Vous trouverez mon Patreon ici !

Merci encore de votre vailant soutien et à tout bientôt sur Patreon !

Carmine

Cold water etiquette

“Careful, watch your step! Follow
The etiquette! She’s not known
For her mercy, she won’t pardon
Early mistakes. First,
Tiptoe around, on the wet sand
So smooth it fools your kin
Into weakness. Immerse
Your toe, the big one
From the foot you don’t like. If the nail
Blackens, get out; if it becomes
Crystalline like her, you’ve been chosen
And your swimming will be easy.
Careful, watch your step. Walk slowly, and feel
Her icy hand gripping your neck, all the way up
From your ankles. Your veins
Are blue now. She empties
Your eyeballs. No, don’t bring
Any mirror: she doesn’t like
Rivals. After this you’re on your own;
Swim or float, but
Careful, watch your step!”

Say the drowned; their bleached bones
Move with algae, their missing limbs
Remembering the days
They entered water, carefully
Watching their steps.

I am a body…

I am a body after all
Says the jester to the court
Nobody reads without their hands open
Pressing their palms against the page

Nights are clear. The moon
Says it back. I am a body,
After all.

Stone smells…

Stone smells fill me slowly
And the rain falls
As soft as my love’s voice
In the nearby room

Everything’s growing
In our little town
Water drips from leaves

I breathe, easily
I breathe

Walk on the highway

As a leaf yearns for winter
The car accident bleeds its orange light

And a gas station
Stands against the night

Going hungry

hungry summer claws my stomach
and smells of absent meals

 

is hunger an even verb
or did I make it up

 

don’t let me sleep, no
don’t let me sleep

 

dogs of hunger wait for my call
cats of hunger roll over expose their belliness
bugs of hunger leave trails of dirt leaving the place

 

I wait alone with my hunger
I’ll wrinkle before my time

 

hunger is after all a decent fellow
companion of golden hours
fasting does grow the days slower

 

it took my hand
left it trembling

 

(let it rumble
like the wrath of an inner god)

 

hunger is male-voiced
not very friendly
tiny tiny
while the streets are ablaze
I hunger

 

I do nothing but hunger I am
a great citizen of this town
I do not ask I do not take
I stand at my place perfecting
my smile of unused teeth

 

oh, so white is the sky
so empty the pantry
so full of himself is hunger

 

full enough for two, definitely
enough for me
enough of me
enough

 

enough.

A safe border

We’ll make sure
That no one goes thirsty

Lied the disembodied voice

Complainte de l’exilée

– says the girl who used
to bite into suns
and swallow stars whole –

I stay, I stay
in a dimly lit room
handcuffed to bed
and no window

I stay

Not quite the literal Apocalypse but not quite the contrary either

rain falls – rain falls
and god’s voice sunk

 

low, lower
and lower still

Stuttering story

on the swirl of the top of the tip of my tongue

*

fire

*

doesn’t burn anymore, no
doesn’t burn anymore

*

i got used to the sea.

Cryptid – short story

You’ve probably met someone who claimed they saw the winter beast. Usually, as they were hunting in February. “White snout, white fur, and blue feathers on the back. Yep, that was it.” But the beast vanished before they could shoot it. It didn’t like to be seen. Truth is, they haven’t seen the winter beast.

Yes, for sure, the beast knows how to be discreet. It lives from snow. Snow, its food, its home, its everything. It climbs the trees to remove little birds from their nests, but doesn’t eat them. It makes them beds, tucks them in, and smiles as they fall asleep in the great whiteness.

Nobody has seen for sure the winter beast. It licks the trees, claws them, until their sap comes out. It licks the sap. It shines on its snout, on its teeth. The beast has the most marvelous teeth – harder than diamond and equally clear. An assembly of stalactites in the pink forest of gums. Squirrels are its best friends. They will show it where they hid their nuts and, by digging a hole nearby, the beast will make the nuts bigger. Sometimes, it will even make a new tree grow.

The winter beast doesn’t sleep. Its purple eyes are always open.

But winter gets scarce in our country. Summer crawls all the way through fall; spring wakes up before its time. There is no snow in December anymore. The winter beast has become a legend. And frost comes up, creeping at our windows, and the beast is lost. Forests are getting smaller. Cities are growing bigger. The winter beast, still, licks trees and tucks birds to bed, but something has changed. It sees more and more men in the forest, wearing bright yellow jackets. Winter gets scarce. And nobody talks about the beast anymore.

The winter beast disappeared in mid-July, near a lake. Some blue feathers were found floating around. Scientists marveled at their find; it didn’t look like any bird’s feathers they had ever studied. The feathers were sent, with utmost care, to the natural history museum in the capital city. Hypothesizes were made; but nobody thought about the winter beast.

Only the squirrels, with their small hidden nuts, miss it.

The slow wear of objects – short story

Paul was driving, not too fast, a smile wandering on his lips. They had left the city a few hours ago, to visit Nathaniel’s grandmother and take care of the house and her cats while she was visiting a friend in another state.

“I wonder how Lily is”, said Nathaniel.

“She’s the black and white one, right?”

“Yeah. Ginger is the orange one.”

“Of course.”

“Lily always used to wake me up at 6am for food. She would crawl all the way up my body and lick my nose until I would wake up to feed her.”

“Why do all cats do this?”

“I don’t know. Ginger doesn’t do that, though. His thing is to wail and yell until he’s been fed.”

“God.”

“Yeah. I love them.”

“They seem lovely.”

“We should get a cat, Paul.”

“We already talked about this. I don’t want to clean no filthy litter box.”

“I would do it.”

“We’ll see.”

