Tea, Spices and Milk

And I was sitting at the Starbucks

on that busy Parisian boulevard

full of honks and delivery trucks

when nothing but the roads is barred,

my chai tea latte steaming my glasses up

'Cuthbert' warily scribbled on the cup.

And I watched that student

through the window

rushing across the street,

and that old widow

overly prudent,

and that ragged beat

limping his way unashamed

to his morning flagon of red,

amid the wet morning crowd

and suddenly thought how

we're supposed to be all

genetically identical,

and how quantum physics state

that all actions reverberate

into different frames of space and time.

And I thought that we might be

the echoes of a single, one-time

action sparked a long time ago,

and that all the possibilities

contained therein did grow,

fractaled in us in fulfilled probabilities

and which, detail after detail,

changed in each individual's tale

to give one complete set of turbulences,

yet one coherent whole,

all paralleled universes

crushed flat into one huge cinnamon roll.

And the thought made me heave such a sigh

that my napkin just flew over the tray

and off the table down on the ground to lie.

The pretty girl went her way,

the old widow cautiously hers,

amid the habitual city-wonders

and the old sot went with the flux

and I was sat at the Starbucks.

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

It's been a long while. Not long enough I can hear some say. Well, sure right you are, I haven't missed you either. Yet for all I know, you might very well have been craving my refractory, longitudinal diatribes for longer than you'd care to admit. So without further ado, here it comes, Ladies, Gentlemen and Poodles...

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

I know for a fact that many of you have wondered, in this festive period, if you could push your depravity to the point of asking for a pair of crutches for Christmas. In the school I'm in, Oh boy they've become trendy, like the latest, must-have accessory in any respectable fashionista garderobe.

So, to my cross-grained mind comes a question: How to casually use a pair of crutches, and why? Perhaps, say, to attract pathos, eyes, attention? Mayhap you want people to open up doors for you? Here's some of the postures I've witnessed, which might be of some help to the newbies (because obviously owning the crutches isn't enough, you've got to have style). Step on your heavily-bandaged foot, your elbows akimbo on your crutches, back slightly bent over and crooked. Or, you can roll skull-printed bandanas around the handles, with matching handbag and tee-shirt. You can also remain the kind, helpful person who you've always been and point to a direction to someone while still holding a crutch. Or hold them diagonally so that people have to avoid any potential shin-breaking crutch in a 4-metre radius. But I'm being sarcastic there, for next to no reason, really. One warning, though, in all this merriment: do not get too confident that nobody is there to see you when you walk without as much as a limp without the said crutches...there's always somebody, somewhere, to see you (much-revered Murphy's Law) walking straight. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I have seen this ridiculous tendency in women only. We men have yet to find the crutch in us.

These postures will enable your foot to take twice as long to mend, and it will actually mend twice as bad, leaving you more than ample time to attract more pathos...or boredom. And let me tell you this as straight as I can: people don't care a straw, for they won't open up doors for you and even though they may ask what in the world happened to you, it's only because the weather's been the same for weeks now and because it might be a great opportunity to snicker. Crutches trigger pathos in sensible people for about as long as a blind poodle would. Interesting, for about two and a half minutes. Right about the time it takes to realise that at some point you'll have to lug the dratted thing about (and for once, believe it or not, I'm not speaking about the poodle).

Speaking of which, where on Earth did all the poodles go? It's been a while since I last saw one alive. As if someone had decided to put them out of their misery, or as if their wanting genetic pool had finally hit them back in the end, as some late-coming retaliation. Perhaps they deserve a place of mention alongside the dodo now they're gone. IF they're gone. If you see one, can you please send a picture my way? That's for the obituary, thanks – or Part 6 of this series.

