pas un pas

within a mixture of heels where ankles bend and toes distend, the souls begin to grin and grind and they become a sound, a plea, the criers cry aloud and louder than they had before. their requests, all transient, i hear thereof, and sink. when morning spins them back again, their heels will click as they retreat. they run, they sing, they play a game with esoteric rules and never any spectators, but while i watch i play along. then the thoughts come, unnecessary, unappreciated, under cautious conscious and weighty bondage. (record) null (stop)

atteindre

blinking on and off, as if to get noticed. your extensions are admirable, but made with dead tissue. thereby, invalid. not even close, real, true, extant. stretch one more inch, and reach one more dead line. the line when wrought shall be ripped down, and down with it comes a wall with your highness. pain is nowhere around, not to be found. find that, i say, and find what you mean when you claim to exist. to recite, this plan is a second-class struggle, all the way to the paperwork, and the bent paper clips you employed as integration. pull one page off, one less frame, take one main. leaves fall soft and sound. not a word, not a sound, not a noise to be heard. not one person's hands got dirty with this work.

enfin

gonna stay 18 forever...

j'étais

you're close enough to touch, but i won't.
i'd rather keep you clean and pretty.
i sit, content to reminisce
on little bits of time, of my life,
idling minds, binding by their decline.
and i submit, as the west gets jealous.
cause i came undone, the sun was empty.
and now it's nothing, just like dust.
it failed us all, and we'd be grateful
for one more day of time, of light.

morceaux

ankles are breaking. the rain was grey like the mountain wind. what am i supposed to hold on to? say hello to hydrogen. characters and blood, nothing i can touch. the greatest dream come true is no longer enough. this is imaginable. this is wish fulfilment. this is a day, not a box that fits in my palm. if i concede defeat, can we please begin drafting our treaty? it feels good, feeling sorry for you.

embêtement

i have no patience left for your exasperation.

sentiment

it would be nice to feel a little less numb.

la différence

i study every language under the sun. none of these tongues has helped me much. i still can't sustain a conversation with anyone.

la réclusion solitaire

Today, I don't work.

I will do my laundry in the courtyard sink. I will then go to the café.

By administrative (or other) order, I must abandon the trunk. They proposed to me a cage in the building where the tired and peeling walls must shelter certain-someones in solitude. There was nothing to move: some clothes and some pictures; a bar of soap and a comb; a clothesline and some pins.

The Room.

A square box barely lit by a lightbulb that sticks to the ceiling. The coats of paint that are succeeded by themselves on the walls are flaking off -- they fall like little petals and become dust.

Four beds are stacked in twos. A high window...

The blond man with dark eyes woke me up. He offered me tea and figs, and we left for work.

Upon entering the building, they gave us the rules:

-- It is forbidden to have female guests;
-- It is forbidden to listen to the radio after nine;
-- It is forbidden to sing in the evening, especially in Arabic or Kabyle;
-- It is forbidden to slit the throat of sheep in the building;
-- It is forbidden to do yoga in the corridors;
-- It is forbidden to repaint the walls, to touch the furniture, to break the window panes, to change the lightbulb, to fall ill, to have diarrhea, to make policy, to forget to go to work, to think of coming to the family, ... to go out pajamas in the street, to complain of objective and subjective conditions of life, ... to read or write insults on the walls, to dispute yourselves, to beat yourselves, to handle a kinfe, to avenge yourselves.
-- It is forbidden to die in this room, in the confines of this building (go die elsewhere; at your home, for example, would be more convenient);
-- It is forbidden to commit suicide (even if we send you to prison); your religion forbids you, as does ours;
-- It is forbidden to climb trees;
-- It it forbidden to paint yourselves in blue, in green, or in mauve;
-- It is forbidden to circle your room on a bicycle, to play cards, to drink wine (not champagne);
-- It is also forbidden to ... take another route in order to return to your job.

You have been warned. We advise you to follow the rules. Otherwise, you will be sent back to the chest and the basement, then to an internment camp until you are repatronised.

In this room, I must live with the rules and three others: the blond man with the dark eyes, the dark-haired man with the merry eyes, and the third is absent. He was hospitalised because he had a headache.

ciel

we ascend today. floating up through nitrogen and breathing nothing but the sun. we ascend today. after all is said and done, we migh fall back to the sea and drown, or be absorbed by the flaming dawn. either way, it marks the end of something we frownded on. you know, i think you'll fall and i'll stay afloat up there, basking in the too thin to breathe air. the water waves swell up and swallow you, you, you become part of it then. neptune got jealous and spit you out on the sand. gritty sticky partlices clinging to your skin and hands that tried to hold you up. maybe you're dead by then, too dead to care. i'm still floating high above, in that golden misty air.

l'arbre

whenever we see these trees of green, and their children, seedlings, fleeing the earth, we want to be the same. grow so big and so tall and so fast that we never had time to look back. they were buried in the dirt so long, the cold unforgiving dirt is where they lived. that's what they called home. the light shines now, but might dry them up. they'll never learn what it means to be. they're deceased. how fortunate they've already a grave. let them rot and enhance the future generations. i will plant my hand, and grow a finger tree with finger nail leaves. the fruit will fall down and do things. and delicate surgeries. my finger tree broke its back and did no more dexterous deeds. all the death and plain to ensue is my fault. blame me.

ardent mirage

do i smell chestnuts ?

rampant

sometimes i wish i missed you a little bit more. i try to remember why you ever so lightly stepped across well-renowned boundaries, and acknowledged little towns you could have trod on. the weatherman says it's cold up there. he's never wrong, and i believe in him. i hope you bundle up tight enough to cut off the blood to your head. and while you lie dreaming a fantasy beyond our understand, i might pass by. i might leave you to lie again. i might let you die. if you're lucky i'll remember by then and euthanatise you quickly than mother nature had in mind. and that reminds me, i never show mercy to your lowly, daring kind. so, recall what you will, and spill out in spurts too short to comprehend themselves.

sous-titre

many times have i wished i had the maps invented. the distance we miss over hills and mountains is a little too much to handle with discretion or consider remotely useful outside sleeps and dreaming. my mouth's opening made it that much farther. my words pushed it that much. i never intended anything by acquaintance, instead we have the thoughts expressed and sentiments repressed. i wished for reunion with that stranger there that winter air that held us back across the rivers who froze into the coldest form of frozen. we then could wonder whether we would cross or not, rather risk the pennies in our pockets before our best left shoes. you would slide much faster like a blade unto the island in the middle.