En roues libres

En roues libres du haut de la rue
Le soleil levant et la tour Eiffel à l’horizon
Le vent doux et chaud sur le visage
Les yeux qui s’embrument
La rue désertée de voitures
La ville à peine éveillée
Résonne de la musique du soir
Les amoureux d’une nuit assis sur les marches
Se demandent où aller
Chez toi, chez moi, chacun de son côté?
Les derniers restaurants qui ferment
Les premiers cafés qui ouvrent
L’odeur des croissants qui cuisent
Les ouvriers du matin attendent
Le dernier bus de nuit
Me regardent passer avec envie
Insouciante, légère et grisée par la vie

Chassé-croisé

Dans le 1^er RER du jour levant
La chaleur et la puanteur
Étouffe les voyageurs
Le mélange est hallucinant
Une marrée de visages noirs
Quelques fêtards
Tous en attente de leur lit
C’est lourd, ça pèse
On rêve
Je te sais de la nuit
Moi du jour
Toujours
On ne fait que se croiser
J’imagine ta vie
Quelles sont tes envies ?
Je t’ai vu me regarder.

En miettes

Le bouc majestueux me casse
Comme un biscuit mon corps est démembré
En morceau
Piétinée par ses sabots
Je deviens poussière

De la terre sort une lumière
Energie pure qui m’envahit
Je ne suis plus corps
Mais je suis encore
Je suis énergie

Je ressens tout avec intensité
Mais je n’ai pas la sensation d’être ancrée
Je pleure toute la tristesse de ma vie
Les larmes coulent et me ravivent
Je m’accorde cette émotivité

Je me concentre
Les miettes et la lumière se mélangent
Je me lève, réconstitutée
Je redeviens corps, remembré
Prête à revivre, plus rien ne me dérange.

Slavery

Slave I am no more
but I still feel sore
from the scars
of lives behind bars,
of those before me
that have made me.

It existed yesterday.
Still exists today,
from poor Africa
to middle class Europa.
Northern Sudanese selling their Southern brothers.
Haitian maids made slave to French doctors.

How can humans steep so low
as to not care about another fellow?
So hat off to those who look for a solution
to counter this aberration.
But dangers await
Those western mates
who hatch plans that unintentionally
Profit those that soil humanity.

Amour fois 7 moi non plus

Lundi matin
L’ennui de la vie
Me sert à la gorge
Besoin de me secouer
Recherche d’une cause d’amour
Je veux aimer

Mardi soir
J’ai peur de mourir pour rien
Le chien des voisins est plus aimé que moi
Je ne dois pas m’apitoyer
Je me penche sur des amour écrits
Je veux fantasmer

Mercredi après-midi
Accumuler un savoir égoïste
Ne sert qu’à me nuire
Mène à un amour arrogant
Je t’aime un peu
Mais mon fantasme plus

Jeudi
Je veux vivre
Découvrir une grande cause
Développer un amour violent
Je veux être désirée
Je sors te chercher

Vendredi dans la soirée
Folie de jouissance
Déesse de l’amour
Je me perds dans ton corps
Je t’aime beaucoup
Tu m’aimes encore plus

Samedi matin
Ce n’est plus un rêve
Amour opportuniste
Tu me déranges
Je réclame ma liberté
Soulagée par l’attente passée

Dimanche après-midi
Emportée par la violence de mon désir
Un peu seule aussi je te relance
Mais en fin de compte je suis dégoûtée
Marre de mes fesses, de ma face, de mes facéties
Je ne t’aime pas et moi non plus

Même pas peur

même pas peur
de ne plus être en crise
de me faire plaisir
de lâcher prise

même pas peur
de reconnaître ma valeur
de savoir ce que je veux
de ne plus me voir comme une laideur

même pas peur
d’accepter que ça ne va pas
de te faire mal
de t’expliquer que je n’ai plus de désir pour toi

même pas peur
de vivre pleinement
de ce qui se passe dans ma tête
de rêver tout simplement

même pas peur d’être positivement moi

Saying goodbye

I wish saying goodbye wouldn’t affect me
I wish I knew how to part easily
Why doesn’t it come naturally?

