To Laurentin,
Skylark

Another sheet of paper for you with inked words
Pretending to pretentiously carry metaphors:
Lights for February, for anchored loves
Becoming projected, mundane candle holders.

The shadows in the room sketch your silhouette
You’ll hear dawn: shrieks of the skylark;
Cuddled in a precious dream, in the drapes of your shape
Multiplying the room with your sighs,  saying… more…

I’ll think on you, in you, and then for you:
Your breath, your jolts, your smiles, your sounds
Will be my compasses,  capricious circle
Naked ‘fore the Universe, under the skies of your roof.

And sealing upon your mouth tonight’s stars
The flask of my air offers you the threads
Of my words’ desire, a black supple river
On that day, no roses, but the lovers’ span…

Written in Lyon on Valentine’s Day 2016.

Poem-report: Greece

Writing poetry in the Hellenic region
Equals to discussing democracy
In Athens, its cradle then despotic tomb
The poem can’t survive in this rather cracy.

Greece however always belongs to pugnacious Achilles
Keeping the mythical beauty of its temples and islands:
The sea is as clear as the thin aquamarine
Which used to ornate Pallas’ bust, sibyl.

And what of Apollo, supreme oracle of Delphi
He is done delivering visions, no one calls out his name
The poet summons him, but he fails to arrive
What can he make of sanctity or lent?

The deity’s site looks as wild as it was then
Between an ochre mountain and a rising sun
The stray cats and dogs, worshipers of the past
Are the only believers who now crowd the p(a)lace.

Greece is pauper alas, and exploits its legends
To obtain some drachm from European folks:
Statues and vases, paintings and almonds
Everything is copied and sold–what a Herculean task!

What sad realization takes hold of the voyager
To follow the tracks of heroes, eager
Athens is filthy, and to heal her gray boyishness
The acropolis is yours for about thirty euros!

Men of our time have desacralized
What had been dreamt about when barely imagined
Glory only remains in what you can read of it
I almost couldn’t find some muses and their lyre.

Written in French in Athens, March 31, 2017
Translated in Lyon, April 19, 2017.

In Memoriam,

Where is the face that launched a thousand ships?
Girls of the age of the waves are named after her
Helen, whose Sparta is now a mundane village
No one breathes in her mythical sillage
No one grabs her golden belt above the hips.

Where is the lithe Hermes and his winged sandals?
Women of today wear him daily on their necklaced throne
Around the neck and the perfume, a scarf is thrown
Do you know of this French house creating scandals?

Does Apollo know he has been sent into space
In an intricate horse of iron called eleven
Here’s hoping he saws the strings of Lyra
He, bringing poetry and Letters to grace.

What about the boastful Paris and his pride?
Cursed by Aphrodite and Helen’s eloper
What would he know of the City of Lights
Paris, paradise of lovers to reach new heights…


And what to say of fair Spartan Hermione
The incarnated actor making much more money
From Hermione to Emma but none of the myth
Both had to fortunately grit their teeth…

Ajax the Lesser who forced himself on Cassandra
Still tears your household and floor asunder
Warrior whose name now scrubs the dust
Off nowadays lame palaces, bound to rust…

Homer, father of the epic poem of Greece
You should hide under your sheep’s fleece
What would you say to the yellowish Cyclops
Benighted idiot, pondering on donuts!


Lyon, March 2- March 4, 2017

The hidden rite

The labradorite scaled skin glistens
Full of cyan as well as cyanide
Fantastic fish it finds the stream
In the crease of the cliff to hide.
On one hand it meets the core
Of nature. It is telluric till the end
The labradorite kisses the lore
On the other hand, a legend.
The slippery fish follows, swerving
The selfish body of water
Displaced, it becomes sensual
Yet it’s just a fish as usual.


November 12, 2016
Lyon

This season births a golden brown hue
Painted on red leaves heaved
By the warm wind this fall evening
One can read the imprint of time which stuns
A network of living paths, on the brown veins
Like a body’s own, lifted
Led, by October ravished
Over the hills and dunes.

This network of veins I own
Forming this soft orange dream
And this hair tousled
By the season’s fire, mad about
The golden muses’ whispers, fairies
The tracks of the stealthy squirrels
Vivid ribs imprinted into the warm clay
Keep my feet to this fall soil
This secret carved into yew.

Appoline
Translated and written on October 24, 2016.
Lyon

The poet, a butterfly

The butterfly is burdened
By first and foremost its name
Its lithe body bearing that lame
“Flying butter’’! It’s bewildered!

When mocked, the poet creates
Towers of Babel scratching the slates
Of the dark-blue hefty Heavens above
Its urge to spring free it cannot solve:

It’s compelled to flap
Its wings shiny with arcane dust
Over flowers sipping the ***** sap
Yellow and warm like a baked crust!

If you ever touch this creature
Pointing your finger at nature
It will fly away, to never return
Ruthless human, what did you earn?

The powder on your skin from the aerial
Grey and sticky, you’ll dispose off
You can’t write with this material
The veil the insect was so in need of…

Let it be overwhelmed with its gift
This hydromel from the skies high
You cannot grasp all the gist
Of those who breathe and ache to fly!

March 30, 2016
Lyon 2 University

Five beats four lines one feeling

This dream I had last night is dear so odd
Of thoughts it could be but a silent stream
Your face was sun was soft in such a dream
I stop the quill, it quivers, quiet flood.

Villeurbanne, 1:50 am, Wed Oct 21, 2015

(translation in French below)

Cinq temps, quatre vers, un sentiment



Mon cher j’ai fait ce rêve la nuit d’avant
Des pensées c’est mais un calme courant
Dans ce rêve doux soleil était ta face
Je freine ma plume, tremblant le long flot glace.

Villeurbanne, 2:18 du matin, 21 Octobre 2015