Category: 2022 – Spring

Categories
2022 - Spring

Sonnets to my Rodina

Image: ‘Protests in Belarus’ © Ang Bob.

Author: Nadia K. Bauer

I.
Когда увижу я —
The silver portal that you lock every night
With the same rusty nail
Olga laughing and you rolling your eyes
Когда почувствую я —
The humid moist the tall pinewoods
CAST alongside their shadows — on the little dachas
The smell of yellowed newspapers burning in the pechka
Will I ever UNsee —
The marks of JAIL on his smudged face
Her mother’s disappearance
The firebombs they threw just across the street,
Will I ever — on the earth of my liberated Rodina —
STAND again.

II.
Hold me —
Rodina moya
Give me SILU to watch you derive from under my feet.
Do not let go of your endless plains and of your
clear birch groves — of your teethless babushkas
who will keep — selling the same juicy blueberries
by the roadside — until I can embrace you again.
Let the shadows of the gaol bars slowly wash off his face.
Give her the strength to walk on our lines without me
— give her the strength to walk. Дай им more years —
rock them until I can take them in my arms from you.
To me, give надежду to believe
That I will feel my bare feet on your
WET and FREE earth again.

Categories
2022 - Spring

The Shop Window

Image: © Furaha Mujynya of Christiane Cornuz’s Cercle seul (1973).

Author: Furaha Mujynya

October:

No faces, no emotions, no warmth, just a train of black coats and umbrellas hurrying along the street, swallowed by the sound of water pouring from the sky. This lasted a week – a long week. A ray of sunshine then peered through the heavy clouds. Finally, headless bodies were given smiles, a pair of eyes and a variety of laughs and screams were to be heard again. I could lastly go back to my perverse search for a new life to follow to fill the boring day. And as expected, I was rewarded with the arrival of the signature seekers, hounding every passing shadow for a bit of their ink. They formed a shocking duo blocking every possible way in and out of the narrow street, rendering the I’m-busy-no-look technique pointless to avoid them. With cheery but loud voices they presented their endless pitch about the suffering of some almost extinct animal – or was it maybe about the destruction of the rainforest? Anyway, what’s truly impressive is their ability to pronounce so many words in such little time, to never tire and always happily accost the next unsuspecting pedestrian. They definitely have great potential for sales. One even managed to get a smile out of a hurried passerby, not that it made him stop to sign the petition.

November:

It’s getting colder, which means people walk faster and there’s less for me to observe and more time to get bored. Though, thanks to our dear drug dealers I get to have at least one Tom and Jerry scene a day. Usually, it’s more of a gentle trotting away including a few paranoid glances behind their shoulder. But this time, I witnessed two grown men running at full speed with their belted pants sagging almost down to their knees. Their pace was so intense that their steps echoed down the entire road. This sudden energetic impulse did not match their habitual nonchalance. Though, a few seconds after they ran past me, I saw what motivated them to sprint on sandy pavement in such an attire. A cop chasing them – with the widest stride I have ever seen – was screaming ‘STOP’, as if the word itself could make them stop. I wondered what possessed our dear policeman to run after the same two guys working this corner almost every day. Perhaps he was looking for an excuse to exercise, or maybe he had the same wicked desire as me to check whether they could actually run with sagging pants – if so, hypothesis proven. Not only can they run, but they can do it faster than a trained officer of the law!


January:

Because of the cold and the snow, we kept the door closed during most of the day. But even without sound I still get invested in the scenes I observe; I simply have to get creative. It was snowing heavily so almost no one walked down the Madeleine Avenue leaving me alone with my thoughts, which is never a good idea. When an unexpected glimmer of hope appeared in the shape of a woman, dressed in black from head to toe with a visibly soaked scarf around her head meant to shield her from the snow. She was openly wailing. Even though her cries were mute to me, I could distinctly see the tears running down her cheeks. She just kept on walking with her hands in her pockets, wind blowing in her face, snowflakes melting at the contact of her warm skin, adding water to her tears. She seemed so consumed by her own emotions that the outside world did not matter, it could have hailed, rained blood, she would have just kept on walking. I wondered what could get someone in such a state. Was it just one bad day in a sea of good ones? Was the weight of life simply too heavy to carry? No matter the reason, it seemed incredibly freeing to cry in the snow, almost tempting to do so. But then I remembered that’s how you get sick, by walking in the snow with wet hair, crying yourself to exhaustion.

