Tuesday, 16 July 2013

Les harpies



Les harpies planent en cercle sous un ciel de coton
Leurs cris me parviennent dans un souffle de vent
L'air chaud à trancher au couteau
La sécheresse fait craindre le feu de brousse
Dans chaque buisson des criquets bruissent
Et cavalant comme des folles là-haut
Elles jouent à se jeter de serre à serre le corps d'une enfant
Leurs sordides gloussements me donnent des frissons.

Les voilà caquetant, la mère implorant,
Mais l'on ne retrouvera rien, pas même du sang,
Ou seuls de fins lambeaux de vêtements
Voletant dans l'air nébuleux du matin
Qui témoigneront encore quelques temps
Du passage des harpies sous un soleil de satin.

T ∩ X, Y, Z


"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth."

H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Monday, 15 July 2013

Blessed are the poor in spirits


"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

Sunday, 14 July 2013

Ficstitious



“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, writer (18350 - 1910)

Insincerity is to genuineness what zirconium is to diamond


"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

Thursday, 11 July 2013

. . .


Eyes follow dot-dot-dot
Tongue touch lip
Shaky pencil birth dinosaur

Intellectual eremiticism


"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude."

Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Intellect vs Senses


"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."

Susan Sontag, author and critic (1933-2004)

Skyscraper

 
I am the world disincarnate
no sound no taste
no sound
no taste
and my spirit rises from the molten tar
skin and bones slightly ajar
slithers past the turds of the dogs

the masses used to revere me as a god
haze among haze I brush past elbows
the space between people narrows
and I pass through the passers-by
and I hover shoulder-high
and I gaze in people's gaze
and the smouldering heat anaesthetises
them their blank stare akin to a tundra desert
inert, so inert
lighter than the air full of mosquitoes
I shell heads by the thousands
like a shower of torpedoes
yet with the net weight of inverted mountains

and I quasar in the glare of the sun
quasi-mirror to its reflection
I skim along the shard of lights which
shake me, shake me
Skyscraper

I remember a Mongol king whose eyes
pierced the distance like the falcon's
and he squinted when I blurred the horizon's line
and even then he doubted,
that I am as old as the sun

ghost, I am a ghost,
and they're the host,
glutting on the Fausts,
and their faults

and the skyscrapers like lances
and I like a harpoon of light
pierce in deadly dances
men's eyes kept in dreary human night

Haiku

leafblower season ablast one path, uncleared still, invites the pace on singing, saffron ginkgo leaves