L'homme d'hier

 Le bitume coule à l’égard du soleil, vers

L’horizon des machines, s’élevant par-

delà les fleurs fragiles et la nation d’abeilles,

Le vent se lève sous la torture d’un outil

Moribond, macadam, ce goût de nature

M’est trop peu, métro à fleur de peau,

Il m’aura fallu le millénaire pour dompter

Ton échine, métal de mon âme et verre

De mon cœur, je tiens en toi désormais

Une parfaite discipline, l’exquise tendresse

Aux yeux de tes guerres, mes armes se reposent

Aux membres grégaires, tu berce mes gènes

Entre l’arbre et la scie, une science trop faible

Pour dérobé de toi l’idole tellurien que j’ai,

Entre tes lèvres crissant, abandonné.

Et si, sous la prunelle de l’orage il te vient

De m’aimer comme je t’ai crée, alors de tes

Doigts encore rigides, ôtes-moi le sang

Et de ma chair forge les chaînes de l’homme dernier.

Un corps

Adroit je me dresse, par delà
Le muret je me blesse et sans
Dire au visage dans la nuit
Que mon rêve était si beau
Sans lui, je repars dans le flot
Vers la cité, une autre et la
Même, j’aurais voulu savoir
Pourquoi je m’en vais, voulu
Toucher une fois dernière la
Figure qui me hante, la chair
Spectrale qui me tente, mais
Je ne sais que faire d’un corps,
Le mien, trop jeune pour savoir,
Trop vieux pour pouvoir, alors
Mon dos se tourne et je roule
A vide.

Bourgeois à la dérive

 Inespéré, le navire m’a quitté

Sans pieds ni terre je flotte en mer des

Chats côtoient ce rivage blanc

Lunaire de ma jeunesse sans

Vouloir, par peur de savoir,

Saler leurs corps sans fins

Dans ce bain des abysses.

Je vide mes poches sans

Vouloir, par peur de devoir,

Combler la solitude qui s’invite

A moi, seul je ne suis qu’amas

Elémentaire, telle la sagesse

Moribonde  de mon banc solaire,

J’ai vu dans ces coulisses dépeuplées

Le reflet de mon avenir, ce temps

Perdu d’avance qui se lasse d’être

Désiré par les mêmes involontaires.

Demain j’irais sans doute, ni espoir

Me pencher un jour sur le reste,

Ici, bourgeois à la dérive,

Je ne tourne qu’en ronds

En vue de voir l’envie

Cent fois sans moi.

In light

 It is in light and

Only light that your nail

Should caress my name

As a girl touches petals,

The sun full of noise

Should glaze our skin

As a girl burns the moon,

By a candle’s lonely tongue

I die for the day that without

You I cannot live

As a girl clears her mind,

The frost under your feet

Should turn my tears from

Salt to wine. 

Stage Death

This has no reason to be

Save the reason, unborn

Unreal, that I know not,

See me as I struggle like

Blind, like deaf, I smell

My very fate, not a gate,

But a stage trap, gaping,

Waiting to swallow my

Fall, written before my

Birth and singing above

All of my desolate sigh.

Like script, but unlike me

I go to gather light and

Applause for what has

No reason to be, save the

Reason I cannot see,

Alone I wonder aloud

Which costume I shall

Wear to the funeral,

My own.  

Neither nor

It is neither the delicate, but

Definite arching of your limbs,

Nor is it the constant and clever

Humor of your smile, and still it

Is not the sheen and shimmer of

Your desolate eyes, no, and yet

It is neither the tepid and tremulous

Breathing of your skin, nor is it the

Tender fever of your words, as it

Also cannot be the silent and

Imperfect flicker of your wit,

No, it is none of such styles and

Forms, done and undone, that 

Move me as you sway time’s steady

Course, for me, you leave unscathed

And unharmed, but that which

Surrounds and supposes in a fashion

I call life, does sway and stagger by

The tremors of your beauty,

Untold, unknown.

Priestess

The priestess shuffles down, around

And through the pews, as wax,

marble and glass echo her

Solemn steps, she goes alone by

Candlesight to save not her soul, but

Solely her lord’s abode, where ruin

Creeps like his son writhed, where

Sin does tempt like desert sands,

She goes alone by twilight to visit

Not the idols, but to enshrine her

Father’s altar, the sacrificial mount,

A place not for man but for lamb.

The priestess hobbles, no, she trembles

Not by fear, but in dismay, that which

She beholds is neither flesh nor blood

Of divine passion, it is a desolate

Mantle not a martyr’s halo, and faith

Alone by nightfall cannot redeem

These fallen vaults of grace, without verb

She goes, within her hands she holds,

As dust raises its sickle and let’s fall its

Hammer, she vacuums the holy place

Before great mass carries through those

Doors the indecent rabble of her lord’s

Creation, dust be gone. 