February:

Today was unnecessarily noisy. Between the protesters’ chants echoing down the street and the funny but loud homeless man approaching every person he saw; I could have used the silence of January. Not that I’m ungrateful for the many tales I got to observe. The homeless man managed to ask for money in such a warm and cheerful manner that he got more people to stop than the association leeches. As for the protest, having people stare at you through the window because they don’t believe in masks and you’re wearing one – not the kind of scene I was looking for. I prefer to play the role of spectator in the lives of my wandering pedestrians. I do not yearn to participate in it.

March:

With sun came the long-awaited warmth of Spring. People are clearly happier when it is sunny, birds are chirping, and flowers blooming. I saw a dancing toddler walking way faster than her mother, stuck with carrying three shopping bags and pushing the stroller. Then I got to watch the usual cortege of preschoolers walking up the avenue, stopping every few seconds to giggle at the pigeons, gawk at the colorful bottles in the shop window or simply stare into oblivion. Their caretakers were forced to make the smallest steps possible to match the short strides and lack of focus of the little ones. There was also a cheeky little boy, no more than four, who came into the shop to hide from his dad behind the glass door, which he thought was hilarious – and so did I. Then his father, a bit annoyed, grabbed him by the arm and apologized whilst hurriedly exiting the shop. The memories of children’s quirks and weird ideas got me smiling for the rest of the day, making boredom tomorrow’s problem.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Marina’s poems

Image: ‘Champagne’ © Sam Howitz. – CC BY 2.0 licence

Author: Marina Silietti

Peace

I was spattered with your lies echoing in my dreams
I felt hopeless, wrecked by the winds that took all of my tears
My bones cracked wondrously on your deceiving skin
My fears were painted in hell and I never saw it coming

My mind shattered slowly as you stood there
Sinking my thoughts and I deemed rugged revenge
I waded out brutally into your brokenness
And your ocean blue eyes bathed in knowingness

You put in the bag the last piece of me
Sidestepping my dismantled wounds
Wandering with your desolate dishonesty
While I was still in the woods

I laid there on the cold reddened ground
Claiming the mercy of the full moon
Asking for the mortality of our bound
While she lighted the inky room

And in the death of my soul, I found peace

Champagne Taste

I swallow your glance like pouring water
And you wreck my fears like golden cure
It’s delicate how you’re spinning in my brain
It’s untamed how you’re shining despite the pain

The champagne drops falling onto our faces is the only remedy
The brightest nights sparkling between the dark is our lightened legacy
So, I’d dare to hold your hand in the crowded room
Are they noticing how I pray for your body to bloom

This song isn’t made for the mighty stars
I’ll ask you to put its melody over a memory you miss
And I hope you’ll choose the day you kissed my lips
Do you remember how you squeezed my necklace around your sliver scars

There are bubbles stuck on your skin, darling
Even the champers samples like your eyes
I’d kill to taste your heart just for once
And I’ll claim my feelings for your mind

Until the end of the night

Categories
2022 - Spring

To A Lost Love

Image: Grimshaw Atkinson, A Moonlit Evening, 1880 ©️ Coleccion Carmen Thyssen

Author: Roxane Kokka

Listen to the dark, fallen leaves as they whisper
In a tremulous chant that I have lost a love
Of which I could not place another soul above.
As in the hollow streets of sorrow I linger,
In the burning ashes of regret I wonder
Of the alternative actions I avoided
And of enigmatic passions I distorted,
Out of fear, out of anguish, out of bitter
Dread of something new. As the thoughts of solitude
Sting my knowledge of that which I could not cherish,
And all my senses, one by one, slowly perish,
I drift in the perpetual silence ensued.

Categories
2022 - Spring

My Grandma’s Garden

Image: ©️ Patrick Didisheim

Author: Leah Didisheim

The Nature in my grandma’s Garden always amazed me
There is this sense of Family
That you find in the grass, and in the flowers
And in the trees and in the hours

You arrive at the Gate
You hear the rocks crack under the wheels
The trees are still there
The walnuts are still left lifeless on the ground

In the summertime, you do not take the main door
You turn around the House
And smile at the pool on your right

You look at the hole that the tree left
He seems to say « I was the King here once »
And you turn again, and walk up the stairs.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Landscapes – Guillaume’s poems

Image: ©️ Guillaume Amstutz

Author: Guillaume Amstutz

Rosy Dawn

A blinding light floods the sky
Stretches from the soil to mountain high
Dyes the land in the sweetest tones
Nourishes the leaves, brightens the stones
The droplets that hung in the air
Now shine bright, pink and fair
The world is a prism bathed in light
Reflecting life, banishing night.

