Queer boreal babe

You'd like to be a migratory bird, a bustard with no strings attached, no definitive home

You'd like to take a plane ticket to fix your past or move to another futur

I see you focused on our imperfections to be corrected, forgeting to live our present

You know, i'm not this superman that will save you from your depression and blackouts

Can you love me even if I sometimes hide in irony and all the blankets?

I'd like to get that Mount Royal you've been swallowing down out of your throat

I'd like to clean the permanent frost from your glasses

But you won't let me show you that we can find our skin soft despite the winter dryness

Sometimes you're too busy tying your shoelaces, preparing for our fall, planning for disaster

I apologize for not shoveling enough snow and anxiety from our entrances

I'd like to love you enough to tame the sound of the snow squalls in your sleepless nights

But my love is not a draught-free house

(You should one day decide by yourself to dwell, my warm body and my cold country)

***

Habite cette catastrophe

Tu aimerais être cet oiseau migrateur, une outarde sans attache, sans maison définitive

Tu aimerais prendre un vol vers ton passé à réparer ou un futur autre

Je te regarde concentré sur nos imperfections à corriger, oubliant notre présent

Je ne suis pas ce superman qui te sauvera de ta déprime et des pannes de courant

Est-ce que tu peux m'aimer même si je me cache parfois dans l'ironie et toutes les couvertures?

J'aimerais sortir de ta gorge ce Mont Royal que tu as avalé de travers

J'aimerais nettoyer ce givre permanent de tes lunettes

Mais tu ne me laisses pas te montrer qu'on peut trouver nos peaux douces malgré la sécheresse hivernale

Tu es parfois trop occupé à relacer tes lacets, à préparer notre chute, à prévoir la catastrophe

Je m'excuse de ne pas pelleter suffisamment les bordées de neiges et d'anxiété de nos entrées

J'aimerais t'aimer assez pour tu apprivoises le son des bourrasques dans tes nuits d'insomnie

Mais mon amour n'est pas une maison sans courant d'air

When a house burns You can't stay in Listening to TV You shout You cough You cry You call the firefighters You take refuge with the neighbor Who calms your anger, your rage a bit ridiculous Against this damn cold and expired extinguisher Stuck on your heart That stopped you from saving yourself All alone By yourself

But when it's your desire To live To work To love And to make love That completely burned down You can stay in front of the TV Screaming silently Without any cough to betray you And even if you call the fire brigade The psychologist, or your mother You'll still have to find the right words To convince them But more importantly To convince you That you need to take refuge Of your routine And above all Of yourself

-

Zoom greetings are technical challenges I always have this single smile, letter or pixel that stays stucked in my throat to drown me

If you come back one hour later by clicking again on the link you will find that the conversation  is still on with me in it, in my confined bed reliving the videoconference

I always forget to close the right window on the screen and in my heart

*

N'entre pas dans ma tête avec un lien cliquable

Les salutations Zoom sont des défis techniques j'ai toujours ce même  sourire, mot, ou pixel qui reste pogné au travers de ma gorge pour me noyer

Si tu reviens, 1h plus tard en recliquant sur le lien tu trouveras que la conversation  est toujours en cours avec moi dedans, dans mon lit confiné revivant la vidéoconférence

You told me you were staying at home Lest the landscape kill you On rivers stained by jet skis along these forests burgeoning with machines You could become one of those stories told between laughter and fear

The one of this sporty girl gently sucked by a dam The one of this man who bathed naked swallowed by a seaplane You, you saw yourself dying with your dick in the air A young man who pissed crushed by a ski-doo in these paths where death and love cradle each other To the sound of squads and mooses

But what scared you the most, was inside you Your desire for some men's body here With their frozen lake hockey madness their laughters, huge in the forest You were afraid that this desire would kill you by isolation In a deadly beautiful landscape

-

Le barrage qui avalait

Tu me disais que tu restais chez toi De peur que le paysage ne te tue Que sur les rivières tachées de moto-marines au long de ces forêts bourgeonneuses de machines Tu ne deviennes une de ces histoires racontées entre rires et frayeurs