When it’s time for me to say goodbye
I feel lost, sad and want to cry
Yet I’m brave and stay dry

I have to make a date for another time
Find an excuse to delay the deadline
Pretend that it’s all good and I’m fine

I force myself to turn my back
And try to never look back
I don’t want to show I can crack

I haven’t yet found a better way
Like quickly walking away
Or turning it into a big play

I can’t help the pain
“When will we meet again?”
Is the relentless refrain

“Will you think about me?”
“I miss you already”
“Stay with me”

That’s what goes on in my head
Because I’m really afraid
That one of us will be dead

Before we can say hello once more

Tu t’immisces

Dans les interstices de mon texte, tu te glisse, même si je résiste. En passant par mon cœur, tu trouves la route qui mène à la voûte de ma pensée, sans que je ne puisse t’en empêcher.  Ne pouvant plus te repousser, tu te colle à la page. Tu t’immisces entre les lignes et rempli les crevasses. Tu te lis à ma raison et détourne mes mots, les imprégnant de tes émotions, les habillant de ta passion, les investissant de tes intentions. Le texte te reçoit, te libère. Il ne m’appartient plus guère.

Between the lines you will find nobody else but you

When I write you sometimes come and visit me. You throw words back and forth at me. I like to play so I invite you to stay. But too often, the play turns to fight when I find you taking over. At first, I humour you, thinking that will appease you, but when you start hiding my meaning and dragging me off the line, I find I need to call your game and stop the kidding. You say you’ll be good, stay in the corner and not pull faces, except that, as soon as I take my eyes off you, you expertly slide in the crevasses, where once again you play with my mind. You make your presence sound benign. You mimic my thoughts, tingle my muse and catch my imagination. Finally, unable to hold you back, I let you fill in the gaps in my text. Words spill out of me like a secretion. My hand becomes your tool, your toy; my thoughts your intention. I darken the pages my head full of you. I realise that it’s the only way I can get rid of you, because once it’s done and read, its life away from me is your main fear. The foreign eye sends you deep down between the lines where you slowly disappear making room for you the reader to freely inhabit the tale. The words on the page tell a new story, invite you to try them on for size. If you accept the invitation, drawn in, you will inevitably invest the text with new meaning, giving it a new life, allowing you, in the end, to only find yourself between the lines.

Boxing words

The irresistible taste of my own anxious excitement brings me back to reality. I’m standing in the middle of the ring for another rematch. The noise in my head is deafening. I can no longer block out the crowd cheering and my heart pounding. Turning my head to the right, his face comes sharply into focus. I know him well. He’s my adversary, but not my enemy. In fact, you might say that we’re more than epistolarily friendly. We exchange paper missiles regularly; sparring blows and bouts over words many times before. We’re now doing it out of habit. I can’t remember how it all started. The old law of attraction no doubt: a fusion of admiration for his sparse, yet wild style, envy for his capacity to surprise me, and the lure of a promise of proximity.

Yet, today’s different. I’ve studied his moves. I’ve learned something about him and me. I’m intent on trying out a new strategy that might make this exchange the one that will give more meaning to my words; increase my capacity to come up with excellent repartees; and establish my mind’s supremacy. It’s almost like my writing skills and pride are for the first time on the line. The referee grabs my hand. I hear my name and a roar. I hear his and applause. The bell goes off. May the one with the best punch line, the quickest wit and the lightest prose win the fight.

Standing with my fists up, I can see him clearly above the red arches of my gloves. We both move slowly, tentatively, spending the first opening seconds throwing “helloes” and “how are yous”, the standards niceties. We’re working through formalities, getting acquainted with each other again. I know his style: a man of few words, he takes the punches, let’s you come close, tire yourself out before throwing all he’s got in the last round. I, on the other hand, can’t hold back. I have to throw all I’ve got in the first round. But this time I’m planning on holding back too. I’ve thought about what I want to say. Let’s start with mortality, a recurring topic that is dear to us and a bit of a taboo. I want to show, that I’m not afraid to die, I can be daring and push a hard line. I’m now restless on my feet, pen eager to discharge clever words. I imagine building up my rhetoric, towards the winning combination, like Muhammad Ali, phrases dancing and light like a butterfly, buzzing and stinging like a bee. I make the first real move and throw in: “I think some people contemplate their own mortality by challenging their senses. Using violence or sexuality, they confront themselves and others beyond the physical realm, exposing themselves to weird and extreme mental and aesthetic situations”. He listens intently.

