Archives des articles tagués poem
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Yellow

30 mai 2013 //
23

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).

20130530-171627.jpg

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

Toujours plus

19 janvier 2013 //
18

Here are a few more (see yesterday’s post) micropoems (haiku… or most probably senryu) in French. Tonight, at dVerse Poets Pub, we are allowed (even encouraged!) to write in another language than English. I then decided to write in my first language, French… and added a few Japanese words to them.

(I guess I should record myself reading them out loud like… right now and join the file, so that you can at least hear the sound of them. Sorry I didn’t provide an English translation this time.)

My reading out loud (open in a new tab)

Voici :

1.
Dans la ruelle
derrière le bar
l’odeur des croissants

2.
Ce monde
toujours plus blanc
il neige

3.
Deux adolescents
se racontent
leurs voyages imaginaires

4.
Le chawan* de mes rêves
imparfait
trop cher

5.
Lecture de haiku
au salon de thé :
issa nomi**

6.
Soir de tempête
les néons du cinéma
ciel orangé

7.
Sous la lune
impossible de mentir :
je suis une femme

8.
Il y eut une neige
il y eut une pleine lune
superpositions

9.
La théière vidée
puis remplie
un autre invité

10.
Dans l’arbre gelé
les pépiements redoublent
aware ari***

11.
Gomme balloune
qui attrape la langue
couleur de pantalon

* A chawan is a bowl made especially for tea-drinking.

** Issa is/was a haiku master. His nickname literally means ‘one tea’, ‘one cup of tea’. The noun nomi means ‘drinking’.

*** Aware is a feeling of compassion, or sensitivity to the ephemeral nature of things. I thought it interesting that it writes the same as the English word aware. (Ari simply means that it’s there.)

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Catégories Français, Pouèmes

Blank new

1 janvier 2013 //
12

A New Year’s come,
and all I’m left with
is uncertainty and holes
to fill my days with.

Every hour is
too simple,
every minute is
too deep

I lose myself in time.

The night’s back,
and all I have with me
is blank ink and virgin sheets
to write my fate on.

Every silence is
too slow,
every step is
too resounding

I multiply myself in them.

The same yearly thoughts are
there, though I don’t wear any-
thing but white – snow
white, to be cold in.

Every snowflake is
too unique,
every footprint is
too detailed

so

I melt
my self
in snow

this year
I
vanish anew

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

Microprepared

24 novembre 2012 //
12

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

— William Butler Yeats

 

I am foreseeing things

You are foreseeing things

Who is ahead?

 

My back to the past

My forehead to the future

I am facing my heart

 

My head is full with

Both the best and the worst cases

A new scenario unfolds

 

You are afraid to die

From fear of dying from fear

Alone in your head

 

Meditating, you think

You are getting prepared

To live in the moment

 

I must prepare to write

A poem, I thought

But it was already finished

 

 

* Those are a few notes — micropoetry style — on the idea of preparation, which is dVerse Poets Pub‘s theme for today. I borrowed the quote from them, and it inspired me to write about the — sometimes — foolish nature of preparation.

And for those of you who read French or like beautiful objects, please check out my offer — it lasts until the end of the world, due Dec. 21st. *

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

Just another purple bunker

3 novembre 2012 //
16

20121103-190820.jpg

Her heart on the brink of
exploding concrete
she wanted to fight through
the woman in her
the bramble on her
but she counted her colours
as blessings instead.

White
her knuckles as she ruffled
depleted bones
and their crushed leaves.

Brown
a lock catching her wild eye
her least favourite colour
her own hues.

Yellow
her envy of bright gold
bullions in her pockets
to ground her in oolong leaves.

Red
the heart of the problem
sowing too many beats
around the saddened bush.

Purple
her head blossoming
in all different directions
violet – was she dancing.

Black
her sleep so tight and dear
a grip of delusions and falls
on top of her world.

