Tea-time

Tea has – and always will

be – spelt with an 'L'.

Why, you ask me,

quite rightfully?

The reasons are dead simple:

because it can serve as

a handy looking-glass,

because it may also be a well

with which you may your thirst quell,

but 'tis also a book by the fire

or a meal when times are a-dire,

'tis a long-lost child,

a brat you can't chide,

'tis a feisty woman on your knees,

a pouty Gill who says: “Pretty please?”

'tis a radiant Sunday afternoon

or a masked haiku by the moon;

tea is a deer throttled by a hound,

tea is midnight's fog on Edin's Mound,

tea is the books you'll never read,

tea is the crumbs and the birds you feed,

tea is a plane's fastened seatbelt –

that's why it can't but be spelt

on Earth, in Heaven and in Hell,

with anything but an 'L'.

I left a copy of this piece sellotaped on a concrete pillar in the Looking-Glass Bookshop in Edinburgh (fine place which I strongly recommend for the quality of the books, the warm welcome, the ready-for-anything spirit and the taste of tea I had there). There may be differences in the punctuation (same for the dating of the writing...my memory doesn't work wonders) and I originally left the title to be added by any potential reader, but it is essentially the same.

The fight

"Why bother? We have enough

Cans to last us a siege

And water to have us laugh

At the very face of the liege!

There is no darkness we fear

There is no man that can us bend.

As long as we live we will leer

As long as we breathe there is no end.

They will see, those barbarians,

What it takes to be a man,

And to feel every human sentiment,

What it takes to shoot a man,

What it is to have delicacy and nuance,

What you earn by curbing your essence.

What they are, as they stand behind our walls,

Is beastly, coarse, and unlikely to make us fall."

Double dash

Like a dash of spilt dark tea

Over the bright tabled glazing

I run my lucid dreams over and over

Until they seem dry and exhausted

And then the real story begins

"Know no fear."

She awoke with a start,

They were all there, still

Stilled. They would, eventually

Remain here and rot.

Mouth agape and contorted hands.

Wounds ope on the innards,

Discreetly yet unashamedly.

"Know no fear."

She breathed in and out,

And resolutely gripped

The broken handle of her jagged knife.

 

To the line

Journeying to the line

Unembarrassed by desire

Or hatred, or vindictiveness,

Or gain, or fear, or shame,

we went on, seeking not adventure

Nor meaning to obey orders

Or do our abscond duty

Nor driven by the will to conquer,

We were there as chance willed,

By some fluke of fate,

Owing to a long and serpentine

Chain of events no one governed

We went on because we thought

Liberty was a woman.

Fragment #22

Things need to come to an end

-- however ugly it may be --

for as things now stand,

my life goes by horribly.

The Tattoo

Covering her entire back

The intent artist is putting

The finishing touch to his masterpiece

Never had tattoo been so revealingly beautiful.

The girl had been thinking and designing

Her tattoo for the best part of ten years.

It had taken him a full week to catch her intention

And another to train his wrist to the perfect movement.

Now is the time to prove his mettle.

And the girl had fever breaking after the first three hours,

And they have to do it in one sitting,

No other option, nothing else matters.

It is obviously painful. And the level of detail is boring into her skin.

In about an hour, this girl will have,

Etched onto her back, into her soul,

The greatest overcast one ever saw,

Down to the smallest, darkest billow.

The music rang

The music rang deep into her mind

Made every inch of her skin quiver

The tip of her teats were so hard

Eyes closed, swaying to the sheer vibrations from the speakers

As if she were thrown away

And riveted to the spot

Fractalled into infinity

Like a raindrop

On a corrugated iron roof.

After the fury

The bird hopped from crack to crack

Past the commotion, the rush,

The rot, the stench,

Under that steel arch,

Looked at the towering giants

Belching thunderous bellows

And was gone, in an instant,

Into the soaring, unaffected air.

Food would be gotten

After the fury had died down.

The relevant fall

They all saw him fall to his death down twenty floors

They all thought at once of what they did that day

So that they could remember it all and tell the neighbours

Their own sadder version of the story of that fateful day

They saw a guy fall to his death down twenty floors.

She looked down at him

She looked down at him

His face buried in pillows

And then out the window

Darkness were spreading

Like squid's ink in a fishbowl

The smell of soot in her nostrils

Made her frown and scoff

She needn't look down again

To see him look up to her

And watch his face fall apart

In a million million pieces.

Suitcase in hand

 

Suitcase in hand

He follows the hollow

On the side of the road

Spatters of mud

On the hem of his trousers

Perhaps brought back

From a hundred miles off

Where he was at a few days ago

He realises now he was happy there

Watchful, horrified but content

The barrel of his gun emptied

In a haystack alive with possibilities

Of murder, revenge, hatred.

Memory lapse

[Ten days in Edinburgh at the Jazz and Blues festival, and raw here I hand over whatever I wrote. I will publish each and every piece in a separate entry, chronologically but starting back in time, like retrieving my footsteps in the sand.]