Nathaniel played music – old rock from the 80’s – and they sang along.

The rest of the trip was calmer. They got lost once, in an interstate rest area.

“Does your grandmother still make that salad sauce? You know, the one with too much mustard in it? It makes me sneeze every time.”

They laughed.

“Well, I don’t think she would change her recipe at nearly eighty-five years old.”

“I don’t even know how she manages to take care of that property. It’s so big. And the garden! How does she do this?”

“I’ve always wondered. I guess she’s used to it now.”

“Yeah.”

Around them, the landscape started changing; they saw more fields, that seemed guarded by the electric pylons framing them.

They arrived in the village at 3pm. It was a small typical village, with old houses and around three times more cows than inhabitants. On the central place stood the church, with its bells glimmering in the sun; the village had two cemeteries, the old one, with mostly 19^th century graves, full of moss and herbs, with an old rusty gate that creaked when opened, and that children weren’t allowed to enter since it was a known fact that snakes lived there, among the warm tombstones; and the new one, that welcomed the visitors with an equally creaky (but less rusty) gate, two cypresses, and a faucet to water the plants. Half of this cemetery’s space was used, the other half being empty, full of waist-length grass.

Nathaniel’s grandmother greeted them warmly. They had lunch – a quiche, boiled eggs with mayonnaise, a salad (with the mustard sauce Paul had anticipated), and ice cream.

They took a walk around the village; nobody spoke. Trees were blooming, like they were covered in cotton candy; the garden was especially beautiful, full of yellow and purple flowers. There were vases in almost every room, that held colorful branches. They could hear the wind in the trees, sometimes a voice, or a dog barking – there were a lot of dogs; Edith, Nathaniel’s grandmother, had had one too, a chocolate Labrador named Cookie, but he had died five years before from a liver cancer. She would leave at 4am on the next morning, and they spent the evening chatting around the fireplace – it was a rather cold and humid kind of Spring.

***

All they could hear was the old grandfather clock ticking and the fire cracking. In the living room, Nathaniel was reading, and Paul, empty handed, was staring at the fire. He had never lit any fire, and it was mesmerizing; much less for Nathaniel, who was used to it.

“This house is so empty”, said Paul quietly.

“Yeah. This is so calm.”

“Your grandmother is always in a hurry, it makes it living. But when she’s not here…”

“I know, right! That’s so different from the city.”

Paul didn’t answer.

“Have you noticed how the neighbors stared at us yesterday? When I went to buy bread this morning, this blond lady looked at me like I was a zoo animal.”

“Oh yeah”, Nathaniel chuckled. “They’ve always been like that.”

“Doesn’t this make you uncomfortable?”

“Well, I’m used to it. We get stared at at home too.”

“Yeah, but this feels… Different. Like we’re trapped in this village.”

“I don’t know, really.”

He sighed.

“I have so many memories here. Like the time I chased a cow through the whole village because she had escaped her field. I was barefoot, and the road burned my soles. But it was a good laugh. The farmer gave me apple juice. I’ve done everything in this village, you know. I used to eat unripe fruit. My grandma was furious because I’d get sick afterwards, but that didn’t stop me. Really, I feel like nothing could’ve stopped me.”

Paul smiled.

“That’s really cute, honey.”

“I’m glad you came with me. I wanted to show you this place. It means so much to me.”

“I know.”

“I’d love to settle here one day. What do you think?”

Paul chortled.

“No, I’m serious.”

“You can’t be!”

“Why not?”

“Well, we can’t just leave everything behind. Our friends. Our jobs.”

“We can always find new jobs. And it’s not like we see our friends all the time.”

Paul frowned.

“C’mon babe, you’re joking. Have you forgotten how hard it was to live in the countryside? With all your religious relatives? I’m glad we both escaped this. There’s no future for us in small towns, let alone lost villages in the middle of nowhere. That’s just a fantasy.”

“I’m telling you I miss living in nature”, Nathaniel insisted. “We can’t live in a two-bedrooms apartment forever.”

“Still better than this ruin.”

“This ruin? Paul, this house is nowhere near a ruin.”

“I know you’re nostalgic, but face reality. This house is falling apart. The coffee grinder almost disintegrated in my hands this morning. Everything looks like it’s centuries old. I can’t enter a room without fearing the floor will collapse under my feet. No matter how hard you clean it, everything’s always dusty.”

“We can repair it.”

“With what money? And look at us. Do you really think we could live here? And the neighbors?”

“They’ll get used to us as we’ll get used to this life, Paul. I want my family history back. It’s in this house. But I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you don’t see them anymore. Your family, I mean.”

“You think I did that for fun?”

“Of course not, but –”

“You know you’re lucky your family hasn’t disowned you like they did for me. You’re lucky to even get to see your grandma.”

“I know, I know.”

“Don’t you remember how isolated we were when we grew up? How liberating living in the city was? And now – now, because of God knows what romanticized fantasy of countryside you have, you would just, give up on our life and go back to a ruin because you had fun there during summer when you were a child? You’re not a child anymore, darling.”

“For the last time, Paul, this house isn’t a ruin!”

They stared at each other. The clock kept ticking, and the fire kept cracking; everything else was dead silent.

“Are you saying I’m a coward?” asked Nathaniel softly.

“I’m saying you’ve lost your mind, is all.”

“I’m serious, Paul.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’ll never leave our, our, home.” Paul said after a few seconds of silence.

“Well, I can’t picture myself living there for the rest of my life.”

Nathaniel was gripping his book so hard his knuckles were white. A car passed without stopping.

“Please, Nathaniel.”

He looked away.

“If you really knew me well, you’d know I’m being serious.”

