#fabulations

Une fleur aux couleurs superbes

           À toute gerbe

Exposait ses rameaux jouvenceaux

Et s’offrait entière à la vue

           Des joyeux pinceaux.

--N’as-tu pas honte d’être à nue?

Lui reprochaient les abeilles

--Un jour viendra qu’on te prendra,

           Par les oreilles

           On te tirera!

--N’ayez crainte, rétorqua-t-elle,

Nul n’ose occire une belle.

À ces mots, tourna sa tige

Et mit fin à ce litige.

Piquées, les abeilles quittèrent

           Un peu amères.

Et puis vint une jeune catin,

           En un bon matin,

Cueillant les blanches marguerites

D’un air gai et en exaltant

           Tous les mérites

De son trésor digne d’un Sultan

Qu’elle offrirait à sa mère,

Mais, ne se retint pas d’ôter

           À notre fière

           Fleur toute beauté

Pour la fille n’était probe

Rien que la blafarde robe.

La gueuse fleur était pourprée,

D’une balafre fut défigurée,

Épluchée de ses pétales,

           Devint très pâle.

Les abeilles reprirent en chœur

           D’une ire sans cœur

--Vois ce qui en est de la beauté,

On t’a défleurie sans peine,

           Quelle cruauté!

--Épargnez-moi votre grand’ haine,

Pourquoi blâmer l’âme libre,

Je ne suis qu’une victime

           Ô! À la fibre

           Rendez la dime!

Trop souvent, c’est l’infortunée

Qu’on ose, de mots, importuner.

Pourtant, sans tous ces vils mâtins,

Sans cette naïve catin,

Je serais toujours une fleur

Avec Macron, tout est factice.Cinq ans de télé-réalité qui n’ont été que fabulations, mensonges, fatuité, etc. (more…)

Sound Propositions 09: Kate Carr

Sound Propositions is an ongoing, semi-regular series of conversations with artists exploring their creative practices and individual aesthetics, conceived of as a counter-narrative to a dominant trend in music journalism which fetishizes equipment and new technologies. Rather than writing copy that can just as easily have come from a press release or a catalog, this series tries to take the…

I walked to town to sell my mother’s poems. She spun a rag for me, coiled it

and set a basketful of poems on my head.

On the way I stopped to drink pond water. I threw away her poems. They were heavy.

*

The town was filled with itchy commas. I was walking home when a comma bit me under my t-shirt.

Nobody knew where the commas came from.

I yelled and threw out my arms. Prak! went my mother’s poems.

I ground her poems to powder using rocks. I tore a banana leaf and made tiny packets.

I told everyone I passed on the road I was selling comma killers.

*

Mariang Masipag is a girl I visit everyday. I eat her mother’s poems daily. I don’t do much else.

“You good-for-nothing! Never set foot on our yard again!” said her  mother.

I came back the next day with large banana leaves. From the rice fields to Mariang Masipag’s house I laid them down  leaf by leaf.

*

But my mother wanted for me a girl of few words. There was a house in the woods. Someone told me

an old hag lived there with her daughter. I went and I knocked on their  door.

Nobody answered at the gate by the yard. I climbed their steps.

I saw a young woman lying on a mat on the floor. I asked her to be my wife. She didn’t say anything,

so I carried her home. Some people arrived after that. “Haven’t you seen the corpse of a young woman?” they asked.

*

I split open the eastern post of our house. “I can read your fortune on this piece of bamboo,” I told my mother.

I didn’t tell her I was lying. She sent me outside to work. I didn’t want to.

I spied on her instead. I saw her making poems in our kitchen.

My mother was impressed I knew her poem even before she fed it to  me for lunch.

She told me not to draw poems from the well anymore. She told me to rest.

“He can see,” she told the neighbors.

*

I told my mother I’d walk past the hills to make a poem for her. She didn’t believe me.

The sun was already down by the time I returned. “I did it. I made a poem”, I said.

I spread my arms to show her how long my poem was.

I told her I made a poem from there to here. She bragged about it to the other women who were washing clothes in  the river.

*

I fell asleep while waiting for the fish to bite. I woke up. I didn’t know where I was.

When I was floating down the river I thought I was dead. I did this until I died.

I didn’t mind to slap a fly off my nose because I couldn’t anymore.