And back to white
morning light that saw her temple
shining through her bark
who was she now

who was she not
risen from a day of painful strokes
on her inside skin
and left gazing at another reflection
of her own tortured being
on the sky’s infinite
openness?

*Contribution to dVerse Poets Pub – Artwork by SueAnn*

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

The Best Bottles

25 août 2012 //
23

Bottles by Borg de Nobel / http://borgeous.wordpress.com / used with permission /

The best bottles remain hidden deep down in history
of the self-
contained people and words, self-
contempted.
Sometimes they do come back floating
(because they’re obviously empty
of liquor and passion)
and when they cross the line
between white lies, dregs, and what-
ever lies beneath
your breath charges itself
with flavors you thought you had already let go of.
Red is the background to your battle
and is the path to reclaiming your head.
Red is the look you give whenever you focus
on the box of your life that you opened,
screwed,
and puked on your own shoe-
shore.
There are bottles we might as well
keep locked under the sea
with their words and labels in and on
and run away from the beach
as there were better tomorrows
stored in glass somewhere
for us to take home.

* Thank you to dVerse Poets Pub and their prompt for today, Borg de Nobel‘s work. Please have a look at their websites. *

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

Per se

11 août 2012 //
32

This has been a mascara-thick day
I covered my face with a domino
only half fulfilled
yet my lips in bloom

All day long I have been trying
to protect myself from your echo
eardrums half pierced
by midnight sounds high

Waiting in a wagon as sweet
as a ride in the dark with neon
stars plastered around
and lips singing tight

I have to conceal everything
but I do burst sometimes, and I did
leave murmurs, heart
broken laughters in air

Had I a cigarette I would gaze
at its lit butt till my holes for eyes
are damaged again
yet there’s the moon

And now she’s making up for lightness
with a shower of Perseid lights
perfidious heartstabbers
rotten leftovers

With my acid smile and moon-drenched
blackholes I look at changing cities
and the midnight rain
fades both our colours.

*** This poem has been written with M83’s Midnight City in my earplugs – memories of rain and light – full moon still impeding my… normality? – full moon still working shifts on me. I hope you see a star fall. If not, at least you have many beautifully sad poems to read, here at dVerse Poets Pub. Oh, and by the way, the pic was modified with Instagram, again. ***

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

#poemsforpets

8 juillet 2012 //
0

Il y a de cela un mois déjà, je m’embarquais dans la folle aventure du 20-Day ArtGift Challenge du fantastique AndHeDrew juste pour voir. Je devais donner une oeuvre d’art par jour, de préférence à un inconnu. Bon, j’ai plus ou moins respecté cette seconde partie, finissant par en donner la moitié à des amis slache connaissances.

Mais j’ai quand même pilé sur ma fierté de fille qui veut être lue mais pas dans sa face, et j’ai donné, de même, des haïkus souvent inspirés par la personne elle-même et ce que mon fouinage m’avait permis d’obtenir : titre du livre lu, sujet de la conversation au cellulaire, etc.

Ça a marché en maudine. Les gens étaient contents. J’ai eu des superbes conversations. Pis en plus, un poème (assez) bien écrit sur une fiche cartonnée, ça fait un maudit beau signet.

Je suis rendue accro (quoique toujours aussi gênée au moment du don), de sorte que j’ai décidé de continuer sur ma chire – et même d’en virer une plus solide encore. @Josianes m’a demandé un poème pour mettre sur son chien, et évidemment, j’ai immédiatement accepté. Je pense qu’y a pas que les humains qui méritent de s’orner de beauté (lire : je n’approuve la mode pour animaux que lorsque c’est BEAU).

Résultat : j’ai lancé, il y a de cela 15 jours, la série #poemsforpets (vous l’aurez peut-être vu passer sur Twitter, FB ou Instagram). Après avoir vu une photo de l’animal et eu quelques infos sur lui (son âge, son nom bien sûr, son caractère), j’écris un haïku (en français or in English) pour lui et son maitre. Pis je vous l’envoie par la poste en plus… tout cela au même prix que l’affection de votre pitou-minou-chou, c’est-à-dire rien. Ben, rien pour la seule place qui reste. Après, ça va changer.

