Soon Enough - a narrative

Soon enough

She remembers her first time
It was so many years ago,
So many years ago,
She is so used to it now that she thinks it’s normal
That she deserves it.
This shame.

She remembers the first time.
It was a beautiful day,
A beautiful morning after, going for an early walk with her lover;
He wanted an iced coffee,
They stopped and sat outside.
She could feel the wind on her pretty young face.
She felt pretty.
She felt likeable.

She was debating with herself whether she was falling in love as he went inside to get the coffees.

She lit a cigarette, and the warmth of the smoke going into her lungs told her that it was a good day. She looked at the blue smoke disappear in the cool breeze.
Yes. She was in love.

At the next table a mother and child added to the picture of that morning.
The mother was tucking the child, a boy of two, in his stroller,
tying the loose safety belt,
tugging at it.
The child was not impressed, uncooperative.
He was staring at her and she smiled at the temperamental child.

The mother looked up at what her boy was staring at.
The mother frowned as she smiled at her.
That’s when it happened,
The mother looked back at her impressionable boy

“Isn’t it disgusting?”

Is that what she said?
Or did she say: isn’t she disgusting?




She felt the same either way
The guilt
The shame
The anger
She said to the woman under her breath
“Is that how you want to raise your child?”

But it was.
It was
How she wanted
To raise
Her child.

It is
How we
Raised
Them

Away from the corner she is dying for a cigarette.
She has 1 dollar and 38 cents
Three quarters
Five dimes
Two nickels
Three pennies
She wonders whether she should put this in her pocket, show an empty hand
Or show a little money to encourage people to give
As if they needed a clue as to what she wants
Standing there with her hand
Barely in front of her.
Bare

She is dying for a cigarette.

But who would give her money if she smoked?
Might as well try to beg with a needle stuck in her arm.
Not even.
People pity drug addicts.


FUCK



Didn’t mind smoking outside that much,
In the cold
The snow
The rain.

Didn’t mind outside that much.
Like a dog
A leprous
Branded
Weak.

Didn’t mind outside
But the looks
The stares,
The disdain
The disgust in their eyes
That’s what got to her in the long run.

She sneaked one in,
Inside
At work
In the bathroom
In the office
In the broom closet
then another.
Not that bad,
Nobody seemed to notice.

But she got caught
Once
Twice
Three times

She went back outside
But the looks…

She got caught again
Once
Twice
Three times

Warning

Smoking can be hazardous to your job.

And again
Once
Twice
Three times

Three strikes:
You’re out.

Out
Gone
In the street

She thought she could get another job
But it was hard
Too hard
Too old

Today for the first time she does not have enough money for both food and cigarettes
She ate
Now she is begging for the first time.

She is begging for a smoke
She is dying for a smoke


A couple passes by, and both look at her
Unconcerned
The man puts his hand in his pocket
Pulls out a loony
Puts it in her hand

Thank you muttered out of shame
She cannot look in his eyes

“Why did you give her money, she hears her say, she’s only going to buy cigarettes with it”

We did that.

Rimbaud - Ophélie

This is Ophélie de Rimbaud. A very classic poem.

Ohpélie de Rimaud. Un classique.

Aragon - Sans titre (Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent)

This is a famous untitled poem by Aragon that can be found in the fabulous "Le roman inachevé". There is an equally (if not more) famous recording of a song version by Léo Ferré.
Forgive the atrocious pronunciation of the German words.

Ceci est la version originale (sans titre) de la célèbre chanson de Léo Ferré "Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent" que l'on retrouve dans "Le roman inachevé". Je m'excuse auprès de tous les germanophiles pour la prononciation des mots allemands.

