Étiquette : english poetry

Rainiest year of my life

In the rainiest year of my life
It’s hard to believe I did not shed a tear…

Enough flood I should say
This sky needs no weepers
It mourns every day

Not one single drop
Have I cried on my own
The rain wouldn’t stop

Enough soak for this year
What is the point
Of adding tears ?

We’ve had a moist winter
Then a wet spring
And a humid summer
To match the autumn stream…

In the rainiest year of my time
It must be hard to believe
I could not shed a tear

Not even a sob
Have I spent over you
Or my departed friend
Or the world in flames
Over this age insane

When it feels too obvious
As you look by the window
Is there even room for sorrow ?

In the rainiest year of my life
According to my senses
And the weather statistics
We must be plenty
For whom the same sky
Yet speaks so directly
And should incline to cry

But I’m saving my tears
For the sunniest years
When I’ll see bright and clear.

(Painting by Edvard Munch)

When we show idiots too much respect…


When a society shows idiots too much respect,
It’s the warning sign it begins to accept
An increase in their type we can’t seem to neglect,
It’s a rising of fools over straight intellect.

And the more we concede our renewed interest,
Only broader it seals their right to profess
Any stupid idea, repainted as quest,
Any false claim or deed always stirring a mess.

How do we shut down a jerk in a free society,
When it makes a despot of who’ll bear the duty ?
It seems better we first check our own opinions
And beware if they turn in the wrong direction.

Otherwise, it’s a question of civil balance ;
All these grounds we give up on knowledge and science,
Only gaining the slightest of all conciliations :
We are losing on truth, for the sake of the nation.

When a citizen shows for ignorance respect,
It must be an alarm that we’ve come to accept
Our decay in culture ; and for lack of prospects,
How we made a failure of that « global access ».

It’s the freedom of fools in the shade of progress,
A minority’s rule forced on everyone else.
It’s the making it cool of that buffoon’s pretense.
And it’s taking the room of our most common sense,
When we show idiots way too much of respect…

When we show idiots way too much of respect.

(Painting : « The laughing jester » – anonymous -)

Reach for beauty


Reach for beauty
For the beauty itself
Not for the memory of beauty
Nor its fantasy

If you can stop your mind
From jumping to the next thought
Usually filled with longing or nostalgia
Then you can keep your feeling of beauty
From heading you straight to misery

Reach for beauty
And for the beauty only
So your remembrance of the sublime
Is never tainted with grief
Or insufferable missing
So your dreams and visions
Instead of turning to denial
Only stand for the desire
And impatience for grace

Let them be self-prophetic and fruitful
No more blame your unconscious so hurtful.
Let your mind’s eye precede the next perception of beauty.
It’s an appeal to your senses
As the light comes through your fences
If you reach out for the beauty
And for the beauty only
Then overall it might just be.

(Painting by Edward Hopper)

Every second lives on.


Every second lives.
Every second lives on.
Even when you think,
When you feel it’s gone
Every slice of time,
Out there is alive.

What if we considered the passing of our present
As a non-evolving process in fact…
While we are supposed to revive the moment
Purely by recollection, through memories.
But what if the human conscience
Was simply unable to treat more
Than a small portion of chronology,
And we had mentally adapted our limitation
By counting seconds, minutes, hours, days,
As a « lost forever » mechanism… ?
When in truth,
At least theorical,
Time is a whole.
And every year, decade, or century,
Happens simultaneously.

As if by self-preservation,
We had invented this past and future
To keep our minds from exploding
In a saturation of data,
And it’s a common ancestral denying
We share for the sake of the greatest illusion ever seen :

Humankind…
Life and death
Before and after
Memories and prospects
Coming from, moving to…

But every second lives on.
Whenever you mourn a dear and hurtful memory,
And you can feel it almost back in your present,
It’s just that it never died actually.

And the best or worst moments of your life,
Instead of filling a rather closed file
Upon the shelves of your brains,
Remain as a full and constant reality.

Without this so-called perception of time,
We’d go crazy.
Still, what if you’d rather go mad,
And let yourself be flooded entirely
With all you ever lived and will live ;
Wouldn’t it seem quite a better fate,
Than forever mourning the few seconds you regret ?

(Painting by Edvard Munch)

What do I get up for ?


The same question flies on every waking up :
What do I get up for ?
If it’s not any employer, any proper job
If it’s not a child, nor a family
If it’s no lover, no soul mate
Whom or what do I get up for ?

If it ain’t for a nation,
For a civilization
Not for my people
Not for war
Not for peace
What do I get up for ?

Every waking up is a nihilism.
It’s only when the day is done
That I can feel whom or what
I’ve been up for, living or aching for

Every waking up is a nihilism
It takes the whole day to believe in something
It takes a whole life _ if you’re lucky
To believe in someone.

(Painting by Edward Hopper)

For the sake of being, breathing, and feeling.