Celle de cette fille sportive doucement aspirée par un barrage Celle de cet homme qui se baignait nu avalé par un hydravion Toi, tu te voyais mourir la queue à l'air Un jeune homme qui pissait écrasé par un ski-doo dans ces sentiers où mort et amour se bercent Au son des bramement de quatre-roues et d'orignaux

My mother tells me: ''Straight love is natural'' And that it would make me happy But I disagree

I'm this guy who wants grading after love with each simultaneous orgasm with each successful blowjobs I count the points until I forget your eyes and if I still love you

When I ask you, ''Did you come?'' I'm waiting for the answer like others the return of Jesus or the welfare state and if neither God nor revolution exists I must at least make pleasurable Our earthly debacles

Yes, I'm this guy who counts the days after our intercourse during the apocalypse I will know the exact count of our abstinence days, rising water will be a pretext to undress us

-

Es-tu venu?

Je suis le gars qui veut une note après l’amour à chaque orgasme simultané à chaque fellation réussie je compte les points jusqu’à oublier tes yeux et si je t’aime encore

Quand je te demande, ''Es-tu venu?'' J'attend la réponse Comme d'autres le retour de Jésus ou de l'État providence Et si, ni Dieu, ni la révolution n'existe Je rendrai au moins jouissives Nos débâcles terrestres

Your favorite uncle died of COVID yesterday Before the ambulance arrived You're sad and overwhelm But you won’t shed a tear

You say that my hugs asphyxiate you As if I were a winter day at -40 Where even breathing is difficult I wish I could cry for you

Becoming like the snow on your cheek But I can't melt the pain away That you keep hidden in your silences Even winter has its limits

-

Même l'hiver à ses limites

Ton oncle préféré est mort hier de la COVID Avant que l’ambulance n’arrive Tu es tristes et dépassés Mais tu ne pleures pas Tu dis que mes colleux t'asphixient Comme si j'étais une journée d'hiver à -40 Où respirer est difficile Je voudrais pouvoir pleurer pour toi

When you say to me, I love you What I hear Is that you don't know me This mouth full of swearing that you kiss and nibble that thick and wet penis that you like to lick as December snow those shoulders of river swimmers that you caress are not mine

I am, by your side All the men of Canada And none in particular And it is for that That I am leaving

—

You say we have to talk That I have to explain everything that is wrong with you Write you a letter Unfold my feelings, if it can be But how to explain that I leave you Even if you are perfect With your soft white skin like the hares when they’re ready for winter And our boiling and trembling orgasms that are the same to me, as the ephemeral mirage of a wood fire When you are lost in the forest in winter a warming break in the heart of a night of frost and fear How can I explain that I leave you, because I can't tell you, that I love you, but also men Even though I haven't tasted them yet As sometimes we start a dessert, and left it To try another and that when you say that I leave you because I put a label on you, on what you think, or what you would do you're absolutely right

-

Tous les premiers amours sont des trahisons

Quand tu me dis, ‘’Je t’aime’’ Ce que j’entends C’est que tu ne me connais pas Cette bouche pleine de sacres que tu embrasses et mordilles ce pénis épais et humide que tu aimes lécher comme la neige de décembre ces épaules de nageurs de rivières que tu caresses ne sont pas les miens Parce que je suis à tes côtés, Tous les hommes du Canada Et aucun en particulier Et c’est pour ça Que je pars

—

You said you were forgetting Your desire to die on Halloween’s Day As if that was enough The warmth of your mother’s hand drawing on your face a queer vampire unknowing of your hidden desires This rare intimacy was just enough To fight the seasonal melancholy And the cold of your school loneliness to cut these hungry vines in the skeletal garden of your ambitions

As if that would really be enough to disguise in communities all our single-family homes all our suburbs, for one day with collective cemeteries homemade, or bought at a discount and to eat all those kilos of sweets, collected doors to doors all those future heart attacks in individual bags That it would be enough All of these gifts and smiles to believe that we care about each other's kids, costumes and feelings For real