I loved you in ancient Ellas

I loved you in ancient Ellas

(For Lisa)

I loved you in ancient Ellas
The drape of cloth, the oiled hair
The body of a boy competing
The Dionysian heights

I loved you in the 1500s
I dreamt your hair wild
Painted it with clouds
My fingertips brushed

And again in the 1600s
The reachable heavens
Touching upon your head
I grew to hold

I loved you in the 1700s
The world crashing down
You rose from the crowd
To open, to open

Remember the 1800s
The long hangover
I wore your flowing shirts
To recover

In the 1900s I loved you
You’d had enough of me
You marched in and finally
I saw you again

I love you now
As the towers crash
I fail at dancing
On the needle’s head

But I loved you most in Eden
I bit the apple
Saw you for the first time
And lifted out of myself

I’ve loved you in the cracks of time

Papillon bleu - the blue butterfly

Papillon bleu I

Papillon bleu II

Papillon bleu

Nothing has been broken
though one of the links of the chain
is a blue butterfly

Leonard Cohen

We sometimes encounter
beings who seem to us
impossible.

They don’t seem to be made
to inhabit such a world as ours.
They seem theoretical, hypothetical,
fictional maybe.

We expect to encounter them in a book,
as a metaphor, an image.

We expect them in a poem.
We see them as poem.

Butterflies are such beings.
The sheer size of the wings attached, god knows how,
to the miniature thorax. What kind of muscles are those.
And they fly. Thousands of miles.

*

I have heard of a well intentioned teacher who wanted to show the miracle of nature
to her students. She got a chrysalis, put it in a jar, poked holes is the lid
to make sure it would breathe.

The students watched, wide eyed, as the chrysalis became a butterfly,
attempted to spread its wings.
But there was not enough room in the jar
for one so fragile

and the wings stuck together.

It was then freed to go into the wild, unable to fly –

A victim of its fragile beauty.

*

Once on a phsyc ward, I heard a woman tell someone else:
“you are like me, you are a blue butterfly. Do you know how I know this?
It’s because like me, you have thin long legs”.

Thin, long legs.

*

We see them downtown, those butterflies with stuck wings.
They are not very good runners on their
thin, long legs.

They can no longer fly.

You see them straining their thorax,
trying to spread the crippled wings. Their chests
hurt from the effort, they can no longer breathe so well.

Sometimes they seem to crawl, passing as shadows in back alleys.

They walk along the walls, pacing their jail.

They are still astonished at being so unable to take to the sky.
It would feel so natural to them. They look at the sky as you look at your home.
They don’t understand why the most efficient of walls
is the invisible one.

Many of them stop looking up.
They prefer to look at their feet stuck to the pavement.
They bend their back in order not to see
the painful sky anymore.

They look like they are carrying a dead weight.

The weight of their dead wings.

Victims of their fragile beauty.

They are terrified. Who would not be?
Every one looks like a predator. A child… you.

They look at this seemingly innocent child.
They see the child who, innocently, pulled wings from butterflies, or the child
who caught one and pinned it to the wall.
That was yesterday?

A victim of its fragile beauty…

*

We take these staggering prey
for birds of prey.

They take our children – those easy prey –
for birds of prey.

They dream of thousand mile migrations.

They dream of being part of a cluster on some Mexican fir tree.
Of belonging. With wings on.

*

This is no country for weak men. The young
In one another’s arms…

*

You see the young on street corners, piled onto each other.
They often have a few dogs piled among them.
They cluster.
They dream
of Mexican fir trees.

*

I have heard that the monarch butterfly tastes bad.
It developed this bad taste to ward off predators.

You see them downtown, they developed a bad taste.
They are in bad taste.

We try so often to clean our streets of them. We build highways,
we move out,
we look away.

We sweep them, brush them aside.
We complain about their look, their smell.

We dream of cities clean
without those half butterflies cluttering, clustering.

We sweep the broken wings,
the thin, long legs,
The impossible thoraxes –

Victims of their fragile beauty…

*

And then there’s you.

You managed to spread your wings tentatively.
You cling to a twig,
you try to stay still,
to dazzle the surrounding evil with your beauty,
but your thin, long legs are no match for those gigantic wings:
the slightest breeze carries you away.

You struggle against this invisible enemy.
Your thorax is strained against your wings.
You fly, you flutter

north and south
east and west –
you aim for those Mexican fir trees.

But those winds,
those wings have a will of their own.

You are carried away

victim of your fragile beauty…


A thrust at any link
might have brought him down
but each of you aimed at the blue butterfly