The World in Winter

The mountains are like the earth’s teeth
hungering for a dawn after a long, long night
and the frost takes hold in this barren heath
a potter’s field covered in white

The falling flakes are the cold ashes
of a fire that bright burns no more
on the meadow the snow crashes
burying deep the earth’s ardor

Under the rooftops covered in white
a quiet maze of vacant halls
bathed dimly in faint daylight
when in slumber the pale sun falls
and as the wind howls over the world
whittling the trees with its whistling
carving the rocks with runes all twirled
crushing the hopes and their kindling
a bitter cold devours the groves
turning the wood into splinters
while a waning moon rises up above
silent witness of the winter

The Shattered City

An organism of steel and concrete
spreads like a disease, far out into darkness
with skeletons adorning the streets
waiting for light to shine on the nameless

The dying stars flicker only dimly
as the towers are circled by haze
the ghosts are roaming limply
in this collapsed and dusty maze

Under the ground, hopes are buried
old love letters in the streets scattered
and hate letters in the chimneys burned
down to ashes, by winds carried

Broken wings caught in cobwebs
clipped apart by vicious hands
far below, the water ebbs
and crashes on the cliffs and sands

But far above, a faint glimmer
beyond the forest and the hills
a distant hope that still lingers
before diving in the landfills

Nightfall

It expands to the furthest corners
All the sorrows, the joy, the songs it covers
The darkness progresses, and soils, and gathers
But through the tears in its skin, the light shimmers

Categories
2022 - Spring

Ode to an Oak

Image: © Eloïse Wenger

Author: Eloïse Wenger

1.
When the shadows of Evening will descend
The Sky and its colours will fade and turn
Revealing a painting of a new blend
In which the pink and red will start to burn.

2.
Then I will leave my house and close my door.
Passing the gate and the luminous church
I will go to the Forest and explore
the woods of fir, maple, willow and birch.

3.
I will see you waving your leaves at me,
Your trunk rending the Sky and newborn Stars.
“Hello my dearest friend.. Mon cher ami!”
For your vision makes me forget my scars.

4.
You must have been the witness of so much:
The seasons passing, your branches growing
All your memories flow in me at your touch
And your embrace makes me think I am flying

5.
Then I follow the path until I see
The Woods glooming at the top of the Hill,
Lythe Lane stopping in sight of the first tree,
A place where all the people remain still.

6.
There I sit on the Bench[1]. It is written:
“Lest we forget.” Words of a mum. Jenny..
Your son is gone with the flags of Britain.
Where is he now? Here? Or in that country?

7.
There must be the very same Bench out there,
With the words of another mum on it.
The language is difficult to compare,
Not the Loss that they will never admit.

8.
Watching humans condemned to endless grief
I feel my hopes are coming to an end
And at the sight of a first falling leaf
The fear of losing you my dearest friend..

[1] This Bench up Lythe Lane is dedicated to the memory of Richard, the son of Jenny, one of my neighbours, who lost his life in 2010 during his service in the Marines in Afghanistan.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Andrea’s poems

Author: Andrea Karlmann

Open in silence 

When it came to me,
Bit by bit,
It was a piece.
A fragmented piece.

A series of sounds,
Fragrant and raspy.

Just a mutter
At first.

Then a touch
Of motherly warmth.

Walking into a room

A leaf had landed on the windowsill,
So, I tossed it out.
A strange intrusion.
Just a leaf.
No one was to blame.
Just the wind.

Moved 

Enthused, unready for sense,
Or the redolence of
Affection,
Infused with motion,
Passions set the pendulum in swing,
Turns and turns,
Ambrosia’s ash,
Ebbing, bending and broken.

Away anathema.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Late Night Wedding Menu Translating

Author: Regan Agrey

For the first time in MUSE, we are publishing a wedding menu! Regan’s message will explain its… creative translations. We had a good laugh reading it and we hope you will too! You will find the French original right below the menu in English.

Regan’s message:
“I don’t know if you’ve ever planned a wedding but if you have then you know that there are a billion different details that you have to think of to make sure everything is ready. Menu translating was at the bottom of my list and I begrudgingly did it last minute, way too late at night, half asleep on my bed with my wife-to-be. Our guests got a kick out of it so I thought that I’d share it with [MUSE].”