Yes, you were saying, for you it was enough to survive One more day These poorly carved pumpkins And their light but addictive taste This makeup done in 2 min With some kind of attention or may-be love That was enough for you, to forget the non-sense Some tenderness bought At the one-dollar-store @imperiallefty ❤ Using “The hungry vines of the skeletal garden”

- Sur le goût faible, mais addictif des citrouilles

Tu disais que tu oubliais de vouloir mourir à l'Halloween

Comme si ça suffisait La chaleur de ta mère Sa main sur ta nuque qui te dessine sur le visage un vampire queer sans connaître tes désirs secrets Cette intimité rare suffisait Pour combattre la mélancholie saisonnière et le froid constant de ta solitude scolaire pour couper ces lierres affamées dans le jardin squelettique de tes ambitions Comme si ça serait assez de déguiser en communautés toutes nos maisons unifamiliales, toutes nos banlieus pour une journée À coup de cimetières collectifs faits maisons, ou acheté en rabais Et tous ces kilos de friandises récoltées en porte à porte Toutes ces crises cardiaques futures emballé en sachet individuels Comme si ça suffirait Tout ces dons et sourires Pour qu’on croit qu’on se soucie L’un de l’autre, de nos enfants, nos costumes et nos sentiments Pour de vrai

Tell me about an efficient depression Me too, I want to make my anxiety comfortable To design myself a positive disaster and find myself just enough energy To see these fall’s false dawns Lighting up our solitudes And our pandemic deaths Before 7 a.m.

Let me write you poems without a hitch I’m getting the hang of impersonal verses I now have a list of meta-metaphors to offer To manage the productivity of your rhymes and make our downfall beautiful Before 7 a.m.

Place me in your office, near your plants And teach me how to put into perspective the end of the world, without anyone while counting to four We will find out our healthy passion Through constant reframing of emotions and perfectly smooth, rhythmic and repetitive poems Before 7 a.m.

Someday we'll pay this debt That makes us Lukewarm lovers Overtime beggars Eternal tenants Of buildings with sporadic hot water (and internet) Our eyes flooded in TV series To forget those days, these months, these years, Without vacation That day when we'll be free from the banks Like dogs without leashes You will make love to me for seconds, minutes, hours, Without interest rates. On the duration of the preliminaries Or orgasms Maybe then you will love me And love yourself With all this precise attention That you put in things when you have the time to do them well Reminding you suddenly of our bodies, our mouths, our hands, ours, all ours, without over thinking the alarm to come without self-control over sleep duration without involuntary calculation on our asymmetric salaries And you will finally pay your mother a renovated house To cure her depression her divorce and your coming-out

-

Comme des chiens sans laisses

Un jour nous paierons cette dette Qui fait de nous Des amoureux tièdes Des mendiants d'heures supplémentaires Des locataires éternels De building à l’eau chaude et l’internet Sporadique Aux yeux inondés de série-télés Pour oublier ces jours, ces mois, ces années Sans vacances

1. You never expected that making love would be so humid, so wet

2. Nor that women became both a wood stove and an earthquake

3. At 24, jaws clenched, you pulled the blankets on your white shirt

4. Almost freed from your digital shackles, by her precise directions

5. Almost free... but even doing it with a man left you with a void

6. Your young decade of lonely orgasms was resisting

- the luminous call of their body

7. Slowly, you realized your sexuality was more cyborgian than LGBT, or +

(A desire remained

for pixelated skins

perfectly chosen

and for moans

perfectly controlled

with Bluetooth headphones)

-

Une sexualité Bluetooth

1. Tu n'avais pas prévu que faire l'amour soit aussi humide

2. Ni que les femmes devenaient, à la fois, poêles à bois et tremblement de terres

3. À 24 ans, les machoires crispées, tu sors des couvertures dans ta seule chemise blanche