“I know.”

“Is that all?’

Silence fell; the floor cracked somewhere in the old house. Paul has a point, thought Nathaniel, there’s a lot of refurbishment to do.

“I’m just saying I won’t live my whole life as an anonymous in a big city.”

Paul sighed.

“Alright, then. But I won’t ever live in such an old house in the middle of God knows where. I’m warning you.”

“Fine.”

The sun was turning; it lit the trees, the old cemetery, their car parked in front of the house. They wouldn’t look at each other; Paul nervously toyed with the bellows. The door cracked open; Lily, the black and white cat, entered meowing.

“I’m gonna feed her”, said Nathaniel, without getting up. The cat meowed again, insistently.

“You do that.”

They both looked at the floor. Old wooden floor. You had to wear shoes, or risk getting a splinter.

“I’m gonna feed Lily”, repeated Nathaniel. He got up, following the cat, her tail up and vibrating with excitement. He stopped at the threshold, looking back. Paul didn’t notice it, his face buried in his hands.

The room, empty, seemed darker. Silently, Paul was crying.

The Woman covered in dirt – short story

I don’t remember when exactly it started. I’ll try to, though. What I recall is the filth. Sure, a store like ours can never be that clean. We’ve got animals, after all. But how did dirt come up? This, I don’t know. I was behind my usual cash register, the number 9, and I saw Richard looking in a hurry. It was a slow morning. He was carrying a mop that strangely looked a bit like him, long and skinny with a very hairy head.

“Haven’t you heard?” he said. “There’s a big mess upstairs. I gotta clean it up before more customers enter the store, you know.” What I learned during my break was that some candles had disappeared during the night – scented ones, pretty fancy if you ask me. They were like $20 each. In the break room, Jenny told me they just had disappeared before the first employees came in in the morning. Vanished.

“Do we know who did it?” I asked.

“They’re examining the camera files”, she said.

I nodded.

“Who would bother to break into a store at night only to steal three candles?”

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. People are weird. Customers, some are just like that.”

“But why didn’t they take, like, the cash registers?”

“Maybe they hadn’t found them? Or maybe they panicked?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

I left after this, as my break was over. I was curious, and went to the second floor to see the candles section. Everything had been cleaned up. I went back to my lane, a bit disappointed.

Apparently, they couldn’t see anything on the camera files. But I must say – I’ve seen some when I was called in the manager’s office – they’re very old and grainy. Nobody thought they would be at risk of a burglary. After all, we’re essentially a flower and pet store. Not a jewelry store or anything. But you never know, I guess. People, right?

I met her on a Tuesday. I saw her from the other side of the store. No, actually, I heard her beforehand; she was pretty hard to miss. Frizzy auburn hair that seemed to have stayed too long without seeing a brush, a strong musk perfume, and of course those eyes. Brown, like two lost, cheering chestnuts, in the middle of a sand desert. Loud is not exactly the term I’d use to describe her. “The loudest” could do. She was wearing all purple, a very elegant deep purple skirt with an orange scarf. All her clothes were stained with dirt. For a moment I thought she was a mandrake, a mandrake that would have emerged from the soil four decades ago, by mistake, and that would have tried to fit in human society. I rang her things: dirt, some pretty chamomile plants, and enrichment for a fish tank. She had the shop’s card, her name was Anna.

“You have a lovely smile!”, she shouted.

“Thank you, ma’am. I love your shirt!”

“Oh, it’s very old. Very, very old. I bought it when I was your age!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, really? You must take good care of it, then”, I said, you know, just to chat for a bit.

“Not exactly. I do everything in this shirt, it’s seen so much I’d afraid it would speak!”

I – mentally – raised my eyebrows. But, you know, when you work in retail, this kind of customer is actually the best you could hope for. It cheered me up. She went away, almost dancing, without a care in the world.

The rest of the day was pretty busy, but nothing special happened. We sold a lot of basil plants. I guess people wanted to make their own homemade pesto sauce.

Then the dreams started.

In the first one, I was in a cave during a snow storm. The loud woman was next to me; we had taken shelter there together, and it felt like we had a long story. Like we were on a long hike or something. She rummaged into her purse, which was large, made of black leather, and worn. She took out an eggplant that she started to eat like an apple. She didn’t say anything, it seemed perfectly normal. We had a long walk, were stuck in a cave together, why not have a snack, I thought? But something felt off. Suddenly thousands of ants were teeming around us, and before I could say anything, they had taken me out of the cave, into the snow. I couldn’t see the entrance of the cave anymore. I knew from the pain in my chest that I would die here, but that it was somehow better than to stay inside with her. I woke up.

I was confused, to say the least. It’s not often that I dream about customers or death. But dreams, you know? It’s not like they make sense or anything. I dressed up, took my uniform with me and went to work.

When I arrived, the store’s atmosphere was overexcited. A crowd of employees surrounded the dirt area. We sell big sacks of different kinds of dirt, which, in itself, isn’t a big deal, but, oh my. An entire pile of sacks had disappeared. Instead, there was a literal pyramid of dirt. Like all of the sacks had been emptied there. We were all whispering to each other, making hypothesizes, when a manager arrived.

“What on earth are you doing here! Go back to work at once!”

She examined the pile of dirt and called the security agents.

Apparently, Bob had been suspected of doing this. Why Bob, I don’t know. But he swore he didn’t do it – he was just, he said, at the wrong place at the wrong time. They looked at the camera recordings and nothing showed up. Bob was free to go. Like for the candles, it must have happened during the night. That’s all I know. The rest of the day was pretty slow. We were all a bit nervous and made mistakes. Bob broke a vase in the home decoration aisle. I saw him sweep away the glass shards, muttering to himself, when I came back from my break.