Voici quelques exemples (rendus plus beaux grâce à Instagram) :

Pour le Winston à @Josianes

For @alimisses’s Igor

Pour Grégory Charles et Marlon à @annakarenine

Écrivez-moi un commentaire ici ou sur Twitter (@meme_aimee) si vous en voulez un.

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Catégories English, Français, Giveaway, Pouèmes

100 Buttons

30 juin 2012 //
16

In these five hundred days she
has learnt how to button up
and down, down, down.
One circle at a time, slowly,
painfully, she would get rid of
words that she thought defined her
self, on, and on, and on.

Sometimes the thread was off the hole.
Sometimes the plastic marked under her nail
like a bite at some body part
she had forgotten she had.
Sometimes one edge was off the other
like envy had swallowed up
eyes she had forgotten she had.

She kept stripping anyway
layers of clothes, on the floor
her feet felt no more sure than they were.

She kept ripping anyway
layers of skin, under her nails
what was once bitten was no more – oblivion.

What was she flashing about?
What was she fleshing about?

Sometimes the breast was off the shirt.
Sometimes the strap marked down to her collar
bone bitten by her own body
she had forgotten she had.
Sometimes one sex was off the other
like lust that had followed up
but – she had forgotten she’d had

those five hundred days.
She had learnt how to live up to
expectations and down, down.
One cycle at a time, painkillingly,
heartbreakingly, she had gotten to the rim of
words that would always define herself
and them, hem, hem.

*** Poem written for dVerse Poets Pub. You might have got that the prompt was ‘buttons’… That was my version of it, together with a -sadly expressed- celebration of my 100th post on Hiroshimem. Please don’t be mistaken, I’m actually quite happy that I was able to write so many posts. Thanks to everyone who read and slash or commented. Feedback is always appreciated. ***

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Catégories English, Pouèmes

Two Months (a first translation of)

16 juin 2012 //
21

October

The wind still smells the same
and brings nothing
but all my memories in one shot
down the gust, down my guts.
Time is flying inside me
one shot, strong spirit
drawing back my stomach
from under the soils.
Another internal flight,
another domestic crawl.

January

The cold still feels the same
and brings home
a suitcase that’s heavier than me
starting now
snow will punch holes in me
will patch me with holy
sheets
shared from winters in.
Love organs:
another all-white horizon,
another night on the sofa.

October

If it hasn’t killed me leaving
will have worn out
my string of days, so fragile
of a hundred twenty five million hai‘s
before my eyes. What’s close
is not even able to make it
-self another place among them,
another pace among traps.

January

If it hasn’t awakened me coming home
will have called me again,
recalled the string of years, the knots, the ribbons
and balls behind the sofa.
Being back is leaving again
in the past, in the vast
nothingness that’s pretense of nostalgia
that my eyes sniff in those cities of yes‘s
and yet without finding
anything else than wanderlust,
anything else than punishment.

October

Deliberate, my exiles stick
a bar into my mouth
a nail into my foot
and my other, rusty.
Every cure will have to be
geographic, metallic.
There’s an earth spinning around me,
months pass but don’t stop.
Other red leaves straight in my teeths,
other dead words rummaging in.

January

Deliberate, my escapes smash
a shot of wine down my throat
waste this body that’s suffering
too much alcohol.
Strangled memories,
estranged futures.
« Paris is spitting on us », he said
with love in his eyes
and am I not also
just another nostalgia hunter,
just another raincloud stirrer?

*This poem has been published in its original French version in the magazine La Tribune juive. I am still working on this English translation, but because the theme of this week’s dVerse Poets Pub is exile, I thought I could share it with you.

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Catégories English, Pouèmes
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