Ben oui. Mon sketchbook pour le Sketchbook Project s’est égaré dans la malle, probablement près des douanes américaines. Évidemment je n’avais pas gardé de traces de toutes les pages. Voici de quoi il avait l’air de son vivant.
All these things we lose…
just like i’m gonna swallow tons
of snowflakes in the white night.
the city’s so wide and bright tonight
i know i’ll completely disappear
in it, and reappear lively in my bed,
in someone-i-don’t-know-yet’s arms,
in yet’s arms
i’ll be wet with snow
-men dreams, covered with
invisible messages the someone traced
on my sleeping skin, while i was busy
waking up
every single breath fainting in my dream.
then this someone’ll fade into the morning
whiter than the night if that’s possible
at all, after not finding egg whites in the
blinding and blinking refrigerator.
i’ll rise from this no someone’s land
that’s my bed. my cat’ll make cookies
on me just like i’m a piece of sheet
or something.
i’m a piece of snow, man, can’t you see?
can’t you see
me – rolling in crispy snow, yet to discover
this someone’s message on my skin that screams,
i wanna see you
AGAIN.
*** This poem has been written for dVerse Poets Pub, tonight about invisibility. Context: tonight is the Nuit blanche in Montréal (literally white night, a series of cultural events that last all night long in the city, and prevent its inhabitants from sleeping – as this is what the expression faire une nuit blanche means: to not sleep at all during a night. I cheated and slept in my poem, somehow.***
« on the other hand », she wrote
that’s easy to write
when you’ve got more
than one arm
to your clock
(am I being)
wise
or counter-clock
wise now?
or most probably just
right,
I mean just dead inside
my right arm,
with this heavy limb to extract
from under my pillow and
throw like
tons of feathers
but don’t worry death’s left
five tweeting fingers
with their right to live
and typing fever
tapping on the right
hemisphere
/it’s as if life took a turn,
freeing one half of me while running
to the other side/
(am I plainly
suffering or rather
discovering unused paths
from mind to sheet,
from wrong to right?)
I am.
*** This poem has been written for dVerse Poets Pub; you will have noticed that this week’s theme is « on the other hand », or seeing both sides of the coin. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost an arm, I simply sprained my shoulder almost 2 weeks ago, and therefore have had to find new ways to do things without my right arm.***
woke up to the whitest
tempest
of ideas,
lying still
pondering,
powdering as flakes
of love were falling down and I
should go get them quick —
groceries. food
for thoughts.
for tough
minds and hearts and
blinds
like mine. food for mines
(antipersonnel)
that I should avoid as well as heaps
of snow covering all peace
-fully —
i’m a weightlifter
of boots and hearts.
lost in white is
my way, as is yours,
and the moon
‘s
softness,
for this overwhelming screen is
weighing on my eyelids like
the heaviest tears of women before
and now
I have things to heave,
to ease —
ebbs. flows.
periods.
full
stops.
regular is only a word
some other people have invented
to make sure they control
their snowflake intake;
I am here lying
still
on a white surface,
waiting for the beautifullest
– irregular –
snowflake to drop
again
on my tongue,
again and again.
roses
i slip under the door, leaving
them to someone else’s care
as i don’t
mind
anymore
who’s left for me
tell me
as i wear ochre and black
every day that i’m walking
(through
a forest of skinned bodies)
naked
dead
(soul)
don’t talk to me i’m busy
mourning
i’m already in disguise
can’t you see?
i’m crying
silver
make-up
rivers
is it that
whoever drifted away from sight
is considered dead
by the whitest soul?
tell me ’cause
i’m innocent
and lost
tell me
who’s left for me
to cry for?
who’s left
to cry for
me?
i don’t care
i’m sipping tea, and
slipping rose petals under gateways
i’m going to walk through soon
when i had enough
of burying myself
under heaps of earth-
en ware
when i hit home
inside
my cry will let you all
know —
all.