But once again he’s going to surprise me. He’s worked out a new style: he’s being me, or rather my old me. His response comes quickly. It’s not the usual teasing” “You’re cute and funny” or the now standard “I don’t believe you… I disagree”. He swiftly catches me with straight punches: “You’re right… You’re amazingly clever… I like your style”. It shows he’s seen through my strategy. What’s his plan? I’m stunned, taken aback by his flattery. Before I can figure out how to keep the discussion going, he makes it very personal, landing three jabs to my head: “But you know, you’re words show that you’re not as innocent as you’d like us to think, not as relaxed about the end, but that you’re rather perverse and masochistic instead”. A mixture of blood and sweat trickling down my brow, stinging my eye, blurring my sight tells me I’m injured in my pride. An electric shock travelling down my spine. I recognise the sign. With my eyesight troubled, internally crying in pain, I wonder how I will take the upper hand again, land a punch that will give me a knockout victory, put an end to today’s story?

I need to compose myself, find the right energy. It’s tightening the base of my neck, rising heat taking over my head, dilating my pupils, drawing in a deep breath. It then comes instinctively, anger carrying me. While sneaking a right cross “Talk for yourself. That’s not me” behind his jab, and, out of nowhere, a snapping right that draws an impulsive: “You won’t get me to hate you or run out on you. Why punish yourself so severely?”, which lands where I know it will hurt. He hadn’t seen that coming. It sends him to the canvas. This time, I’ve surpassed myself, turned his remark on its head, and knocked him right out of his tree! So why am I catching myself thinking that it’s too early, I didn’t want to hurt him so cruelly? I won’t let the referee count “1, 2, 3”. I won’t let him say “C’est fini!”. There’s more in us. After all, I’m determined to hear him suggest, if not say, that we’re a like-minded pair, a perfect match, you see.

Shamed by my low blow, I’ve dropped my hands, released my fists, letting my pen roll to the floor. But he recovers before the count is out. He’s up again, in an as straight-standing posture as someone who feinted a few seconds earlier can muster. I breathe a sigh of relief that brings a smile to my face. We quickly resume action, go back on the attack. At first, I tease him, let him get close. I give him a chance, playfully felling him with a couple of right hooks to the face: “You lied there so gracefully and pensive as well. What were you dreaming about?”; ducking his tired left hook: “I don’t’ dream any more”; and a stronger body blow: “What do you know about dreams? You’re so uptight and controlled”. But our renewed exchanges give him strength. Laughing, he connects on three clean shots to my chest: “Why do you care?… Where’s the fun for me in answering predictably?… The wind eats at my spleen uncomfortably!”. Thrown off guard, out of breath, I’m struggling to find out how to solve the puzzle. But I’ve forgotten all about my new strategy. Reverting to my natural bend, I’ve started to throw blows constantly: focusing on his head “But what do you mean?” while also aiming low “That’s really not funny?”. My words are more miss than hit and the barrage I unleash on him laves me weak. With few defenses left, he lands a right to my body “Words are unpredictably porous, wondrous and ponderous. Don’t expect me to explain”, followed by another powerful right hand to the heart “Fight as you might, I will never tell you that we’re meant to be”. I fall near his corner. I’ve lost all energy. I can see him distinctly. He’s standing over me, his left hand prepared to begin jabbing me softly, and then less mercifully, as soon as I show signs of recovery.

My strategy had been not to be too busy, to take my time and not get the fight over early. But technically he’s way above me. Two pages and four lines in, I look up, nod in deference. It’s time to throw my towel in the ring. The referee confirms my defeat, proclaims his victory. I feel my humiliation rising. It’s going to send me into hiding where I’ll lick my wounds so that, inexplicably, I’ll be back for another round when I’m finally good and ready, because I won’t give up the fight. I want to keep measuring myself against him and  keep telling him how much I’m fascinating by him at each and every opportunity. Hoping that it’ll trick him into admitting that it’s more than just a liking for my words and a penchant for the struggle and flattery that makes him tease me and provoke me into this wordly battle.

Tu me dis Je te dis

Tu me dis tu m’intéresses
Je te dis ça me remue

Tu me dis viens jouer
Je te dis que veux tu?

Tu me dis tu es belle
Je te dis tu m’as pas bien vu

Tu me dis je t’aime
Je te dis je ne te reverrais plus

Tu me dis va te faire voir
Je te dis je suis perdue