Known turbulences

"Writing poetry is the art of predicting where lightning will strike. Reading poetry is akin to stepping into a thunderstorm."

Me, teacher, writer (1979-)

The bee

Grandpa waved and waved his arms

as if the libeccio in a fit of madness

had turned him into a scarecrow.

The afternoon was still and breathless,

not a snort of wind, not a thread of cloud.

It was a bee which Grandpa

was franctically after.

It first buzzed about the table

when Granny brought the melon;

it reappeared from somewhere

when it smelt the grilled sirloin.

By cheesetime Grandpa was so red

that he grabbed his empty glass and

in one swift motion belljarred the bee in.

It was as surprised as any of us,

banging on the lightletting walls.

Wine trickled down and formed

a circle of red on the sunstained

plastic cover. All were amused but I,

I couldn't take my eyes off the scene,

the tragedy wrought in a second.

The cutglass patterns drew

crosses of light which seemed

to dazzle the insect.

After a long while it grew tired,

or it fell into the purple ring;

it drank or perhaps drowned,

tittered, its wings jerking slowly

refused to carry it further, or perhaps

they had crushed on the glass.

The bee circled the rim, sensing air maybe,

its antennae erratic, its head rocking;

perhaps still drinking, or choking

on the spirits trapped inside.

It remained motionless for a while.

Grandpa lifted his glass and filled it,

gulped half of it, his eyes on the bee.

Watching the bee, which lay here,

unmoving, playing dead I hoped.

I had also hoped it had left its sting

so that Grandpa would gobble it down.

Neither of these things were happening.

I looked up and saw him observe me.

Perhaps he had been watching me all along.

He took a paper napkin, scooped up

the dead bee with an unbrutal motion

of his gigantic hand, walked

in the scorching summer sun

to the patch of verbena,

dug a small trench,

dropped the bee in.

When he sat back down

only the disturbed flowerbed

and the circle of red

bore proof that anything

had ever happened here.

Dismembered

"We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection."

in Hallucinations (2012), Oliver Sacks, neurologist and writer (1933-2015)

Tinder is the night

Tu voulais pourtant le swiper à gauche

mais ton pouce était semble-t-il bourré.

Le mec te parle et putain qu'il est moche !

Dans quel pétrin tu t'es encore fourrée ?

Tu voulais celui d'avant, ou d'après,

d'autant que celui-là a l'air bien cloche.

Tu comprends pas comment tu t'es gourée,

même pas en rêve, c'est mort, grave il se touche.

Moins tu réponds et plus le mec s'accroche,

c'est tout toi de tomber sur un taré,

il a du croire que c'était dans la poche,

désolée mec, j'en ai rien à carrer.

Bordel, qu'est-ce qu'il attend pour se barrer ?

Il croit qu'il va se vider les baloches ?

C'est ta faute mais t'es pas désespérée.

Tu les sens venir bientôt, les reproches.

Tu rêves ou le type tente une autre approche ?

Il est teubé ou il le fait exprès ?

Il croit que je suis la mère de ses mioches...

Bon, OK mec, tu m'as bien fait marrer

mais il est grand temps de me supprimer,

je suis pas une fille pour toi donc décroche....

j'aurai toujours aqua-poney en soirée.

J'aurai toujours autre chose à faire : cinoche

course à pied, ou me coller une taloche.

Tu sais, ça nous arrive de s'égarer

mais mec on n'est pas que de la bidoche,

faut parler avant de s'énamourer.

Alors toi t'apprends à liker à gauche

et moi j'apprends à ne pas me gourer,

comme ça personne ne loupe le coche,

chacun de son côté pour mieux se marrer.

Deux jours de vrac

The constant hater

For some people hate is formol for the soul,

it keeps their blood flowing at a sure rate,

their death is postponed because they are cruel –

prolonging their life by prolonging their hate –

oft it's the last option available.

Great-grandma would have died decades ago

had she not hated us with all her guts,

slyly stoking her rage for it to glow –

loathing more familiar because love hurts –

but hating needs constant care lest it rusts.

Bitter as could be great-grandma hates on

but now she wants help to sleep the long sleep,

so when she finally asks her great-grandson

he ignores the kind plea and blames the grippe –

leaves her muttering to herself, alone.

Pausing to watch

Highways

Different pace

Flying the dunes

Giant rat chasing man

Cuneiforms

Blowin' in the sand

Not all clouds bring rain

Toes in the sand

A good few things started and ended here –

mom's ashes were dispersed in that same sea

which saw me almost drowning years later –

this is where I come back when I'm lonely.

A girl here guided my hand to her crotch,

another taught me all I know about fear,

life oft waited here to go up a notch –

a good few things ended and started here.

I learnt some relationships had a price –

a good few things ended forever here –

that journeys are more precious than their prize

for you can lose it yet still walk the pier.

Inherited things lay here unwanted

for I began to write before I came –

for here indeed a good few things started –

every time different, every time the same.

The ships still pass in the Bay of Biscay –

tireless winds churning sands, seas and thoughts –

a good few things were born or in decay,

here where clamour still the battles once fought.

Here my yesterdays and tomorrows blend –

suns set with rage and kind moons disappear –

aroused and alert looking for the rend –

perhaps all things are bound to happen here.

Couldn't be any more relevant than now

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell (1903-1950), Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Edited by George Packer, 2008)