The other day, the leaves were falling hectic orange and frantic yellow all over the place, for Autumn had come. I like this season a lot, for the bright colours, the fantastic sceneries they show or evoke. It's also a tad dreary, by the same token, for you can now see the bare branches, the knots and scars on the bark, the general sorriness of the leafless tree. Slightly less majestuous without their shiny robe...somewhat like everyone else on this planet. We can also note the equally drab birds perching in there. All of this makes you less reluctant to park your car under trees during this season. No fruit, no bird dropping on your windscreen. So I parked confidently...and come evening I damned those birds who could still find fruits in them scrawny trees. Droppings of orange and red all over my car. And the ones parked on either side of mine. Luckily, it rained quite hard that night so my car was laved of their evil-doings. The next day I paid especial attention and chose a treeless spot. No tree, no bird; no bird, no dropping. When I saw what had happened to my car in the evening, I knew the world was making me pay for something. Bad karma attracts birds. For only my car had been Pearl-Harboured. And the consistency (I'm passing over the details) of these droppings excluded everything but fruits, or berries. How on Earth could they find fruits in November so far up north? For Pete's sake, even elderberries had been gone by then. Some mystery I'm still paying for as we speak...there's no avoiding trees in this world. Someone must pay.

And someone will pay, someday, for their bungling up a McFlurry (jumping from pillar to post, I know). Why is it that in McDonald's they always serve you a McFlurry which is never flurried, the hollowed spoon sticking out right from the centre, erect, ready to fit onto the flurrying machine? Perhaps it's just a French language thing where they don't care to see WHY it's called a McFlurry. In any case, this defies any structural and gustatory sense: you can't remove the spoon without actually taking half of the ice-cream out with it, along with half the M&Ms (my all-time favourite) and the caramel topping. While everything should be blended into one great flurry (hence the name) of flavours, everything is stacked into one one-taste-at-a-time, uninviting heap.

You feminists are waiting for me now to spit my venom at men, a vulture-like look about you, malice in your eyes. And while you could just look at us to find enough fuel for your warmongering, I'm going to disclose what happens in the Men's room. That should fuel it for a few days at least. While few of us know for certain what happens in the Ladies', you mightn't know either the delicacies that the observant can find in this hellish place. Graphic details ensueing (so if you've leaving us now, fare thee well dear reader, and may you find a safe path through this nightmarish jungle of poodles, pigeons and crutches!).

The smell. First thing to greet you. Ranging from ''just acrid'' to ''astounding blocked-due-to-cold nose opener''. Sticky feet. Usually around the wall urinals, but if you get lucky around, on or across the regular bogs. The walls themselves, the doors, handles and partition walls can be sticky too, so mind your fingers. Absolute absence of toilet paper, at all times. Don't count on a forgotten newspaper, or on that last leaf of drying paper – we've got airblades now.

There's many a different style to roam the johns, but I particularly like the blokes who come for the number one and either: 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands 2- re-arrange their hair in front of the mirror and then leave 3- don't wash their hands but still dry them in the airblade (to avoid a potential case of sticky fingers, while I think they're actually creating it) 4- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. All before grabbing that door handle.

Differently, but not any less efficiently, the blokes who come for a number two and 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands (yeah, I know) 2- have to wash their hands but prefer to dry them in the airblades (remember my theory on sticky fingers?) 3- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. I have also witnessed 4- the necessitous who had to come here for a bossy number two, knowing full well there'd be no TP and a faulty airblades, perhaps even no water at all. I can't tell you the rest of that story, I still wake up at night because of it.

I hope you had your fill of filth (and I carefully avoided the subject of pubes smudging the sink). As for me, I avoid public urinals like the plague.

 I'm about to hit the hay, and content though I be to have poured my bile over those and that which irritate me, I'll still hold an intractable grudge against poodles for not showing me the way to complete spleen. Godspeed.

picrate

La vieille fille aux litrons de picrate

traîne ses guêtres sans trop de hâte

vers ce dîner sans viande ni encens

où parce qu'elle aura un peu trop bu

racontera sa vie terne à ses enfants

ceux qu'elle n'aura jamais eu.

D'un large regard elle balaie sa cuisine

et de sa douceur porcine

lave lentement l'assiette de son repas

puis d'un sobre et triste pas

rejoint son lit de mousseline.

Le dernier litron nonchalamment en main

la bouteille posée sur ses flasques seins

elle fixe son plafond usé des regards

de cinquante années dénuées d'espoir.