Savage tree

Under the savage tree a man wakes,

To discover an instrument of simple

Death or peaceful torture and by his

Hand a lovely slumber he does find

Under the bows of broken light, ‘till

The ground beneath his rest does

Whither and respire to his will.

Anew

My birth I cannot recall

                               strange

How unknown to me a

Beginning of my very

Own should be.

The world awakened to me

                                forgotten

Now, to be remembered

In dream and daze, until

Born anew I shall

Die and immortal become.

Own devices

To your own devices I left you

Alone by the singing machine

As your voice cleared a lonely

Place in the air, against which I

Had nothing save the silence of

My stare.

The man you swore was

Neither lover nor friend, instead

You said he was either figure

Or shape, a thing to hold beneath

My glare.

Of you was left only your voice,

A home, a mold that is my return

When my words have sunken

Through their weight, then I see

The chasm of my sight, and heed

The rapture of

Your flight.

Gone by

Here, you look young again,

Old friend gone by,

When you left to the sea

For rest and repose

You found hard shores

And still harder souls,

For in veins grew

Crystals of salt and

Beneath some eyes

Stones wept from cold.

You went by the tides

For solace and sense

And before you felt wet

Sands, you made castles

With hands, and by the pier’s

Lonely stretch, you welcomed

A friend gone by, to the abyss.

Window

My face to your window

Presses for home, against

Ancient time my heart grinds,

To bleeding clocks I am machine

But to your panes I am half-man,

A cog, a needle, a mind of mine

Can be no comfort to your skin,

A flesh so tender to my breath

Can be no journey’s rest,

Your hollow eyes laced in tears

Sing by the graveyard of my years

And should I stop to wait my days,

Shut your lids on my coffin door.

Name

What name is yours that has no voice

And blindly whispers in the night?

What name is yours that cannot cry

And softly whimpers out of sight?

What name is yours that cannot yearn

And meekly reaches for more height?

What name is yours that cannot struggle

And hopes to triumph in the fight?

Name, what folly can you pray for

If only to save you from your plight?

Name, what empty dreamscape

Will cover you in evanescent light?

Go now, go -

Here is the sanctuary, the well,

Deserved resting place of fear

Not the days passed, they are

But the shrinking shadows

Of forbidden gateways

To undesired hideaways.  

Go now, go –

It is time to rest and time to wither

Go now, go –

It is time to yawn and time to fade

Here is the chalice, the vessel,

Upon cloudy seas to sail

Between whitecap and hail

The sands that welcome

Your lonely anchor

At last your restless soul.

Go now, go –

It is time to drink and time to fast

Go now, go –

It is time to flood and time to sink

Here is the stage, the glen

For your solitary play

Masked in the crepuscule

 Of your final day

Canter to the measure

Of time’s endless sway.

Go now, go –

Elegy for defeat

May you stand, body bound
       To invisible chains
       Feet in the ground
       Heavy with all of your pains
       And from your lips of resignation
       Tumble sounds of supplication.

May you stand, blinded eyes
       Turned to the zenith aster
       Under such azure highs
       The blood of your master
       Drips from fingers trembling
       Onto the great pyre crackling.

May you stand, down to ash
       Your soul will burn
       Like a tattered sash,
       For the wind you yearn
       Of wingless dreams and delights
       Broken by morning screams and lights.

Carbon monoxide

I live in a land full of lonely friends. On my street there are no stray dogs, only overfed cats and by the time the mail arrives early in the morning, the streetlights are already shut off. Families have died in these houses. There was a whole block contaminated by a carbon monoxide leak. Twenty families died in their sleep and for days letters piled up in their mailboxes after the streetlights shut off. They still had smiles on their faces when those who claim the dead and dying came for them with cellophane and tape. Be careful! CO is odorless, tasteless and colorless: it is the dream gas. My house is a good house and even though I do trust it, after the twenty families died I had a SERVICE come out and tell me whether my house was really as trustworthy as I thought it was. Can anyone imagine how relieved I was when the SERVICE told me it was the most honest house they had ever met? In this land of flowerless fruit trees having your trust rewarded is rare enough that it merits celebration, so I bought a cake, so sugary and sweet I could only nibble on it. It lasted me for weeks and now that I come to think of it, the entire time the cake sat in my refrigerator getting nibbled away daily by my sensitive mouth, I received no mail. This is of no major significance, receiving mail has always been, in socio-historical perspective, very overrated. I do admit though and not without a little bit of a guilty conscience, to my secret delight upon receiving my first letter in weeks. It was my neighbor wishing me well from his vacation destination. He said in the letter that he was visiting a land where fruit trees bear flowers, great masses of them, blindingly colorful. I allowed myself only a passing moment of jealousy and then flushed the letter down the toilet. It is undignified to leave traces of such things. [Sometimes the closets rattle and the pipes break.] When my neighbor returns, I will have many things to tell him with words as odorless, tasteless and colorless as CO. Perhaps it is better I say nothing at all, perhaps I should swallow my words like alphabet soup, talking is sometimes far more lethal than any gas and this land has no mercy for imprudent lips. Then I shall have a party, with all of my friends. It will be the loneliest party there ever was, but there will be no cellophane and there will be no tape.