That night was one of the worse I’ve ever had. I couldn’t sleep for hours and then painfully passed out, having nonsensical dreams that felt more like hallucinations than dreams. Maybe because of my approaching birthday? I’ve always slept badly the night before my birthday. In the clearest of those dreams, I was lounging on a chaise longue in my turquoise bikini. The weather was sunny and warm. I was sipping on a colorful cocktail – I think it had tequila in it – with, weirdly enough, Anna, the extrovert customer. She was wearing a purple one-piece swimsuit and we were apparently the best friends in the world, chatting and laughing. I suddenly shrieked; my cocktail had become as black and thick as tar. I had the feel that it was made of crushed flies.

“What”, chuckled Anna, “don’t you like licorice?”

I muttered something saying it wasn’t licorice.

“You can’t be my daughter if you don’t like licorice”, she said, half-jokingly.

I stared at her. Her mouth – I noticed we had similar mouths – was smiling but her eyes were dead serious.

“Come on, have a sip”, she insisted. As I raised my glass again, my right hand shivering a little, the dream stopped and I woke up, covered in sweat.

She actually came back to the store on the next evening. She was more disheveled than the first time, and seemed tired – her eyes, though, glimmered with a mischievous spark. She bought some catnip and mint, and a plant of tomatoes, and appeared to be happy to see me.

“My dear, you look marvelous today!”

“Thank you ma’am”, I smiled.

“It’s my birthday today! I’m not longer in my thirties!”

I found it quite weird that she would announce her age like this when most women wouldn’t even hint at it.

“What a coincidence! I’m not longer in my teens as for today!”

We then congratulated each other. She seemed to be sad to leave. Her clothes were stained with dirt, like on the first day, but were dirtier.

I was hoping I could sleep better that night, since I was exhausted – everyone who’s worked them knows retail jobs are physically demanding – and my wish got partially granted. Sadly, only partially because I had a dream, which was the last thing I wanted. But this was nowhere as displeasing as the previous ones. I was in an orchard on a summer day, with a little boy who couldn’t have been older than six. He was running around, chasing butterflies, and the fruits – mostly peaches – were hanging low. Some had fallen down and were rotting in the grass. Wasps and bees were buzzing as I felt a deep melancholia feeling struck my chest. The realization that I didn’t have much time left wrapped me like a blanket. The boy was still running around, laughing. Suddenly someone – or something – tapped my shoulder and, as I turned over, I woke up before I could see their face.

The next day was my day off. I spent it cleaning my apartment and accidentally broke the glass of my family photo. I looked at it closely for the first time in years. With time, the difference in our faces had grown bigger. If I could have been mistaken for their biological daughter when I was a child, it was no longer possible; my sharp features, with a crooked nose, bushy eyebrows and small brown eyes, contrasted sharply with the soft face of my sister, who had a round face and chubby cheeks. Her curly hair and light eyes made her look like a little doll. She resembled both of our parents, it was particularly striking on this picture. Anyway. I wrote on my to-do list that I’d had to buy another frame and went on with my day.

The mysterious robber had stricken again during that night. But this time, it was serious. A snake had escaped. Oh, no, not that kind of snake – we’ve never sold any pythons or boas. It was a corn snake, a basically harmless kind of reptile. But the store’s reputation would suffer from this, was the rumor to be spread. “They let a snake escape! How can we trust them? I’m not gonna go to this store with my children, I’m telling you!”. The managers were all furious – and clueless. The cage had been opened neatly, as if it were unlocked with the right key. Still, nothing came up on the cameras – but it seemed like a cat was roaming the store. We didn’t know much.

The customer went back that day. She was even dirtier than the last time I had seen her. But that day, she looked on the verge of tears. Her lips were shaking, so did her hands. She bought a pack of frozen mice. She didn’t say anything but stared at me, for a long time, just stared at my eyes without smiling, and left. Had I wronged her in some way? I wondered as rang up other customers. I didn’t know, at the time, that I had seen her for the last time.

On the next day, I opened the store. As I entered, a trail of dirt led me upstairs. The cats’ enclosure had been unlocked. I found a dead cat, the gray one, that we called Mr. Cloudy – the others hissed at me, two were hiding – and next to him, an equally dead tarantula. Both were covered in dirt. There was a pile of dirt on the floor, that resembled a small pyramid.

On the next month, I quit the job.

Antigone

Antigone is kneeling
arms thrown apart
embracing death
embracing much
too much
Antigone you can only touch
so much
what are you doing
your dress is soiled
with dirt and blood

*

the light had died
in Antigone’s eyes

*

we’ll have to clean the stage
and repair the broken masks

I live with my death…

I
live with my death
curled up like a kitten
his fangs deep into my neck
I
live with my death

*

my death has golden eyes
and won’t let me come near

*

my death
awaits.

Still life with a cat

fire
covers it all, covers
it up

*

smoke’s rising

*

I sit still
in my lap
rests the cat

*

unbothered, purring
with his claws right into my thighs
blinking, slowly.

*

soon we will suffocate.

Écriture participative : miroir de rue

Bonjour à tou.te.s ! Je vous propose aujourd’hui une nouvelle session d’écriture participative sur l’image ci-dessous. Je vous invite à nous donner votre poème dans les commentaires de cet article !

I live incandescent…

I live incandescent
in the misty air of time

*

badly burned legs
do not limp anymore.

Summer rain

getting off the train

in the gray suburbs

men walking fast

under a summer rain

*

in our garden the flowers smile.