I want to enjoy
Enjoy singing, performing
Enjoy the search for a missing line
Enjoy your company
Enjoy that coffee
Any time
Enjoy the meal I’ve been waiting for
I want to enjoy
Every inch of sunlight
Every shade of dark and bright
I want to enjoy
Every natural thing
Like breathing
Or resting

And if it seems too much to ask for
Let me rephrase it :
I’m not talking of enjoying life
Or the human condition
In all its tragedy
To enjoy one’s meal
Is not an acceptance of life as it is
To enjoy a long breath
Is not a winning over death

I rage for what I’ve just lost,
Like sunset, good mood,
Perfect timing, appetite,
Mojo, social opportunities…
I rage about the stuff I can do something for
On a very daily basis
What is supposed to be simpler and easier
Unlike moving mountains
And God knows I enjoy moving mountains
In my humble scale
But I want to enjoy the power of standing at ease
Without any special purpose
Any urge to appease
Just for the sake of being, breathing, and feeling.

(Painting : Egon Schiele)

A vision of you at the counter

I saw you like ten years younger
In a flashing vision at the counter
With that same shy enigmatic smile
You used to give me back then
Always dimmed by sorryness

« Hey honey, it’s me again…
And I wish you hadn’t noticed me
I wish you never noticed me at all
In the first place »

« And I know you recognise me
Though not the same person,
But the same look
So familiar »

« How typical of you,
Not only typical of men, should I say,
Yet precisely you,
Who will search for the same gaze upon his destiny
Every five or ten years
The look that reminds you of someone else of course
Yet mostly, the look that makes you recognise yourself…

This is who you are,
Through my eyes
Who you were
And who you’ll remain »

I saw you like we’d always known each other…
It’s a lightning shot
I get those every day :
I recognise you in every corner
Of every street
Then I breathe deeper, shake my head
And know how easily confused I am again
I don’t need a scientific notion over this trouble
You say it’s more typical of me
Than most men
Well, good for them,
Good for them all.

It’s in the shadows of her face
The way these lights fall back on her nose
Much like yours under the same beams
Not the mouth though
And while she’s covered by two of her friends
It becomes even more puzzling,
As if the covering is intentional
Just to drive me increasingly nervous
I know she’s not you,
But I don’t want that pretense to be so finally revealed

Come on, let me see again
Just a glimpse,
Half of her profile
Oh, that pout she wears,
The tension in her cheeks
Like when the lips too long restrained
Push forward in the wait for speaking…

That’s you.
That used to be you.
And you’re crazy beautiful
Younger
Older
Taller
Smaller
I never really cared…
It’s the look
Always the look

(Painting by Egon Schiele)

A twin version of me (to keep you company)

  
People that I might frustrate or disappoint :
I wish I had a twin version of me,
Or even a whole serie
So you could find me available anytime,
In any of my usual spots
And I would always be open to conversation
Or just to hear you discharge your emotions,
All you had to conceal through a day’s work
And I would even consider beer as an option,
Whatever helps to make the connection.

People that I might avoid,
Or never seem to rejoin ;
I wish I had more extra-time or energy
Who doesn’t of course,
But there are those whom you don’t expect much from,
And those who make you seek their attention,
For they showed you once a little concern.

It’s out of respect for your assumption
That I pass up the chance of a discussion
You don’t want this tiny portion of my understanding,
You don’t want this micro dose of my empathy,
Or that I just pretend you have my sympathy.

And furthermore,
You wouldn’t want me to say it :
How much I don’t want your company
Not right now
If at all
Not every day, for sure
As for that clone version of mine,
It’s the same :
If I saw him once in a month, it’d be fine.

People that I might neglect
Or I seem perhaps to disdain ;
You’re allowed to condemn my failings
There are too many signals I cannot see
Or choose not to see
And it pains me when I realize
I could’ve only said one word,
Only spared one look,
Just to make you feel better.

But if you come to me as yet another prick,
Too drunk to calmly speak
Or to listen to your opposite,
Then you know the reason of your frustration,
And accept you deserve it.

Oh, and forget about this twin version of me,
He would neither answer your questions, really.

(Painting by Egon Schiele)

Life is a wound.

Life is a wound
But you can make it bearable
Make it feel enjoyable

All life is bearable
It only came out from a wound
So purely craving to exist
It tunnelled through the matter’s skin

Most life has to rip the surface
Of the matrix it was held inside…
It shoots out from the water
Breaches from the stone
It tears the shell apart,
Pulls out from the wombs

Most life has to rip the surface
To receive the light
Most life has to pierce in its race
To deceive the night

Within its nature itself,
Life is an open sore
It’s breathing in bleeds
Out through any pore

And you can see it tragical
Or you can sense a miracle
How we all came out from a wound

How we all came out from a wound

Which never scars, nor is immured
It is alive, it is injured.

(Painting by Pierre Soulages)