Good news

She sucked the smoke in. With all of her life she sucked the smoke in. She had been waiting for the good news, the news the doctors would carry on their professional lips. A few words, only a few, clear succinct, the ones she wanted to hear. The doctor's lips would be tight and between their teeth the words she had been waiting to hear would slip out, almost inaudible, almost nothing, almost silence. Their faces would be grave, sorry and even condescending, yes, why not? Patronizing enough to neutralize their discomfort.

LUNGS + TUMORS = NOT GOOD (e.g: death, etc...)

Cigarette corpses crumpled in her ashtrays. She sucked the smoke in. How much longer would she have to wait? It was taking longer than she had expected or maybe it was simply her impatience that had dilated time. 

SMOKE! SMOKE! SMOKE!

The whiteness of their medical eminence would be powerless before her will. They would offer solutions with grave faces and cold voices, something about it never being too late, about the great leaps in bounds medicine had made since her mother's time. Oh yes, leaps and bounds, great steps, giant steps too large to be filled by human strides. Progress is like a bouncy ball. Was the filter better or worse for you?

READ THE COMMERCIAL! 


She sucked all of her life in. Smoke filled her lungs, like the air of a jazz club at 4 in the morning. Heavy, sweet, tired, dirty and mesmerizing. The cylinder between her lips blazed, inhale heat, exhale ash. She was waiting, she had been waiting, she would be waiting for still some time. Another corpse in the ashtray and the smell of tar and tobacco on her fingers. 

YOU CAN'T FUCKING DIE!  IT’S NOT IN YOUR BILL OF RIGHTS! 

Autonomy as alternative - 1

Autonomy refers to the ability of an individual to construct his or her own principles of existence and codes of interaction (Auto being the 'self' in its reflexive dimension and nomos is the ancient Greek for law, rule or convention). In short, it carries a meaning quite different to that which is commonly bandied about in 'political' and economic discourse. Our vulgar conception of autonomy is in truth closer to that of 'independence' or 'self-sufficiency', something often equated with a child's development or designated as an admirable quality to have in the workforce and as an individual in general. This unfortunate semantic distortion is rooted in the liberal conception of the individual and of political action. The founders of political liberalism believed that autonomy characterized the adult state in which the individual is no longer dependent on others and is capable of satisfying his needs on his own. 
The dissociation (that liberals pride themselves on making) between individual and society does not create emancipated or autonomous individuals, but creates parcelized individuals, who are fragmented and isolated making them vulnerable to coercive power emanating from extra-social structures (e.g: the Market, organized religion, technocrats...). Extra-social structures are those who lack reflexive action and that instrumentalize society by exploiting it as a resource in order to achieve dehuminizing goal. Parcelized individuals are participants of a network and suffer from an inter-relational deficiency. They believe themselves to be free, but are in truth nothing more than operatives.   
What the munificent institutions of 'democracy' and 'freedom' preach is that individuals becomes free by extrapolating themselves as much as possible from society and that society is a necessary evil that must be reduced to its most harmless sediment. Margaret Thatcher expressed this frightening obsession in the most eloquent of ways (as always) : "There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families."
Society creates context and yet receives context. Society determines meaning and yet receives meaning. Society is inter-subjective, meaning that it emanates from the interaction of the subjective experiences of its members, and yet, it cannot be reduced to the sum of these individual experiences. The circular dynamic between society and individual gives the relation its indeterminate nature which in turn allows for critical interpretation. It is indetermination that constitutes the foundation of human freedom and any attempt to bracket the human condition to arbitrary theories of determination is an act of enslavement and exploitation. (A future post will be dedicated to the subject of indetermination).  What we are witnessing today, in our society, is not the individual's liberation from society (this being the official liberal and capitalist discourse), but the progressive weakening and isolation of the individual by the destruction of society, or rather of social consciousness (this being the veritable liberal and capitalistic action). Parcelized individuals are tragically dependant. Dependant because they are neither reflexive, nor transformational, nor inter-subjective, as we shall see.  And tragically because they see themselves as free, when this vision is rooted in their blindness.

