wide smile

a part of me 

separate from me 

comes around dependably 

but intrusively nonetheless. 

Clementine Haiku

They are wondering

What the juices will taste like

Eyes peeled to orange skin

ok it's out of sight

of the melting moon

I've forgotten about everything

from where I sit

it's all hazy plexiglass

the closest thing

to me

is the easiest thing

The Flags of our Fathers

Card school code in the common room,

a dishonoured debt, hair pull and later found

to be an emo on Facebook, request denied,

walked past the gates on the way home once,

people live like this, behind gates,

and languish in the devil's disappointment

of a botched scholarship, 

or a missed promotion,

or a spell in prison for fraud or 

embezzlement of some kind.

The flavour text that appears decades

after the time to explain whose

parent was nothing but the flick of

the tail of a trench coat in the wind

or the smell of walnut and leather,

or for me, six grand borrowed for

a Golf L, disappointment, 

the faint recognition that mouths

often write cheques that the body

will never cash, that the body

actually can't cash and the

body can't cash in class crossing

because there are secret signals,

stand up during the Hallelujah Chorus,

morse code through the space echo

of fists crashing at the rugby club

of dads who suddenly appear

from beneath the eaves.

That is

they are here again to say I had dreams

once too, that I didn't want a voice

that wakened me husk,

that bellowed artificially low

over watery real ale,

I didn't want to think of empire

or industry or anything about my

role in all of that.

 

I simply wanted to step out

of the cockpit,

walk the wings of a Spitfire,

storm a machine gun nest,

manage a verse of 

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

at Twickenham without

weeping into my pint,

or worrying about where

the car is parked,

I wanted not to watch

my upper lip slowly

curl up in distaste

over several decades, 

like a fortune telling fish 

in the palm

of someone else's hand.

translation of michel houellebecq's "la fin de la soirée" , an attempt

At the end of the evening, there is an inevitable disgust. There is a sort of mapping of terror. Well, I don't know; I think. 

The emptiness within, expanding. That. Untethered from any possible occurrence. As if you were suspended in the void, equidistant from any real action by forces, magnetic and monstrous. 

Suspended thus, powerless in your grip on the world, the night will seem long. And in fact, it will be. But it will be, though, a protected night; but you will not appreciate this protection. Only later will you appreciate it, once you've returned to the city, once you've returned to the daytime, once you've returned to the world.

At around nine in the morning, the world will have reached its peak activity. The world simply be turning, lightly snoring. You will have to take part in it though, throw yourself at it, like one leaps for the steps of a train car already leaving the station. 

But you will not reach it. Once again you will await night time – which yet, once again, will bring you despair, doubt, and terror. This will happen, again and again, until the end of the world. 

from 

Le Sens du combat,

Editions Flammarion, 1996

note: the word "écœurement" is translated to "disgust" which is probably too vague. it's a great word which is like nausea, but whereas nausea for me is really in the stomach, this like a nausea localized to the heart. always interesting to think about body parts and what words and feelings are mapped to them.

Two haikus on rational behavior

Prefrontal cortex

Over the limbic system

A losing battle

An impossible

Aspiration not to hate

Or love anyone