MENU

FIRST COURSE

Some kind of Gruyère cheese with some carrots, celery and leek Eggplant saucy thing and some crunchy parmesan love
Vegetable in a soupy Gaspacho
Salad with a bunch of fancy words…basically some sauce and pecans with an eatable flower

***

Rollin’ pasta with ricotta, Popeye’s spinach and the creamiest of cheese
Hearty pasta drowning in safran
Shots of guacamole for everyone, bruschetta, and a buffalo mozzarella ball
Spoon full of balsamic vinaigrette bubbles (quite nice actually!)
The cherriest of tomatoes with the greenest of olives
Chiacchiere “La vita e bella con Rak & Reg”

***

Raspberry sorbet
(with the choice of wildness in the air… alcohol)

MAIN COURSE

Mapley, cinnamony and gingery on top of some beef Seasoned juice…?
Grilled almonds hanging out with some apricot
Potato bake with some kind of french cheese : The reblochon
The whitest asparagus you know vs the greenest and meanest asparagus with special guests carrot and green bean

***

Or replace your meat with
PETA certified, 100% meatless lasagna
(no animals were harmed in the making of this lasagna)

DESSERT

Some fluffed mango and passion fruit relaxing on some coconut
Mom’s crunchiest dark chocolate
Wild berries invaded by Crème brûlée, vanilla style

FOR THE SMALLS

Creamy chicken pasta

***

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

§
§
§
§
§
§

French original:

MENU

ENTRÉES

Terrine de gruyère en mille feuilles aux carottes, céleri et poireaux
Caviar d’aubergine et tuiles de parmesan
Gaspacho aux petits légumes
Salade de jeunes pousses, huile de noisette et vinaigre de xérès
Noix de pécan et orchidée karma

***

Roulé de pâte à la ricotta et épinard, crème de fromage
Coeur de pâte crème de safran
Verrine de guacamole, tartare de tomate, boule de mozzarella buffala
Cuillère de caviar de vinaigre balsamique
Tomates grappes et olives vertes
Chiachéré “La vita e bella con Rak & Reg”

***
Sorbet arrosé
(Framboise / Alcool de framboises sauvages)

PRINCIPAL

Noix de veau de lait au sirop d’érable, cannelle et gingembre
Jus aux épices
Abricot moelleux et amandes grillées
Gratin de pomme de terre au reblochon
Asperge blanche vs asperge verte, accompagnées de carotte fane et de haricots verts

***

Ou remplace ta viande avec
Lasagne aux bons légumes
(aucun animal n’a été blessé pour faire cette lasagne)

DESSERT

Mousse à la mangue sur un lit de noix de coco et fruits de la passion
Croquant au chocolat noir
Mousse fruits rouges incrusté de crème brûlée à la vanille

POUR LES PETITS

Emincé de volaille à la crème, coquillettes au beurre

***

Glace

Categories
2022 - Spring

The Limb of Life

Image: ©️ Frederica Petriglieri & Kiljan Paris

Authors: Frederica Petriglieri & Kiljan Paris

Nothingness was eternal. Without pain or pleasure neither anger nor calm. It was the lack of everything, the erring of lost consciousness of those who weren’t aware of their existence.
Floating in infinity among stardust and lights. Carrying the emptiness of the universe.
All souls were one and one soul was all.

How am I supposed to remember our matterless past?
While I’m floating tenderly in Charon’s boat.
Why does my memory of the universe fade away?
For the first time of my ethereal wonderings
I’m forgetting everything.

The darkness starts to weigh over me.
The Acheron! Am I drowning?
Wasn’t I destined to cross it?
Sudden fears grow in my being.

As I’m sinking deeper in unknown matter
Away for my lost embarkation
The fluid is tickling my lips
An instinctive sensation.

The pressure grows and grows
My entire being is surrendered by warmth
The feeling of weight accentuates
Where am I?
I did not cross the stream where everything ends
So has it just started?

All of a sudden my hands grab a soft rope.
I let them go freely along it
But they’re ending touching a moving wall
Is it possible? In all the darkness around, am I in a defined space?
For all I know now I’m trapped and alone.

My consciousness is trembling
The surrounding moves again and again
The wall is forever dancing
I’m trying everything to reassure myself,
When, out of my touch
Something comes directly through my head.
Wonderful hot air, smelly yet irresistible.
The Acheron smells nice!