Louise Glück – Letter from Provence

Beside the bridge’s photogen-
ic lapse into air you’ll

Find more interesting material.
In July the sun
Flatters your Popes’ delicate
City as always, turning granite
Gold. The slum’s at standstill then,
Choking with droppings. Still
Its children are not entirely hostile;
Proffer smiles
At intervals most charmingly. I gave
Them chocolate, softened in the heat,
Which they would not
Go near. We heard they live on love.

Diving, diving…

Diving, diving
water is black
diving, diving
the air is scarce

*

It’s become so much
that I keep diving
barely knowing how safe
the earth is for animals
like me. I don’t know
what lies in those caverns
underwater, where is the curse
that allowed me to breathe – can I say
that I’m breathing? It’s more of a
suspended lung – I doubted them
and reap the benefits
of not being alive – I dive
I dive, deeper – what is to find
in the caves of the waves?

*

I won’t leave til I find
what I must be looking for
instincts made me dive
dive, dive,
deeper again
I won’t breathe til I find
drunkenness of the tide

*

It must be real, right? Or else
I would have died for nothing – it must be real,
isn’t it? Is it real? Bright eyes
in the dark, bright eyes
watch me out.

*

How deep even is
my memory?

Louise Glück – Nurse song

As though I’m fooled. That lacy body managed to forget
That I have eyes, ears; dares to spring her boyfriends on the child.
This afternoon she told me, “Dress the baby in his crochet
Dress,” and smiled. Just that. Just smiled,
Going. She is never here. O innocence, your bathinet
Is clogged with gossip, she’s a sinking ship,
Your mother. Wouldn’t spoil her breasts.
I hear your deaf-numb papa fussing for his tea. Sleep, sleep,
My angel, nestled with your orange bear.
Scream when her lover pats your hair.

Days, still…

days, still
come and pass
laying on us

*

snow in the night
of a calm ocean.

The current

What will come? what will stay?
The current dries my hopes away.
What is gone? what is stone?
They lay beside me, lifeless,
deserted by the moon as I am.

 

The current came and passed away.

I saw a country…

I saw a country
full of white shimmering beaches of salt
with a sky as big as cats’ pupils at night
with trees as dead as the words we keep looking for

*

and you
weren’t in any of this

*

but I
am just a body
you say

*

just a body.

*

 

Introduction of silence

Silence, winter
grows on my skin
on my bed

 

I need to speak now
later will be too late

 

Underneath the ice
water is boiling
I use it to infuse pain
infuse, drink it, drink it all
pain crosses me

 

I need to speak

 

To say something valuable
is not even today’s matter
to slay the silence
is more than enough for now

 

And when I try to fall asleep
hands swirl around
with poisonous nails
with plague-blackened palms

 

I need to speak now
later will be too late
silence promised me a still life
of pure marble

 

it lied
underneath the ice
I’m boiling too
the metal hand of silence
keeps me quiet

 

against all odds

 

I need to speak now
my lips shatter
my throat shivers
silence beats me with a frost hammer

 

I become
more and more of its frost, statue
wailing underneath the ice

 

and I know
true victory is to reopen the frozen wound

 

I will try to speak now

Sylvia Plath and Mitski: death, destruction and bathtubs

Sylvia Plath, “Tale of a Tub”

The photographic chamber of the eye

records bare painted walls, while an electric light

flays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;

such poverty assaults the ego; caught

naked in the merely actual room,

the stranger in the lavatory mirror

puts on a public grin, repeats our name

but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

(…)

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub

bread an ample batch of omens; but now

water faucets spawn no danger; each crab

and octopus – scrabbling just beyond the view,

waiting for some accidental break

in ritual, to strike – is definitely gone;

the authentic sea denies them and will pluck

fantastic flesh down to the honest bone.

(…)

the tub exists behind our back:

its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

(…)

In this particular tub, two knees just up

like icebegs, while minute brown hairs rise

on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap

navigates the tidal slosh of seas

breaking on legendary beaches; in faith

we shall board our imaginary ship and wildly sail

among sacred islands of the mad till death

shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

***

Mitski, “Humpty”

I’ll live in the bathtub

It’s cool and clean

It’s smooth and it’s steady

It’s all that I need

 

I broke our belongings

They’re all on the floor

The room is now empty

Nothing left to throw

 

All the eggshells are on the ground

And I try, I’m trying to pick them up

But they crack and crumble, it’s all too much

Too frail for me to touch

(…)

I’ll live in the bathtub

Surrounded by tiles

All so square and so steady

I will die in their cool, cool arms

Peaches

peaches
ripen

 

meanwhile the stars
(are they dancing? are they falling
in the airless abyss? who knows –
we barely see knots
of light in the forest of night)
meanwhile the stars

 

burn, cold as ever, and the flies
teem in the rotten fruit
far away, far away
in the orchard we visit.

From a city-dwelling aspiring scholar

clear sorrows
of moss and mud

*

I won’t go near the woods
I won’t enter the woods
I won’t make the woods known

*

clear sorrows

*

lost particule of boredom
in a dusty library

*

I am.

Poetry prompt: Wrath

I am a blazing ghost
floating through walls
I used to howl in pain, in despair
but I grew out of despair
now only wrath and silence drive me

 

And they don’t seem to be bothered
they see the frying pans full of hot oil shake and shriek
but don’t think they might be haunted
it’s all a game for them a game to play
before going to bed

 

I am a blazing ghost
ice scares me
I live in winter streets
in the middle of my fear

 

I think I drowned
long ago
in a polluted river

Poetry prompt: Salt burn

It keeps my eyelids shut
it keeps my ears open
I am noting but a salt wound
in the middle of a salt circle

*

is it the sea
is it a magic ritual?