*** Oh, and here’s the link to today’s prompt at dVerse poets pub! We had to take the colo(u)r wheel, and play with colo(u)r symbolism. Believe it or not as my poem is sad, but I had a lot of fun including colo(u)rs into it. Make sure you check out on a few other poets’ contributions too!
By the way the picture was taken by me (and instagrammed) during a walk in Old Montreal. I wish I knew who made this beautiful doorart. ***
Falling up.
This is what’s written on my new sky-blue no-sleeve
the one with clouds on
what I’m wearing is an exact reflection
of what I (think I) am
constructing
and words type themselves
gradually
across my chest,
burn it on the left side,
and leave handmarks
your hands
were sent to me by email
open wide and blank
like the pages I would have written on your back
if you had stayed across me in the mornings,
pages inked with this purple pen
that left a bruise-colored stain
on the other side of my heart
when I left you leaving me I
was
falling
afar
now I am
falling up,
rising in a sunny vest
over the clearest double rainbow
a 50-year-old had ever seen
but how can things be
so clear?
white on white
ink on ink
that is
the clearest of things
It’s a soppy Monday morning —
you’re wet with rose water, and
eyedrops have left prints on
the sacks under your eyes —
photocopies
are under way,
copies of mornings to come
as if you could copy the future
(but you’re pretty sure you can).
It’s a dirty Monday morning —
your glasses are chalk-white, and
you have to roll your eyes to see him
walk in &
forget his code
with the puppiest look —
right away you’d adopt a dog
next time you’re allowed to dream
(in your office, on the floor).
It’s a crazy Wednesday morning —
your hands feel empty without coffee, and
you’d have grabbed his – instead you
only said bonjour,
but your step was sure
as you ran upstairs, racing
after the trace of him & shame
of letting your dream out of your mouth
(but maybe his is close too).
It’s a blurry Wednesday evening —
you’re clearing your ears of student voices,
practicing your own je m’appelle
in your corridor head,
till he rushes out
& your blood rushes too —
eyebrows lifted like chapeaux,
as if you could copy a pretty man’s smile
(but you can, of course).
This is the year of dark and moist forests
of your smile piercing branches
when the moon is too big to see
what is really hidden
On a complementary day
yellow + purple
you lifted your fingers to say hi
they spelled victory
I read two, I read light
Two days before we had tea
yellow, red
if we are to give things their real names
2+3=5
just like they make purple
to my unbalanced eyesight
just like
they make sense
The coming year is one of sherbet
mango, strawberry
soft-colored on your palate
acrid on mine
because I am addicted to the brownish kind of
stories
As the moon decreases it shows
how much of ourselves
so that taste and color
can melt one into another
so that we can add numbers
to each other’s presence
***
Written for today’s Meeting the Bar, where Victoria C. Slotto invited us to write about synesthesia, which I have a very mild form (every digit has its color).
I am a lunar girl
every single one of my steps is lit
when nobody else’s is
when everybody else is
nighttripping
I am at work, gazing
into the past that’s
decreasing and the
future that’s all the same
– cause I know you all from the past,
where we’ll return to –
I am no sunshine girl
wearing more than half a suntanned face
at a time, taking off
sunglasses
even at night
singing
– cause you know how the song goes,
and how we used to be –
tripping
at the northeastern corner
of a circle that’s
hard to explain geometrically
just like
other things real
I am a lunar girl
whose nimble feet are lit, sandals
and pain
at the tip of my toes, dainty
– cause we all know how blessed light-
ness is
after dark nights of
increasing.
***
This poem was written for tonight’s dVerse Poets Pub, which is about trips. This week’s theme inspired me so much I had to scribble something and come out with it, even though I have a hard time editing and viewing my texts tonight – see you guys tomorrow for the reading and commenting part.
1.
Eyes
swollen
desire
2.
Tongue
salty
impulse
3.
Ear
malleable
crunch
4.
Buttock
resisting
manicure
5.
Thumb
swallowed
adulthood
6.
Labia
cloudless
minds
7.
Cry
pinched
innervation
8.
Heart
beaten
sheets
(Written for dVerse Poets Pub, tonight on short verse)
Hiroshimem 