The Dancer

She dances, oh she dances

she tiptoes away in echoes

Her blue cotton dress is

a murmuration of sparrows

she darts and she flits and she comes

She forgets where she chances from

But not a glance, not a glance

In her ears ring sweet folk songs

so she dances and in her dance

swallows and waves in throngs

like tumbling pebbles on the shore

crashing and crushing and drowning

the shells, the music, the troubadour

Her quick legs flash like arrows

lance the wind like thunder

She whirls and swirls and she sees

the quiff lip of the cliff ahead

where every step stops to tread

And in one, two, quick embraces

kisses the ground she just left

And dances, oh, she dances.

Monster

I am the opposite of a monster:

I do not show myself to anyone.

I stay in the dark of my den,

I watch, I stalk, I conquer.

I do what everyone dreams of.

I listen and observe and wait:

I am early when others are late.

I do not hate, I can only love.

I am not what you think I am:

for I prefer the comfort of obscurity

to the dangers found in the city,

with its scoundrels, its thieves, its shams.

The art I practise you never discuss,

for you refuse to acknowledge.

Yet you can’t say that I make a fuss:

I’d rather remain at the light’s edge.

In the black of the streets,

my artifices open the minds:

I am the one-eyed leading the blind,

awake where everyone sleeps.

I am not the monster you think of:

I run deeper than your deepest thought,

what I do I do it for love:

I am that which you once fought.

I am in the hiatus, at the edge of sight,

only to be seen peeking between the slats.

Exiled by day and obscene at night:

navel of the world living among the rats.
 

The line in the sand

The line in the sand

I had to draw

was like the thin shadow

on the ridge of the dunes

when the sun starts mowing down

the world around

when the darkness looms

the line in the sand

I should have drawn sooner

was like the sleepless

possibility of chaos

of living on a fault line

the line in the sand

spiral poor and mean

sour and lean line drawn

with a flotsam stick

splitting the drowned

from the quick

that line in the sand

for us signalled

a mine in the sand

that would explode

and slay us both

the line in the sand

freshly-dug furrow in constant shadow

flanking dunes made by the hoe

like a toothless gum in a parchèd mouth

the greatest divide in that land

in which everything has gone south

so I drew a line in the sand

and we kept on either side of it

enamoured adversaries

who could and couldn't stand

on the one side of the pit

because someone buries

because someone had to quit

because someone must be banned

that damned line in the sand

estranged us, strangled us

for you it was a curse

because you didn't doubt

for me it was the ticket out

of that bloody wasteland

So I left behind the line in the sand

still drawn on that strand

marched on down the road

by walking away from you

my heart heavy and my head bowed

but with the steady stride

of someone who has gone through,

who knows it was the right thing to do.

 

Straight in the face

"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it."

Hunted Down (1859), Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870
 

Home Alone

"On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone."

Janis Joplin, singer-songwriter (1943-1970)
  

When the night

When the night finally manages to lie still

heard are the trains rolling over the sleepers

slow heartbeat rumbling across the city – dadum dadum –

necessary toil in the necessary dark – dadum dadum –

obvious sleepers booming through the slithering lights

an even resistance against the order of things

– dadum dadum – dadum dadum –

as the night inert shepherds the weak into her lap

the industrious secrets follies, passions and weariness

collars up their feelings against the cold – dadum dadum –

somehow warmth to be found nearer the bodies

and no longer in the broad daylight of – dadum dadum –

– dadum dadum – legitimacy belongs to the wolves

– dadum dadum – where make-believe sleepers

lie still lest they stir up some restless memory

– dadum dadum – and petrified – dadum dadum – let it

steal their soul – dadum dadum – dadum dadum – dadum dadum –

The Chest

That's a broken piece of furniture

which, missing a leg

jams the drawers and the doors –

rendered useless.

Moved from corner to corner

until it no longer fits

out of fashion

out of usage

hauled to the attic or the cellar –

too sturdy to easily yield to the axe

once had too much value to be burnt –

so leave it then;

broken heirloom too cumbersome to change house

only to change hands without being touched –

so leave it there, then.

The house will go down when it does,

surviving that very house perhaps.

Why did that leg go –

those who could have remembered are long gone –

but the chest, stayed.

 

Take a pill

happenstance happened quietly

nobody yelled or beat their chest

no drama really

it was as easy as the dull rest

like an over-the-counter-morning-after pill

for minor catastrophes

just as things went downhill

up went the fees

no one cared though, it was mesmerizing

so much chaos so superbly orchestrated

a caprioling murmuration of starlings

in the vespertine dusk 'fore the endless night

we let it happen because –

no point trying really since –

something without no real cause

no real consequences

would we remember it years from now

would we remember the when and the how

best be buried with the whole shebang

lest it start growing a sharp set of fangs

 

Le grand cambriolage

Sometimes I wish somebody broke into my flat

and burgled everything – even the books

even my clothes – nothing even to be sat

and nought but dust sheeping in the nooks.

I'd then be homeless and run with the gale

cross deserts and all them little brooks

I've been dreaming of as if the grail –

I'd then be free from everything that hooks.

I frankly don't know what's pinning me down here –

everywhere I seem to be turning my looks

I see nothing but madness tier upon tier

I see nothing but what the mind snaps and crooks –

Yet everyone content with the same outlooks

– only I at peace with what reality brings –

while all seem arrayed in ready-to-burn stooks

while all see the essence in booze, drugs and flings.

Sometimes I wish somebody broke into my flat

so I could finally shirk off this pack of rooks

and go my own way for this isn't my combat –

to each their own fading bliss in their own fading books.

 

Games

Children play-pretend they're adult

playing dead

because there's nothing else to do

every day

at four on the

gameless playground

mirror shards beaming

like a sniper's red dot on the forehead

killing on sight

no cover, even in the dark of

the abandoned shack –

recreational death

mimicking that outside

the other one the adults play

and can't stop talking about

dismembering locusts

recreating death

because pain is not felt

but it feels good to bring it

– heck yeah it does –

perhaps even going as far as

dancing around the carcasses

because rituals have to start somewhen

and all those black threads

covering everything

all stemming from the one broom –

children feel like witches

riding the dark night –

it covers the sounds

muffles your footsteps

no-one can hear you or

the kite-runners of Karachi

– we know what happens to kite-runners:

they either get caught or thunderstruck –

children hopscotch from earth to heaven

sometimes on shards of botched buildings

crudely chalked on the patched playground

the game is avoid stumbling

over the pitfalls, over the graves –

to be underground is to be forgotten

if only until after the living's to return –

no children game is ever innocent

and the adults play-pretend children

contradict in terms:

children playing grown-ups

and adults pretend they're Peter Pans

because too much reality isn't fun, right –

the preferred oblivion of

a doll which will obey our every wish

a delirious dance in a nightclub

the costumed thrill of a carnival

no game is ever innocent

aiming at some lower point

the elusive in-between

where everything comes to life –

sometimes a squeaking, squawking bike

endlessly circling in a closed patio

and a little imagination is all it takes

– but is that even innocent now –

Exposition “Jeux, rituels et récréations”, Gare Saint-Sauveur, Lille, 2017