*

my skin’s burning
as do candles
in the middle of the day.

*

what will come
when all is finally over? I hope the sea
doesn’t bleach our skulls I hope magic
still exists somewhere

*

meanwhile, I’ll be saying
what mad women do
inside of their ceilings.

Poetry prompt: Soft grass

sometimes
I’m the first person in the world
my made up brook
fresher than her rosy fingers

*

and no matter how many warm nights we spend out
grass will always feel softer
in the winter

*

the gas station at the far end of my city
doesn’t mock me anymore

*

reaching out
to a lost hand
at the end of a plaster arm.

Poetry prompt: The rise and fall of cicadasong

I can never see them
but know they’re here around
maybe in the trees
maybe on the ground
cicada songs

 

When I cried late into the night
they were silent; when I sobbed, hysterical,
biting my pillow, I could hear their disheartened
disapproval –
When we drank wine at sundown
(for they love to cheer)
they would gladly sing along
going louder as the wine sank in us –
When light was a soft blur on the stones
oh, hectic they were – but I cannot see them,
cicadas, summer’s voices,
our proof that if time could walk
it would look around
and unearth them
cicada songs.

Poetry prompt: Thinking about your almost lover

You know I kept
this scrap of paper you gave me
with a funny doodle of my eyes
(how I wish
you would have drawn something else
making up my lips with yours)

 

And last night your hand
played a bit too long with mine
you did that silly thing
of comparing our hand sizes

 

And I’d write you poems,
elegies, everything
if I only knew how to understand your face
and the funny moves you do
when you think none’s watching

 

You know I collected my old pearls you know the ones
we used to make friendship necklaces back when we were kids
I wanted to make you one but I forgot how to do so
instead I put all the letters of your name inside a little bag
that once held earrings
and I hear the letters knock together

 

what can I do, once I’ve said
you have eyes as black as the ink of my doodle?
what can I say? The blanket
cannot wait to wrap you
keeping you inside its warmth –

 

You know I kept a sample
of your perfume I got at the store – and picture
the back of your neck, your earlobe
covered in silver jewelry – I can hear
your giggle when I’ll finally be
brave enough to kiss you.

Poetry prompt: filtered sunlight

It’s a lazy afternoon,
the bed still keeps the track
of her back, of her knees
of her smell

 

The plants at the window
make the air go green;
the blinds are half-shut,
leaving filtered sunlight enter
and clean the room

 

Oh, to keep the score! of your body,
of your laughter,
oh, to keep the score! I can’t seem
to focus on my book; the bed’s still open,
a soft white in the subdued sunlight. When
will you be back? soon enough
the night will come; will you see
how the light plays on my bedsheets?
I bet it’s even softer
with you in there.

 

Still, the light turns
and enters dusk
apologizing, seemingly.

Poetry prompt: sparkling shadow

the night at my window
sparkling shadow

 

my fire’s burning
my heart’s aching

 

it beats
knock, knock
that sound again
will it ever
leave me to my pain?

 

night, a woman
in her evening dress
of shining opals
her nails a bit too long
her teeth a bit too white

 

is it her
or the cat maybe
scratching at the door?

 

I’ll know it when the right
night will come,
I’ll follow her
and forget it all – but for now
the night’s at my window
sparkling shadow.

Poetry prompt: Laughing water

She came to the pond every night,
as the lights started to twinkle in the city;
she brought a candle
that smelled like cinnamon.

 

She sat on the tree
the old oak tree that had its roots
deep inside the soil, the tree
that had seen the rise and fall of clouds
and the moon reflecting on the still water
of the pond.

 

One night, she heard a sound
but dismissed it – probably an animal
but what kind of beast
laughs with this crystal clear voice?
No – she must have imagined it. And the cinnamon candle,
slowly, expanded its light and smell – and everything was
oh so peaceful.

 

The second night
she could swear she saw
a head – not deep down
not diving
not at the surface of the water either
but rather
a head of water
emerge, for an instant
looking at her in the eyes –
then vanish.

 

On the third night
she could barely smell the cinnamon;
it smelled of stone
after rain, when the dirt
is wet and warm in the summer.

 

But on the last night,
a placid night in the middle of June,
a hand touched hers;

 

a hand made of water –
and the water smiled
as it extinguished the candle.

Poetry prompt: the labyrinth

Prompt: “after having made it out of the labyrinth I arrive at the doorway that is said to have truth just beyond it”

“I made my way
out of the snow that isn’t cold,
but tears you apart like teeth;
I made my way
out of the monsters, darker than night,
convoluted snakes, headless dragons
you confront for your death –
how terrible! they make you
see through the skull
of others, knights or maidens,
polluting your mind forever – but
I made my way out. And
after having made it out of the labyrinth
I arrived at the doorway that is said to
have truth just beyond it.
A trench
separated us; I climbed
and climbed – the portal
is there, I reach into it,
and I find – can you believe?
Two eyes, brown in their white liquid
that ignored me as I saw them – I was
one of them! I fell down,
quickly devoured by the trench,
to get back to the white plains
of pure nothing -”

 

And a thumb, nonchalant
turned the page.

Guest in a lovely house

opening the door
in the middle of a sentence

*

I don’t know what they’re talking about,
abortion or restaurants
it doesn’t matter

*

they glide
through the conversation
pushing each other
so that the first one to fall
will have their throat slit
by the skates of the other

*

no, don’t be dragged into it
like a glassy wall
they reject you

*

I close the door
before the unspeakable happens

Slightly revised teenage memory

the golden hour of the day has past

*

all I remember
is the fake grass of a stadium

*

being crushed by dozens of children’s shoes

*

(she sprained her ankle
but refused my arm
the children were screaming
far, far away
as the night fell
like it always does)

*

all I remember.