4. Presque libéré de tes carcans numériques, par ses ordres, ses directions précises à elle

5. Presque libéré, mais même avec un homme il restait un vide en toi

6. Ta jeune décennie d'orgasmes solitaires résistait à l'appel lumineux de leur corps

7. Tranquillement, tu te découvrais une sexualité plus cyborguienne qu'LGBT ou +

(Un désir demeurait

de peaux pixellisées

parfaitement choisies

et de gémissements captés

par écouteurs Bluetooth

We will always be These discordant voices To whom one say To change tune Lovers Who sing badly Love For those who do not know How to recognize Beautiful Melodies On torn music scores Or on instruments Slightly different - Des partitions déchirées

If you look back You can easily Taste the sweat on their skin And melt to their flavour Of men who work late Proud men with a drugstore perfume Hot men even in the Fall Yes, if you look back enough You will see in the well of your memories These smells, these faces, these tastes Of men Who found you beautiful And drown yourself in it

-

Narcisse Mélancolique

Si tu regardes en arrière Tu peux facilement Goûter la sueur sur leur peau Et fondre à leur saveur D'hommes qui travaillent tard D'hommes fiers au parfum de pharmacie D'hommes chauds même en automne

You had sex without protection With another man And you say you're sorry But I do not feel a thing about it Instead, I think of the things I do without protection Looking at the sun until my eyes cries & smoking socially until my head is spinning How can I be angry at you? When I am craving the same things you found in sex A feeling of control, over my own destruction And this exhilarating need of destructing hetero-patriarchy, and myself in it You cry over your careless friends and your lack of reaction You cry over the lost garden of sexual purity that feeds on the bones of queers and their shame You cry over your ideal of a perfect middle-class life After the storm had already pushed the BBQ into the pool when we came out And put fire into our well-trimmed future

I can't help but to say, you don't have to feel sorry For loosing the possibility of an ideal That was never made for us That was always made for us to fail

-

Dépasser la honte

Tu as eu des relations sexuelles sans protection Avec un autre homme Et tu dis que tu es désolé Mais je ne ressens rien Simplement, je pense à ces choses Que je fais sans protection Regarder le soleil jusqu'à ce que mes yeux pleurent et fumer socialement jusqu'à ce que ma tête tourne

Comment puis-je être en colère contre toi? Quand j'ai envie des mêmes choses que tu as trouvées dans le sexe Un sentiment de contrôle sur ma propre destruction Et ce besoin exaltant de détruire l'hétéro-patriarcat, et moi-même à l'intérieur

Tu pleures sur ton ami insouciant et ton manque de réaction Tu pleures sur le jardin perdu de la pureté sexuelle qui se nourrit des os des homosexuels et de leur honte Tu pleures sur l'idéal d'une vie de classe moyenne parfaite Après que l'orage ait déjà poussé le BBQ dans la piscine Dès notre coming-out Et mis le feu à un avenir  bien taillé

Before going to bed, I read to you in Spanish The Little Prince, and you correct me My clumsy ''R'' rolls and ''I love you'' Are as many petals thrown in the wind As if the exuberance of our love Could protect us From borders and debts As if I were this rose who wants to fight a tiger with three little thorns

When I wake up, I do the dishes and exercise, always a little earlier With the light of spring coming back I feel like it is we who are budding A little more each day And that the spring will heal your anxiety So that you can finally bloom In your own way

I’ve never cooked so much And maybe it’s a way to fill up With family traditions, or remedies I find in my rolled cakes A way to call back my grandmother or in the ''je ne sais quoi'' of a warm soup A way to heal your home-sick heart

- Battre un tigre avec trois petites épines Avant de me coucher, je te lis en espagnol Le Petit Prince, et tu me corriges Mes roulements de ''R'' et ''Je t'aime'' maladroits Sont autant de pétales lancé au vent Comme si l'exubérance de notre amour, pouvait nous protéger des frontières et des dettes Comme si j’étais cette rose qui veut combattre un tigre avec trois petites épines

Au réveil, je fais la vaisselle et des exercices, toujours un peu plus tôt Avec la lumière du printemps qui revient J'ai l'impression que c'est nous qui bourgeonnons Un peu plus à chaque jour Et que le printemps guérira ton anxiété Pour que tu fleurisses finalement à ta façon, à toi