Fragment #23

Shot down like a deer in the dark

lying dead, the wound soon a door

for dirt dwellers, bugs, birds and boars,

to feed on my dull, rancid carcass

my soul delves deep in the core.

Fragment #122

 
She is one of quick ends and violent means 
– the long game but a string of skirmishes –
– blood and brood the only option for women –
– there’s hope in honour till it vanishes –
– daggers and poisons and sharper wits
make for faster peace through perfect blitz.

 

Corps memory

 

She turns towards me while opening the door

— The two cavities under her collarbones,

dark under the scorching lightbulb —

— Her shirt now three sizes too small —

Never have I seen her so frail, so hesitant

— Her angular silhouette penciled on the floor,

unnerving now, even more so later when —

Her lips parting, her voice hoarse and spent

— Her spindly fingers crooked on the handle —

She fades, featherly light, as grief wanes

 

Handshook

 

All it took was a handshake

to unsettle the masculined gaze

All it took was a kind look

– the warmth of a handshake –

for him to avert his teary eyes

All it took was a “Hello, Jack”

– the second-too-long handshake –

to expose the chink in the armour

to make him chin-on-chest humble

All it took was the simple kindness

– a handshake like an embrace –

of one who fought unseen battles

recognising one fighting another

telling them without stoic prattle:

“Feel no shame, and be brave, brother.”

Every cycle worse

 

“No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. […] Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!” 

Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909), by Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American politician and academic, Governor of New York, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, and US Secretary of State.

 

8 stades de notification

 
Insignifiant

Indésirable

Informatif

Intéressant

Important

Impérieux

Improbable

Impossible

 

In between dreams

Sometimes it’s hard for me

to fit in this world

sometimes I feel that I

could stop a rushing train

right there in its tracks

seconds before speeding off a cliff

absorbing its full momentum

saving hundreds at a time

that my roar could cause an avalanche 

which in one embrace I would stop

that I would devise an equation

quantising particles

manifolding them

thereby unlimiting food and fuel

that I could fly out in space

grab and chew a whole black hole

and spit out a new universe

in my mind’s eye I can

and have done all these things

of course in the real world I couldn’t

but my daydreams and nightdreams

are full of daily scenarios

because I am weak-bodied

and strong-willed

and because I know

what it takes to love

what it takes to be unloved

to seek refuge in dreams

when everything else

falls apart

for my inner world is larger

than the entire universe

Freedom in the shadow

 

"All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible."

Doris Lessing (1919-2013), novelist and Nobel laureate, as quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 18.

Corps mourant

 
watching the cormorant
alert, scan the river
plucking torn feathers off –
bitter taste in the mouth
of the weary, backstabbed,
morose office worker

Three, or two, or one

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."

William Faulkner (1897-1962), interview in The Paris Review of 1956.