A Schumann clarinet piece

The clarinet
plays
soft, softer
than what I can remember.

 

Long deserted home,
long lost country
of bread and milk
and other less symbolic things
4pm snacks, on the radio
classical music and tales of the day

 

If it weren’t cliché
I’d say the clarinet is weeping. It’s circling,
closer and closer,
to the land whose language we spoke
that we have now forgotten.

 

The clarinet
rises from the basement,
in frail circles of smoke
I see a brook
from a children’s picture book.

 

There is
a sunlit kitchen

 

Ah, how useless
is to reminisce. The child
was a scared one – figures of fingers, a song
of fear is all I had. Why can’t I
let it all behind,
on my dusty piano’s fingerprints,
why is the clarinet back?

 

I remember
the fog of time makes me blurry

 

Soon only the clarinet will stay
still soft, still weeping
and I’ll be gone
as did my piano
as did the days

 

As did we.

Madness…

Madness
Cradles my face

Buried in myself
I still talk
To the wind, to the bugs
To the walls.

The bed’s a highway…

The bed’s a highway
full of rampant alien hands
that crawl all over my body

 

His hands
cunning hounds
that find the wound
(easily
I tried to make it difficult
but as a removed seatbelt
my hands were useless guard dogs)

 

And I sink into the mattress
like into warm asphalt

 

Soiled. Sore and soiled
there is no way out
his hands inside me
and nothing in me that claws or bites
I’m a softness a home
for hunting hands
all warm and wet I am

 

And no matter how much I wash the sheets
how white they are
I am a spring
a spring of mud

 

his hands
still over all over
my body

 

he doesn’t even realize it
both the hunter and his dogs
both the rifle and the fang
he doesn’t even see it

 

I wash myself
carefully
uselessly.

L’Ivresse des profondeurs

today

 

I’m going on a quest to find It
in the abyss I went and only found dead corals
in the cities I went and only stained my nails
in my flat I went and only found expired food

 

only bare can I achieve It
but my clothes have layers
and I know only death comes
after I remove the finest one

 

if I fail we all do.

Some very usual thoughts

inexorable
the sun will eat us all

 

waiting for the shining death
some shadows of voids of pieces of voices
of dead people stuck
in the ice of a winter lake

 

waiting for glory

The problem of not having a big poetry project in progress

trees
bend over, all craving
a single drop of water

 

houseplants, they think,
are lucky –

 

and the air
is unbearable
both inside
and outside

 

it weights,
heavy,
on their leaves
on their limbs

 

and on ours too
but what are we
to trees?

 

Whatever. I still need
to find a resistant enough subject
to carve out – enluminate
maybe although
this would be too flattering
for I am not
skilled enough – stones,
bones, shame – all materials
but i barely know trees – how can I write?

 

Will i ever find it?

Songs of love

the last hour
pearls she grinds
under her teeth

 

the last minute
sweat glimmering

 

the last second, however
is pure salt

Poetry writing is maybe akin to demonic possession

“They put up a rope of fine red silk -”
Delete it.
“On the fine rope -”
Oh no. This is bad.
“But I cannot dance”
This is too easy.
“At least it doesn’t choke me anymore -”
Too dramatic.

All I have to do is jump – jump into the void – and hope this will be
Graceful enough
For them to stare.

Childhood

arms
like expanded wings
she jumps
on the clay-painted road

 

eyes squinting
trying to find balance
not any balance
the perfect one

 

clocks tick
and clocks tock

 

the child flies
in uncorrupted time

 

oh to find her strength
again!

 

singing softly
both feet in the air

 

soon the mother will call for
clocks tick
and clocks tock

They call it “Heat Wave”

Suns
roll around in the fog
the deadly fog. Everything
is fresh new in the heat (but for how long?)
that makes everything shake
ungodly like summer always is –
Skin
is roasted, eaten away
by the voracious stars…
Roads
haven’t melted yet,
surprisingly,
but they will, soon.

 

I won’t let my houseplant die.

Why I stopped writing in French – in theory

(This article is a response to this poem).

Several people asked me why I started writing in English instead of in French which is, after all, my first language. This is of course a legitimate question, and I spent some time pondering over it. After all, why did I give up on French poetry?

First of all, I’d say it’s for a practical reason. I spend most of my time on the internet, which is vastly redacted in English, to the point I mostly think in English. I actually learned this language from the internet. I found that my poems (that I post on my tumblr account too) gained more traction and that more people engaged with them when they were written in English. I started translating my prose poetry to English (and it surprisingly worked better than in French, which is one of the reasons I chose it. My style flows more naturally in this language).

But, more than one single reason, I’d say it’s a body of circonstances that made me choose English.

English feels both closer and more distant than French. I’m far from being bilingual, of course, and I’m not even studying English, but its way of using prepositions, its conciseness, its sonorities, make it feel more flowing and, weirdly enough, more real than French, which feels flat in comparison. Besides, while I’m relatively well-read regarding French poetry, which is interesting but can sometimes choke the aspiring poet (such heavy, prestigious past and tradition), I know practically nothing about English poetry. I feel less pressure in English. Less pressure to be original, groundbreaking, revolutioning the art of language.

Another reason is that English is (sort of) the language of the LGBT community. I wrote Melted wax, still cold – still wax (that you can read here) for young lesbians, not only French-speaking ones. I want to speak for my community, who is scattered all over the planet and has to learn English to be able to access to most online resources and to create relationships, platonic or not. My friends and I use mostly English when we’re texting, for example.

