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.

Undo the day

Undo the day that I met her

Ravel her mysteries, cipher

Her tongue and uncurve her hips

Conceal her smile and whiten her lips

Let me live the grisly days of unfete

When I thought I was controlling my fate

Before I heard these two luring voices

Before I faced two unnerving choices.

Before this time, I was an empty shell

But I was whole in a soothing hell.

Sadness kept me quiet and calm

Nurtured in night's solacing balm.

Now love robs me of sleep and cheerfulness,

Blands the food and swells the restlessness.

Please, undo the day that I met her,

I hate to have to face this mirror.

the sworded hand

– the sworded hand –
– with spider-like fingers –
– and hale, accurately-trimmed fingernails –
– gripped like a prolonged member of the body –
– unnerving magnitude of meticulous, methodical death –

 

Diamond

Of all geomatrical shapes

diamond surpasses quartz

minutest precision of angles

determined a hundred million years afore

and an hour ago by the diamantaire

as the lesser hour is ticked off by his wristwatch.

 

Circle within circle

Leeway north of the wind

Intercostal access to the core

Too much leeway

Sleepless rosary of stars

Immobile latitude

Pellicle of pearly fog

Such roaring canticles

Ringing clearly as morning bells

Shortness of exhaled breath

Strands of hair loitering near your face

Heaving respirations of the night

Nigh your shoulder

Cooling down the heat of debate

Acts of love like bottles thrown at the blue

With desperate foreboding messages

Smashing into rain

Into speechless clouds

Chronosensitivity of ideas

Uncipherable sentiments

Light weighing only the impetus of its speed

Trickling down your throat

On a mother-of-pearl morning

Through your bedroom window

Where we still embrace

On the threshold to good or evil

Shattered pieces of self everywhere.

Hellespont

At last, here on the shore of the Aegean sea,

Stranded like a stranger, dishevelled yet alive,

Sand in my mouth and hair, lying among debris,

Her heart's pulse like an echo that I can't revive,

The memory, cherished for too long, is now gone,

On this Thracian shore, as I lay torn, by doom drawn.

 

There

Today got me to face the question:

why ever should I go there?

“Because –” said an interior locution.

I clammed it up before it could blare

anything that might be unfair,

anything that might hurt.

Like I have any voice.

Cowering under destiny's quirt

lashing at my back

offering Hobson's choice

whack whack whack

rolling in the dirt

all beaten blue and black

time would dally dally dally

I have to go there

willynillynoshillyshally

because there's one question

one question only

and its solution

its lonely solution

all along –

was there.

 

What Really Irritates Me in Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 4

Thank you, Cécile, for putting me back in the saddle! It has been a long while since I last posted in this section, and now my notebooks are full to the brim. High time I relieved them of their atrabilious content.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Poodles, here comes...

What Really Irritates Me in Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 4

Aaaaah poodle, how do I love thee? I love thee not, indeed, but I love thee anyhoo for pawing me the material to my cantankerousness! How have I missed thee? I have missed thee not, of course.

The ostentatious joie de vivre these quadrupeds effortlessly display when they greet anyone borders on the indecent. Wait, it IS indecent. Why do they frolic about as if they'd found a pot of gold? I know every dog does that, but not to the extent poodles do, and not with a certain relish at their own excitement which make their eye lustre...I guess the absence of survival instinct must be accounted for. On a different topic, I heard recently that the smaller the breed, the longer they live...dear Lord, protect us from tininess.

A good friend of mine directed me to a silly page on the Net (http://www.funfacts.com.au/cachi-the-killer-poodle/4/) The story has it that a poodle named Cachi fell from the 13^th floor onto a woman's head, unexpectedly killing her in the process. A passer-by was hit by a bus whilst beholding the stunning scene, and all this foofaraw caused a man to have a heart attack. This...article, for lack of a better word, is highly dubious and probably means to poke fun at an unfortunate series of events. Made me raise an eyebrow, I must admit. Because I believe that the said poodle must very well have been trying to greet the woman below with a well-deserved hug, and must have greatly misjudged the distance. I don't think this is beyond their capacity. Doesn't say if the dog survived, though. Tough little blighters, might have, for all I know.

It does seem I can't get enough of poodles, doesn't it? Well, believe it or not, I still haven't exhausted what seems to be an antediluvian hostility against them. But let's move onto other things which nark me to no end, for if I don't do it here and now, it'll start growing on me...and I'll turn into my great-grandma, which will be way more unfortunate than Cachi hurtling down on someone's head.

I recently joined a dating website. That wouldn't be such a great deal if this hadn't sparked a helluva lot of concerns. For instance, why on earth must fifty to sixty percent of all the pictures in there show a woman, age ranging from 18 to 50+ with

• rounded or pouted lips
• her index and middle finger held in a V shape near said mouth
• rounded, glittery eyes
• heavy make-up
• tilted head
• a blinding flash?

There should be a limited number of selfies allowed. I know that the first selfie to be shot was achieved by a certain Robert Cornelius back in 1839 (more accurately a daguerreotype), but man, why would you lovingly debase yourself in such a fashion? I know ridiculousness never killed anyone, and that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but ridiculousness DOES NOT MAKE YOU STRONGER AND NEVER WILL. This syllogism is a complete fallacy.

I understand the selfie-in-the-mirror trick though, for obvious, pragmatic purposes. But please, PLEASE, do pay attention to what's in the background! We don't want to see knickers scattered all over the place (actually we do), dildos (true story), a kitchen sink full to the brim with dirty dishes (another true story) or the general mess you live in. Which could easily make me rant against pictures of men sporting a dubiously immaculate whitish tank top over a dubious/sculpted/tattooed build, but as I haven't seen them myself, I'll deal with them hollow men later.

Something else which peeves the bejesus out of me is when I look up at the profile of a woman and it says...nothing. Just plain as day : Such-and-such – I can't discuss pseudonyms...I consider this way below the belt because they range from the purely pathetic to the downright ludicrous and/or ridiculous, though inventiveness ought to be lauded – well, Such-and-such hasn't filled in her profile yet. She's been on this site for six months, and she hasn't had time to write a single word? You kidding me? Too busy trying to take the right selfie? Duh. Sometimes a woman visits your profile, “likes” it, and you visit hers, as common courtesy wills it: no picture, no personal description, no desiderata. How do you want us to react to this buffet? How should we judge your “likeability”? What in this vast ocean of nothingness would trigger us to “like” your profile and make us think we would match?

Last diatribe and then I'm out for the day. However we lonely men appreciate the efforts some of you lonely women put into self-portraying your pushed-up cleavage, your long, spotlessly-shaved legs, your fluttering eyelashes and your smouldering look...we don't quite understand why you take the pains to specify in your description that you really DON'T want us to choose you because of your looks or to think you're superficial. And sunglasses, when worn, have that irking tendency to cover a part of the visage I tend to be interested in – but that is the sunglasses' fault, not yours, right?

See you soon for another piece of rambling harangue!

*keeps mumbling*