Puis d'un geste inattendu de puissance

les yeux plongés dans le crucifix sur le mur en face

elle brise le fût du litron sur son chevet et lasse

Mais d'un mouvement plein d'innocence

Saturé de regrets mais sans haine ni rancoeur

Elle s'en va fourailler ses chairs à la recherche de son coeur.

 

Pipes and principles

"We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

John W. Gardner, author (1912-2002)
 

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

William Pitt, British prime minister (28 May 1759-1806)

"I'm sometimes asked "Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots."

George T. Angell, reformer (5 Jun 1823-1909)
 

Inconvenience store

"If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

Robert Fulghum, author (b. 4 Jun 1937)
  

Forest fire

Today, another forest was burnt down.

It's the third or fourth this month.

I've often wondered that if you were to catch

All this smoke and recuperate those ashes,

Would they account for all of the matter

This forest once boasted of? Or would some matter

Be utterly lost, as the shape and name are lost?

Nothing can be whole again once it's rent, or burnt.

Though some folk say all the particles are still there,

Hovering, going somewhere to find a fuller end,

Though to where or for which purpose no one said.

As if every particle ought to be accounted for.

My hunch is that though the entity be gone,

With the memories of the place and its components,

The shadow of it lies still in the memories of men,

Till this too is gone. And that long after its departure

Something other will be here, city, wasteland, forest perchance.

Make room for the new, kill the splendour,

Perhaps these were the thoughts of this pyromaniac.

Whatever crossed his mind, like that of the others,

Whole valleys grey with ash and rank with smoke

run the eye as far as the sunset and its black cloak.

Who said the mind was like a forest? I can't remember.

But I now say that the mind is like a forest on fire,

And the best trees are spent on some mad altar,

and their ashes fuel the sombreness inside.

Perhaps forests are meant to burn, like the mind.

But I might be wrong. All I know is that there are holes,

holes the size of forests, now, where those minds were.

Loss

Never have I seen such a lost generation.

Never a generation so lost.

With all the means to know,

where they are, why they are, when they are.

They don't know who they are,

where they are, why they are.

Such an absence of care for what's to come.

Such an absence of care for who's to become.

Such is the way of the teens I've taught this year.

Apathy meaning an absence of path,

reluctance an absence of luck.

Following whoever's footsteps are doomed.

Following whatever's the least useful to them.

Smiling wryly at their own purposelessness.

Smiling earnestly at others' failures.

Allurement of easy money and easy pleasures

blinds them, leads them to restlessness.

Never sadder nor happier than ever before.

Never had so little interest in themselves,

never had been so focused on their selves.

So lost to reality and its codes.

Coding their own ethereal kingdoms.

So hopeful, so hopeless.

No dreams, no boundaries

in a world which forsook and strengthened its frontiers.

Both prisoners and wardens of society.

Escapist strategies of the dominator

landing off-target rockets in the landscape –

none ever beheld such avoided butchery.

But the worst, warded off by school walls,

is yet to come.

When they will realise what's to come

when they will realise what's in for them

when they will compute time and money

and add two and two and marvel

that it makes three, and not four,

never again, and smile wryly,

the unfairness of the world suddenly made visible,

suddenly a constant, an exact exfoliator of rest.

Yes, they will think back, and smile –

even then they knew, had feigned ignorance,

had trudged on, secretly hoping for the best.

 

Restlessness

Whenever I get some good news
I always feel this restlessness
This unfulfillable envy that I lose
Only when I realise it's just mum's absence.

The Soothsayer

Others buried their gaze in the constellations,

Others, again, looked into alignments,

Others still, wondered at numbers and sums,

Other eventually stared at cloud patterns,

Others' devotion lay in the paths of the palm.

He, on the other hand, looked into streams,

under the bark of the willow trees,

snapping twigs, uprooting lilacs for inspection,

tasted and observed the water in the ponds,

pried into the entrails of dead cattle.

He would often lie down on the ground

and examine what his hands raked in,

would ruffle dry leaves at his ears.