As for my historic in writing English poetry – I first started to write one or two poems back in my last year of highschool (they were terrible) because the prospect of writing – the most demanding way of writing: using the very fabric of language, poetry – in a language I barely spoke appeared terribly demanding and enthralling. I wrote several poems (mostly short ones) in the last few years, but nothing big. Then, in September of 2018, I started working on Melted wax and wrote almost exclusively in English. I consciously decided not to write in French anymore this year, probably in March or April of 2019.

To conclude, let me tell you a short anecdote. When I was 15, I spent three months in Germany, and I completely forgot French after about a month of being there. I woke up one day and just couldn’t think anymore. I barely understood German, and had forgotten about any other language. So I was stuck, language-deprived, which meant I had no stable identity anymore, no sense of time or space, without any links to my past, my friends and relatives, in a deserted world. And I think that, without really knowing it, I started holding a grudge against French which had abandoned me. I feel like we do not understand language, especially not our mother tongue. It’s like a current that crosses us; we can try to make something out of it, but ultimately, we’re at the river’s mercy. We don’t control anything. Knowing – knowing intimately – one’s language only makes us blind, in a way. We can’t even fathom what it’s like to lose one’s language. But it can happen; and I don’t think I could forget English as easily as I forgot French. English is more like a swimming pool I’m still building, if that makes sense. Not to mention that its words feel fresh, new, contrary to French ones.

So, yeah. Right now, I’m exploring the frontiers of French and English, but that’s all I can tell about it (a new project I’m only starting).

 

Suicide note

My suitcase
isn’t unpacked. Heavy. Walls
are dirty, covered
in painted slurs. It smells
like death. It’s getting closer.
I can almost see its snout pressing against
the broken windowpane.

 

The key is in the lock –
but they warned me
the corridors aren’t welcoming
and once you’re gone
you’re gone –

 

I can’t stay here – I won’t
stay long. I’ve seen it all, my whole body, clothes
stained with
something I cannot name. I’ve seen it all.

 

I won’t stay long. Will my suitcase
travel with me?

 

My reflection in the slashed mirror
grins, viciously.

Searching for the self

in the space between my arm and its skin my hair and myself
the skull and its holes the thigh and its bone

 

i draw dancing figures
that don’t last long, no
but how graceful

 

how graceful.

Ekphrasis

In a yellow dress

 

How pathetic my welcome arms
that touch nothing but the scent
of dirt after rain

 

She’s posing. Oblivious
arrogant, even. Ice,
ice, and the coldest sun.

 

Past years mock me.

Portrait of the artist as a schizophrenic / Leçons de ténèbres

One pill.
Two pills.
What, who
will teach me
how to step into the dark
without losing my crystal shoes?
One pill.
Two pills.
The night’s a car
that is ready to pick me up.
One pill.
Two pills.
Everything’s quiet.
My clothes sparkle.
One pill.
Two pills.
Oh what will remain
when all is taken away
when I’ll have to walk
alone in all this cold?
One pill.
Two pills.
I don’t hear voices
not anymore. My hair
is damp. Is it with rain? Is it
with God’s tears all over again?
One pill.
Two pills.
What teacher will be patient enough
for me to follow through?
One pill.
Two pills.
I know they’re plotting it
revenge tastes sweet
but all I know is bitter medicine.
One pill.
Two pills.
The last streetlight
has passed away
so many nights ago.
One pill
Two pills.
Oh, where is my teacher?
Collecting what’s been lost
long lost.
Death watches over me.

 

That’s it. I took
all of my pills. Will justice
ever glow? Who will teach me
not even to dance darkness away
– this, I know, would be unreasonable –
but to walk, merely
without spraining my ankle?
Who?
That’s it. The box is empty
I took all of my pills.

“Poetry must create pictures”

Ideas. Pictures. A bait
of pure silver
that barely scratches skin.

 

Words, though – a panther
I chase, that chases me
too. Fishing for ideas
lets you find the alien, overhanging;
lets you play the good part,
the lucky one, you discover the rarest of fishes
with minimal effort – a picture
is your reward. You can show it off
while it dies slowly. Take a picture. Your hands are clean
and the fish is dead.
But I
unexperienced hunter
but I
let the panther circle me
the word is all around
it claws it will claw it has clawed
its way into my body

 

Body merely a sheet
for past felonies
(you can’t call a crime
what is barely a nature)
Still – I hunt for
the panther
that roams around, sleepless, lawless,
merciless
– Ideas,
pictures, away from me –

 

The word’s embrace dilutes skin
I’ve known it. True victory

is to make the frost statue bleed.

Venez me voir le 22 juin à la Comédie-Française !

Bonjour à tou.te.s. J’ai eu le plaisir de participer cette année au Bureau des jeunes auteurs-lecteurs de la Comédie-Française, et nous lirons nos textes à la Coupole (salle Richelieu) le 22 juin à 17h ! Si cela vous intéresse, envoyez-moi un mail (carmine.g.denis@gmail.com) avec vos nom et prénom afin que je fasse suivre pour obtenir les invitations.

En espérant vous voir nombreux.ses !

Men are speaking…

Men are speaking, softly,
in a language I don’t understand; is it Russian,
Polish, or Serbian maybe? They lit some fire
and the smoke is rising, like the moon
we don’t get to see in the city. Are they seeing
how yellow the light is right now, behind dark clouds? It’s been
raining for weeks and still the rain comes, fresh everyday,
as if for the very first time. The men are talking,
as a single ray of light
greets the ground –

 

I’ll close my window. It’s raining too hard tonight.