The answer, or, to use a more clinical vocabulary, the cure, to the plight of the parcelized individual lies in the autonomous actor.
Autonomy, in its etymological source, has three constitutive facets. 
1. Autonomy is reflexive : the autonomous actor is conscious of his or her autonomy and is able to elucidate it. The actor has both an external and internal perspective on his or her conventions and actions and is aware of the limits inherent to these. 
2. Autonomy is transformational : by constructing rules and laws that are reflexive, the autonomous actor transforms reality. By conventionalizing reality, the actor deforms it. This is an act of individual appropriation, for reality declines itself to the number of autonomous actors.
3. Autonomy is inter-subjective : the autonomous actor constructs reflexive conventions by interacting with other subjective realities, thus creating relations of interdependence (and not of dependence as in the configuration of a heteronomous society of parcelized individuals). The construction of conventions implies a coherent structurating of reality based on communication; being autonomous does not, therefore, entail everyobody doing their own thing.
If individuals are to be autonomous actors then society must be an autonomous stage, and a stage must be built by actors. Autonomy finds its vitality in this indetermination and is, theoretically, what gives vitality and originality to democracy. A true democracy is reflexive, transformational and inter-subjective. Its constitutive dynamic is the circular relation between individual and society, a relation in which extra-social coercion and structures of dependency are absent. In this light, it is glaringly evident that ‘democratic’ actors are a myriad of smiling puppets and that liberal capitalism is the puppet master.    

On freedom - 1

Note: Rather than talk about freedom, I prefer exploring the concept of autonomy, which for reasons that I will expose in the next political post, is more pertinent and productive. However, this post, and others to follow, will focus on freedom because of the overwhelming aura it has in the organization of our collective values and norms and because of its omnipresence in political debate.

Repeat something enough times and it becomes true...It appears as though it is our mere ability to declare ourselves free that makes us free. However, regardless of what the clergy of representative democracy preaches and the sooth sayers of capitalism prophesize, freedom, today, in our society, has lost its meaning.

Political freedom implies constitution of choices (constitutive freedom), not merely the selection from prefabricated choices (relegated or permitted freedom). Creating our own choices is not enough though. We must then have the means to  transform theory into action. It is transformative action that creates empowered and responsible citizens. In a time when the only political act we, as citizens, make is to vote, then our transformative power is merely residual. We are convinced that by voting we guarantee our freedom, however, this emblematic act is only a punctual delegation of power in which we abandon defining elements of our sovereignty. Representative democracy has confused power and sovereignty to the detriment of citizen freedom. We believe that all we are doing is delegating the exercise of power to lawmakers and governements and that we are still the sovereign arbiters of that power, when in truth we are simply choosing  the devolution of power, but not longer question its legitimacy, nature or meaning.

I do not claim that political freedom is an absolute to which we must aspire, it is neither possible, desirable or coherent, and I maintain that the debate on the limits of freedom is vital. What I cannot tolerate however, is a debate and fervor about an ideal that has no meaning, that has become utterly vacuous...the political slogans that remind us daily of our 'freedom' are prime examples of how party-based politics distort semantic substance. Whenever an ideal is used and  abused to justify any given ideology one word comes to mind : propaganda or as 'democratic' institutions would call it : public relations. A concept or ideal can be a means to achieve ends that are contrary to those of the very same concept/ideal. This is what has happed to the word freedom... A tool and an instrument that has built the invisible walls around our political audacity and a battlecry that rings hollow in the abandoned hallways of citizen activism.

Metro Morning

Having a conversion with an early morning metro is a most impossible thing to do. Of course, a rational and straight thinking man (straight is sometimes very backwards) would inform me that communicating with underground snakes is no simple task and that I should therefore not be surprised that it is (mostly) impossible. I, however, pride myself on thinking in curves and zigzags, great circumventions that have the randomness of improbable statistics and, this morning, the fact that it was mostly impossible for me to communicate with the chrome tunnel marauder was at the very least disconcerting. Unsettling! I severely reject the assumption and subsequent assertion that all fast moving worms look alike, either because speed blurs their differences or because in the entrails of the city everything looks alike. Preposterous! It not only surprises me that so many human entities have such poor eyesight, but it also worries me that nobody has (so far) tried communicating with an early morning metro. I myself have not tried. And that is the only reason I consider it mostly impossible. I'm afraid that if I do try, I will learn some very disheartening news. Nonsense! 

Here and there, 
Whispers echo, morning shuffles, 
Heavy feet and heavy tongues, 
Here and there.
Eyes weak as sleep seeps
In tunnels of air.
Here and there,
Vacant lot faces
Yawn and sigh.
Thump, thump... thump, thump
A heartbeat or
Boredom’s drumbeat?