A melancholy face, 

seen through the flitting

window of a surprising

train booming on a race

in the opposite direction,

brought to a tired mind,

years later, as a friend

breaks out the information

of an orderly quietus,

both sat on the edge

of a bed facing the ledge

of the window, like statues

ready to recover from the salt,

her face ebbing away

as the memory of that day

quietly comes to a halt,

finally acquiring a meaning

long sought and deferred,

as that the moment conferred,

duly timed to the awakening,

probably hidden all this long

in the fold of the bed-sheet,

in the cold of the slanting sleet,

or in the iridescence of the sun --

which ought to have been seen

years before on that train

thundering through sun and rain

glowing on that face's dull sheen.

 

Can't live with, can't live without

 

"[L]e lien qui attache l'individu à la société est tellement puissant que, même dans la soi-disant “société des individus”, ces derniers sont si peu capables de prendre leurs distances avec les entraînements collectifs que, spontanément, ils consentent à l'anéantissement de ce à quoi ils tiennent le plus : la liberté."

Daniel Cérézuelle, Écologie et liberté. Bernard Charbonneau, précurseur de l'écologie politique, Parangon, 2006, p. 21.

Mocking

You and I met on a rainy day

much like today

and your eyes were telling me

that you already loved me.

I didn't believe them.

And the cars swoosh past us

unmindful of us.

No chirp can be heard

for all the birds

have flown away,

hiding from the grey.

And sleep always comes late

and dreams hardly ever sate –

then you told me you could salvage

me from the ruins of an age.

That you could change this wasteland

of a heart just by holding my hand.

I didn't believe you.

Morning is mocking us, rain is mocking us,

laying on the windows behind many a buss –

When they consort to slur the moment

They never fail to disappoint.

You told me that one could love as many times

as you did and true it might happen sometimes,

that I was one of a million

and I could find no reason

to believe you.

A broken gutter somewhere is dripping rain

and my feelings are going down that same drain –

arms at the side, helpless, I watch time pass by,

dreading this greeting as much this goodbye.

With parting lips you tell of the beauty of death

and you can tell I am taking my breath,

smooth breathing in a soothing hell

and now the gods are mocking us as well.

And I don't know you as well as I wish

yet methinks this you do relish.

– I don't believe you.

And the gods we believe in never fail

to ignore us yet we suffer their bale,

day in, day out, until the end of our time,

guilty and innocent of a known crime.

And you tell me we can still make amends,

though you slept with two of my friends.

And you tell me to have faith in love,

that there's no feeling love can't fly above.

But I don't believe you.

I don't believe you,

for your eyes say something different

for the rain clinging, indifferent,

to your hair says that the day has ended,

that you can stop all that you pretended,

for I don't believe you.

And you have broken me down

without so much as a frown,

with a half-veiled scorn,

here, on this wet morn,

with your wonted absence

of finesse and elegance.

And yet, even now, standing crushed

in the rain with all sounds hushed,

looking at your wanting smile

I don't believe your guile.

You may disguise your sentiments

as well and as much as you want,

you may hide your nature

and come out as another,

you may mock everyone

into believing you're a man,

but being tried and true,

I don't believe you.

And you had better leave me then and there

in the middle of the rainy nowhere,

for nothing can change either you or I

or make us believe each other's lie –

both spent before this affair even started,

both broken before we even parted,

mocking the stars and the promises

and the hollow and the artless kisses,

and you had better bid me adieu

before I start believing in you.

Swimming in this sky

Food for aught

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being."

Franz Kafka, novelist (1883-1924) in Investigations of a Dog (Forschungen eines Hundes), 1922.
 

D'amour et de fer

La tête haute sous un soleil plombé bas

comme attiré par le sable qu'il reflète,

il faut marcher, marcher, faire un pas,

puis un autre, courbé sous le lumineux bât,

jusqu'à la prochaine dune, la prochaine crête

mais, surtout, ne pas baisser la tête,

et avancer, parce que c'est loin, là-bas.

Ne pas attendre, car le soleil mord.

Il déchire la chair, lentement,

sans remords ni aucune dent,

car c'est lui qui décide du sort,

qui mirage de séduisants ports

desquels personne ne ressort,

pas même les pieds devants.

Marcher au travers du silence,

du crissement du sable,

les gerbes marquant la séquence,

le rythme de l'incomptable,

seul et inconsolable,

combattant la somnolence,

le soleil et l'absence.

Aller, aller plus loin

oublier pourquoi

on en est arrivé là

pourquoi ce point

à portée de main,

au bout du doigt,

tendu et las,

restera

là-bas,

plus loin.

Sauf si, d'un brusque coup de rein,

on étalonne la dune,

on balaie d'un revers de main

la sueur de la lacune,

si on boit l'eau de la lune,

si on accueille le lendemain

sans envie ni plainte aucune.

Car ce soleil qui tord les chairs

c'est aussi celui qui nous éveille,

qui se couche sur nos éveils,

qui rougit nos chimères,

qui donne vie à notre air

et qui allège notre veille,

orbe de feu, d'amour et de fer.