-No wait!
I’m not in the river anymore
So where does this come from?
Isn’t hell supposed to be filled by flame and toxic gas
And that all the unliving are suffocating for eternity?
So why does all I breathe taste unrealistically familiar?

All flavors flourish within me.
The more I feel, the more I forget.
Senses of deeper knowledge
Are drifting me away from all that I know.

I start to hear my own symphony.
My heartbeat settle the rhythm
While the pond over me is shaking
I thought the underworld bears two rivers
But my ears hears billions
From the depth of darkness
The songs of their endless streams
It is drifting me back to a sense of unity
For all the rivers are joining in one.

The tune is connecting me to everything
To all that is over me. I can feel it.
So why does my rhythm sound different
From all the rivers symphony?
-Am I not alone?

Far distant sounds make the wall trembling
Soft and insistent
Decided yet subtle
As pretty whining in the darkness
-Maybe it’s not that hard in the underworld
It must be the voices from those who successfully passed away.

But I’m still running in circles.
And my cell is getting smaller.
-Has my judgment arrived yet?
Am I a damned soul trapped in itself
Destined to question for eternity?

-LET ME OUT!!
I push the wall and pull the rope with all strength.
The voices answer me back:
“AHHHHHH”
“AMORE CALMATI”

I’ve no clue of what that means but surprised as I am
All the muscles within me freeze.
“HAHAH, GRAZIE”
Who the hell is talking?

To satisfy my curiosity
And also because it was itching me
I open one eye to glimpse beyond the fence.
Soft lights spread in my small nest.
But enough to see the whole of me
My arms, hands, feet and toes.

From darkness comes shadow.
On top of that I’m hearing voices.
I’m starting to be crazy for sure.
I need to act, to move and get out.

I’m taking again the rope with both hands
My feet are pushing in every corner of my prison
I hear the same voice shouting but now I’m not stopping
Voices become louder and louder.
But I continue to push.
I’m banging my head through the wall.

I’m sure it’s moving and I can pass through.
-That’s it! I found a fissure where the light breaks.
Even if I suddenly doubt about following the light at the end of the tunnel.
I know it’s the only way.

It’s as if the wall wanted me out.
Every now and then the tunnel squeezes me and pushes me forward.
“LET’S GO PUSH”
Well I can’t do better and my head is stuck.
“HAHAHA”

I look up again and the light blinds me.
I’m tired, my body aching everywhere and my muscles start to fail on me
“GO GO COME ON”
As I’m fainting, the ground under me collapses.
My lungs are exploding as I’m trying to breathe.

But it hurts, I’m suffocating
Yet the boundaries around me are gone…

I’m floating amongst the giant hands of the underworld
So I did cross the Styx and Acheron after all!
For I’m selfless, defenseless and vulnerable.
In the arms of two titans who sing lullabies.

I know nothing anymore.

Categories
2022 - Spring

The Man in My Stomach

Image: © “Bobby and Betty, circa 1953” by Patrick Q

Author: Emilie 

TW: This text speaks about compulsive eating disorder. If this subject is sensitive to you, dear reader, maybe skip the reading of this text as it is not a shiny depiction of healthy behaviours.

Emptiness. I am full of it. From the very bottom of my toes to the top of my head. It takes so much place that I could throw up. It is devouring me. A hunger that drives me mental. There is no amount of food I could eat that would fill it. This void is always starving. No drink can quench its thirst. No candy bar, no grilled cheese, no leftovers, nothing can satisfy it. 

Although my head wishes so deeply to reject it, my screaming body refuses to. I picture this it as a man, an older man. Not old–old. Old like your best friend’s older brother. The kind of guy that would fuck a minor but would look cool because of it. Not an adult yet, definitely not a child anymore. The kind of person who would make toxic look appealing. Who tells you he loves you when his actions show you the scary opposite. The kind you know will throw you away like trash. The one that makes you stay. Well, that is the man living in my stomach. 

Please, dear reader, do not get me wrong, I hate him. As much as I am able to love. I told you. I am mental. Not in a cruel way. I am not the man in my stomach. I am mental in the medical sense. My therapist says I don’t have a classic eating disorder. Whatever this means, it pleases my pick-me girl self. I emotionally overdose and they drive me hungry. They mostly happen after fighting with my mum. We, my therapist and I, think it is due to my cowardice. Sorry, the proper words are: ‘I am unable to express my limits and emotions in front of my mother because she invalidates them’. Despite the fact that paragraphs could be written about my dear mother, this text concerns the man in my stomach. Let us move on.  