He, spurned, would stand atop coombs

and listen to the variations in the wind

for portents of war, peace, happenstance.

The Stragglers

Stragglers waited along the bend

like swept-in-heap leaves

bundled closely because of the wind

and the late, off-season cold.

We had seen such drama before,

but the trees' roots seemed to rake in

something other than dust.

Wild calla would have to be in bloom soon,

and snowbells promised a heady fragrance.

Outside these, nature seemed bland,

controlled, safely harboured in man's lap,

spring fuelling the sap leafwards.

An odd zeitgeist wafted from wide-open windows

along whirls of the burnt fat of bacon,

(every day felt like a Sunday morning)

elderberry wine and fresh toasts.

Great puddles of sunlight bathed the kitchen tiles

and bounced on glasses and glasses,

revelling in a high-flown morris.

The swish-swish of the sweeper grated the hours

which the town clock failed to strike,

infuriating the pell-mell stragglers.

Some were content with just staying put,

and silence had been requested a long time hence.

Rigor mortis wasn't such a bad bargain, after all,

though the wind made them more alive

than necessary, while the trees seemed unaffected,

albeit slanting slightly to the south.

Over a year ago, the last of the stragglers had smiled.

Unimportant as it appeared to the-then onlookers,

this never happened again, and things which happen

only once are worth jotting down,

both philosopher and carpenter say so.

So he had smiled and had fallen to the ground,

in an exact similitude of death.

There he lay still, covered in leaves,

unheeded by the other stragglers

who went on waiting along the bend.

They thought they were quite happy there,

and one of them had declared, one day:

“This is a good enough place to straggle.”

The tree under which they had settled

shaded them from the sun come Summer,

shielded them from the wind come Autumn.

Ravished their eyes in Spring.

Only in Winter would they truly be miserable.

They had been there so long

that they had quite forgotten

who it was they had walked behind,

and for what particular reason.

The leaders had long been gone

out of their sight, out of their mind.

Oddly, and by the same token,

was also put out of their mind

the very reason why they had halted –

probably somebody had wanted

to relieve their bladder against the aspen.

For all they knew, here was as good a spot as any.

But – and this was uncanny –

nobody had sent for them

nor had their number dwindled.

Odder still was that ensued no mayhem,

nor any resentment was kindled.

They had passed from walking to waiting

faster than can strike a bolt of lightning.

And it was generally considered no fault

of any who had left nor of any who was present.

Even though the situation had precipitated

a whole set of problems, from losing track of time

to hunger, to stiffness in the limbs,

to quick fits of boredom and hatred.

But they could rest, chat with the locals,

behold life answer about its many calls.

Yet they flickered like the leaves of the aspen

in the faintest of breezes ever,

their own breath seemingly shortened –

menaced by the slightest sweeper –

covered in dust, shame and light.

Under cover of language

Under cover of language

words lurk, in cobwebbed

nooks and dusty crannies

in the dark pits of the mind

like throbbing guts

munching, mulching,

digesting, breaking down

the amino-acids of concepts

the red cells of the consonants

and the tissues of the vowels

the blood in the syntagmatic veins

waiting for the faintest cut

to spill their dyscontent on the tiled floor

vomiting tropes

expelling unspelt words

sickness of the language which snaps, cracks,

malfunctions, disrupts and blocks

and – sometimes – wrecks

when it should plant – and hacks

when it ought to tend –

and what it doesn't make it mars,

what it doesn't build it ruins –

In every body in wait lie

apocalyptic words.

The lion and the lambs

"Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life."

Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1900 - 1971)

Fragment #98

Serenity in impending doom

quietude in the hurricane

light in the darkest gloom

hope in the harshest bane –

thus are the dragons

that in here loom.

