Filed under: the craft
An extract from Mourid Barghouti’s memoir [bold is my addition]:
In such conflicts, the incident, the word, and the teardrop repeat themselves. Everything is repeated. Despair is repeated and hope is repeated. Heroism and treachery are repeated. Blood recurs and elegies recur. In long conflicts we don’t have to wait for the massacre to experience the pain that will follow or for reality to come into being for art to be created. What we wrote in the past will always provide material that fits the future perfectly.
The cruelest degree of exile is invisibility, being forbidden to tell one’s story for oneself. We, the Palestinian people, are narrated by our enemies, in keeping with their presence and our absence. They label us as it suits them. The weaker party in any conflict is allowed to scream, allowed to complain, allowed to weep, but never allowed to tell his own story. The conflict over the land becomes the conflict over the story and little by little the weak discover that his enemy will not allow himself to be wronged. The enemy permits him only to be in the wrong, defective, and deserving of pain because he has brought that pain upon himself through his defects and his faults; it is not his enemy’s doing. This is the cruelest form of injustice, and injustice is a form of exile, just as stereotyping is exile and misunderstanding is exile. In this sense, the entire Palestinian people is exiled through the absence of its story.
Filed under: à la
Monsieur Éléphant remembers . . .
Oh là là how French you are! Parlez-vous anglais?
Red socks dance just so, toe fit and foot lift,
bob and weave, another King Ali
floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.
Don’t mind me, I’ll sing your praises
to the grave. Dart and leap——
between the dragonfly and the stinging flee
it’s very hard to read.
Oh Monsieur Serpent, such sweet face you show——
I lean closer, eyes closed; listen to you sway and charm
your reptile toes with your serpent-charming tone.
But below, the desert shifts——a broken line slithers
a mandala across the sand the wind sweeps clean.
Second by second grains fall through the sieve,
tower and decline. You watch from the shadows,
wait to strike; brought to life by the slow passage of the sun.
Rain slides by, water off a serpent’s . . .
Monsieur Canard smiles a quack.
I keep la société française close to my heart,
where you reside; hold dear a little jig and bop,
a smile creased across your face, a page.
Oh Monsieur Léopard, what soft fur you have——
I would lean over and stroke your flank.
Oh Monsieur Girafe, what a long neck you have——
I would lean over and plant a kiss.
The tall man is your friend, and so am I . . .
Filed under: à la
I would eat air
if I could
and become World’s Fattest Breatharian
in the Guinness Book of Records
I would gasp the heat of the sun
and gulp water from the clouds
I would swallow the scent of grass and geraniums
and drain sustenance from the skinny shadow
walking in front of me
I would cackle like gravel underfoot
and dive bomb the sky like a lunatic magpie
I would munch the heady aroma of horse-shit and coffee
in lung-fulls!
oh Air!
elate me!
inflate me!
Filed under: à la
First, jay comes.
A significant gesture
signifies two
twigs or wyes
in the form of twigs.
First, jay comes.
Takashi Homma blots
his copybook,
a blot with attendant dot
and dribble.
First, jay comes.
There is no other text,
but I recount
Gerhard Richter
in white and red.
First, jay comes.
Scrawl a flight
before a locust plague
of sticks: insects
are kept as pets.
First, jay comes.
A fire set
and flame hovering;
a fire set
from twigs growling.
First, jay comes.
There is blood
spat
on the snow,
covered by twigs.
First, jay comes.
Blood,
a thick rich line
through the snow—
a twig bisects.
First, jay comes.
Crosses in the snow—
twig drawn
calligraphy—
blood below.
First, jay comes.
Ah, the blood stains
pink the snow;
that heavy splotch
must mean . . .
First, jay comes.
Beside the frozen stream
and pipes of spring
blood splatter indicates
deceased.
after Takashi Homma
Filed under: Tarkovsky's dreams
dawn is a promise
in the director’s eye
villagers cling
to the last breath of sleep
behind closed shutters——
mist rolls
over vines and olive groves
in the shadowed valleys
hunters rise early in the fall——
a single shot cracks the silence
the sun also rises
Filed under: Tarkovsky's dreams
the roseate hue of dawn
through closed eyelids
a cello/piano duet drifts
over the valley
music comes from an open door——
Anja holds the cello between her knees;
against a swollen belly
her moaning bow plies the strings
behind her, a dim figure
plays the piano
the dream of an unborn son
Filed under: à la
see
through the glass dimly
the pale lit sky
dissected by lines
of venetian blinds
stay
in the room darkly
shrouded in shadows
and the silence
of furrowed brows
search
for a breath etched sharply
across the blank page
of the future
in bed with the past