So, I eat. This abyss inside of me needs to be fed. Not just food by the way. He wants more. He craves for people. He wants more than dicks and pussies. His main desire is love. To love and to be loved. So, I dress up nice, wear cute and sometimes revealing clothes, put make-up on and I fall in love. Over and over again. With anyone really. Over and over again. I do realize it is not genuine, but I am attracted to its rush, like moths are enchanted by light. The man in my stomach craves for emotional over-eating. I feed him all the time and, sometimes, when satiated, he is not that bad. When a boy touches my arm a bit too long or when a girl maintains my gaze, the man in my stomach is happy. He gives me chills. He definitely has a type. I have another. He likes broken people. People with traumas, with something shiny that comes from grief or loss. My personal type is composed of talented and passionate people. Mostly artists. And artists are often broken. Consequently, we agree on the kind of people we fancy. He wants to eat them, and I am confused about what I expect of them. To love them? To be loved by them? I am clueless. You are right, dear reader, it is sad. Like really sad. 

My younger self would not be ashamed nor surprised, just disappointed. She was longing for so much more. She had enough dreams to fill thousands of worlds with. She was an artist. An unbroken one still. The kind of artist that you see in children movies. With eyes imbued with curiosity and harmless mischief. She would paint on invisible walls with the imagination that lived in her compassionate heart. All of this to say that, staring at my phone, I feel nothing but the overwhelming presence of emptiness. 

As my tears run over themselves on my cheeks, I feel sad about being sad. I am empty. A living void in autopilot. Maybe if I dared to look inside of me, I could find the trace of a fragile butterfly, sleeping in its delicate cocoon. Maybe it will survive this season of nothingness. Maybe not. It is the hope that may or may not live inside of me. But for now, there’s nothing else in me than the man in my stomach. And Hell. His name is probably Chad. 

Categories
2022 - Spring

The Song of The Night I Couldn’t Hear

Image: ©️ H.S

Author: H.S

1 Invited to a party I didn’t want to go to but went anyway because it was a girl who invited me:

Miserable numb dumb and drunk, standing still in a corner, stupid and silent – Drinking. Constantly silently unconsciously shivering for a sex dream. She has to work during the party – volunteering (that is to say she works for free) so of course she has no time for me. She invited me to this party and I know nobody except her so here I am – standing here stupid getting drunk on beer and sex dreams – Such assaulting sadness – the people here are not my style, no – they’re wearing fancy clothes – expensive but no style – A Great Gatsby of a party. She pleads, begs me to go dance and make friends while she works – “Go make friends” she says. And drunk I do! Some new overdue drunkard friends and despite everything they’re nice, cool and love to dance and Arab like me like I prefer. But I get carried away and truly crudely dance till two and then I see her again, but a guy is just all over her, arms around her – around her neck and all – So I confront her about it and really I just misunderstood this mysterious situation and she wasn’t interested in my body like I was in hers so too bad but hey at least I made drunk friends out of it all…

2 Trying to have a good time despite it all:

Rocks and blasted trees are those people! I walk amongst the lepers of the drunken night like Dante in the dark forest, music booming in my ears – I just nicely gently and softly push them aside to go to the toilet and get shoved and almost punched. Another guy interrupts us (me and my new drunk friends) dancing to strictly and stupidly insist I spilled his beer – which might as well be true. I didn’t fight him tonight but almost – I just wanted to have a good night a good girl a good life but now I have to play Jesus amongst brigands.

3 Coming home drunk:

The sad and sorrowful song of the night I couldn’t hear – tinnitus from the terrible tittle-tattle of speakers – the haloed aura of the réverbère, my only protection against misery, the failed night – “at least I tried!” but she didn’t want me so I left, not wanting her either. No cars on the soft sweet saintly concrete – A fox emerges from a garbage can and blesses me with intelligent eyes – He sees me and flees. I walk home, away from that katabatic catastrophe of a city – tortured by the streets, martyred by sidewalks. That night home in drunken fear and trembling I see the fox in my dreams: the fox was the Writer-Director of deranged Thought-Movies Fathered Angeled and Revered in Heaven (Hell).

I wake up weary and write these lines.

Written, Directed, Played, Watched, and Forgotten by H.S