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.

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.