N'oubliez pas

S'il-vous-plaît, n'oubliez pas de:

• le matin, ouvrir les persiennes
• changer de mes draps la parure
• poursuivre la lecture des Persanes
• vous occuper de ma manucure
• arranger mes oreillers
• me parler gentiment
• ne pas me réveiller
• cajoler mes sentiments
• changer l'eau des fleurs
• faire comme si de rien n'était
• penser à mon bonheur
• me faire profiter de l'été
• penser à mes richesses
• oublier mes défauts
• tenir mes promesses
• accueillir les nouveaux
• me tenir la main lors des injections
• masser mes jambes inactives
• faire de ma sieste une sédation
• me ramener au bord quand je dérive
• me dire qui est venu me voir
• m'assurer que j'aurai des visites
• au besoin rafraîchir ma mémoire
• au besoin les faire venir vite
• mettre de la musique en fond
• ignorer mes silences
• tourner mon regard au plafond
• vous armer de patience
• parler comme si je n'étais pas là
• faire comme si je n'existais plus
• faire comme si j'étais juste las
• parler comme si vous y aviez cru
• ne pas oublier de prendre les devants
• au besoin, ouvrir mes paupières
• vous assurer que je suis vivant
• le soir, éteindre la lumière.

Nombre de jours à vivre : 18

Nemigen

La vieille cité se traîne, hagarde et cruelle,

Dans les nappes de brumes qui émanent du fleuve.

Elle se souvient avoir dû faire un choix,

Il y a longtemps, alors neuve et belle,

Mais seules les conséquences et leur poids,

Quasi-posthumes, secouent ses articulations trop sollicitées

Comme une vile arthrose.

Elle était moins amère, avant,

Quand ses marbres étaient roses,

Même quand elle était au levant,

Même quand elle sentait le rance.

Il y a dans son air aujourd'hui

Des pestilences qui bouchent ses narines,

Une amertume qu'elle subit démunie,

Mais avec laquelle chacun se sent uni

Dans sa déshérence chagrine.

Soudain, d'une seule voix, elle se secoue,

Branle ses quais et ses dômes,

Exhume d'un coup quelques vieux fantômes,

Et comme une lionne harponnant au cou

Une vieille proie qu'on avait pensé morte,

Elle rugit d'une voix rauque et forte,

Un lambeau de chair en gueule,

Qu'elle vivante ne veut entendre plus

Ce mot entre tous si veule

Ce mot qui interdit tout salut.

La bouche en sang et secouée de sanglots,

La cité assassine se love de nouveau

Pour digérer sa pitance en ses sombres flots

Fière d'avoir retourné le mort en son caveau,

Une ultime fois, comme un pied-de-nez au sort,

Se vautrant un peu plus dans son malheur,

Un peu plus dans le souvenir d'alors,

Dans le ressouvenir de ses plus belles heures.

The Sea Peoples

No other graver matter

than a piffling presence

or a downright absence

of dialogue

than a definite pick

between null and void –

unfair to say the very least

on that damned old sea

yet even then there is our

leaning propensity

to steer downwind

right under the weather

where muted voices are heard

muttering of softened catastrophes

when we bailed out a leaking ship

with a punctured thimble

Attention! Attention! is cried

quite forgetting

the mere presence or absence

of ropes and pulleys

midst the roaring of the waves

we add insult to injury

tend to our wounds with handfuls of salt

furl the sails! is heard

unfurl the sails! is heard again

we don't know which order is right

or if we heard 'light' or 'fight' or 'night'

we sail on a sea of silence

we sail away

we sail a way

the wind howls and the sails,

half-unfurled in the confusion,

are off the barking gales

land ahoy! mirage ahoy!

daydreams pervade the wake

we ought not to drowse

there are skerries to be avoided

we ought not to

but our wakefulness is scuttled

by reveries in broad daylight

flooded by eerie sunbeams

– calenture on the prowl –

we have hearts of men nonetheless

stout hearts of men honed in deserts

sharpened on seas

bled by mad wenches

filled with bad rum and snuff

and now with rheumatisms

and prone to snuffling

ether does that to us

and under ether the least shard of light

appears as a dagger in the underbelly of the clouds

under ether the least drop of water

appears as a sky-engulfing sea

the least whisper a world-crushing typhoon.

Eager to make a name to ourselves

like the peoples of the sea back then

we had no other possibility

but to take to the ocean

and choose between the silence and the fury.