Looking for your Green Card
Mayhap Mayhem

Don't lose it now...
But you're the kindaguy

One finds (with)
A tiny piece a recipe
Folded up in his wallet
For

Madeleines
Sugar Butter Cookies

While in the islands
Alone among the ties
Bind me then
By invisibility
To now then: some kinda

Some Offworld alien celebrity
From some far off
Land
Made of money
Pots of honey gold
Over there
Out there
The other side of the rainbow
A milk box

Para'Illusion
Half delusion
Unaware

Don't lose it now*
That pink card
"Permanent alien resident"
With A Madeleines Cookies recipe

In your wallet's
Back pocket
Mayhap maybe

It should be easy

To make.

the way the sunlight comes in through the kitchen window
is my favorite shade of yellow

i saw it when mémé sat me in her sink
and we ate raspberries
i shoved them on the tips of my fingers
and stained them red for a week
i could catch the yellow in my hand

i saw it when mémé shook her head
because tes madeleines sont pas assez cuit
and i rolled my eyes and assured her
i was not going to be a housewife anyway
i could feel it warm my arm

i saw it when mémé giggled
as she snuck me a bottle of wine
i cut my hand trying to open it
and hid it in a shoebox under my bed
i could feel the glimmer on my cheek

i saw it when mémé cried
as she held my chin in her hand
she said being fearless and daring are a bad mix
and it also runs in the family
and i could feel the rays reach across my collar

i see it when i think of mémé
i am no housewife
i struggle open a bottle of wine
and i have a bad mix of hereditary characteristics
mes madeleines sont toujours pas assez cuit
i can catch the yellow in my hand

Les nèfles de Kabylie

Il est des souvenirs d’enfance qui dominent longtemps l’esprit et ont des goûts de saveurs douces telles les madeleines de Proust.
Pour moi qui suis né à Bougie Ce sont les nèfles de Kabylie.
C’était en mai soit en juin que ces fruits blonds arrivaient sur la table de formica dans des couffins tressés de paille,
comme le signe d’un printemps qui bientôt deviendrait fournaise mais vibrionnant de Soleil.
Il fallait enlever la peau et en séparer les noyaux qui me faisaient penser à des billes Mais leur chair était succulente avec des zestes de vanille. et de bonbons acidulés.

J’avais huit ans, c’était la guerre !

Mais quand les nèfles arrivaient, j’oubliais les soucis des «grands» pour goûter à la chair des nèfles, jouer aux billes avec leurs noyaux.
C’est ainsi que parmi les drames, le regard de l’enfance est lointain.
Car la mort leur reste chimère. bien moins réelle que les jeux et les fruits dorés, bref privilège de l’enfance.

Paul d’Aubin (Paul Arrighi)
Toulouse- février 2014.

If she could have got
inside her head, Nadya
thinks, she is sure, her

mind can expand like an
inner universe. The thoughts
moving around like lost

planets, clusters of stars,
images, words, faces, actions
remembered. If she could

just put her hand into a
hidden orifice and reach
into her brain and sort

amongst the galaxies of
ideas she could be brighter,
braver, wiser, and there

clinging to certain ideas
associations like Proust’s
madeleines would be old

loves, broken heart moments,
melodies from favourite songs.
Josef has told her to leave

off the *****, to put away
the bottles, drink water, tea
or whatever. But he does

not satisfy. His love making
is a joke, all push and poke.
Sometimes she thinks her

thoughts come out of her
head and dance. Time for
another drink. She thinks

of Paris. Summers past,
spring walks. Josef’s endless
chatter breaks in; those all

too intellectual boring talks.
She imagines him as another,
pretends some young Russian

overeager tends to her, embraces
her body, kisses each inch of her
flesh, pleasure giving. No more of

this boring life, more of that wild,
touching the new, exploring ***, living.

-


It's always raining.

The cafes are home to neon lights that reflect on the wet concrete.
Brick roads, painted with the tears of God.

I don't cry anymore.

I walk the streets, the night breeze whispering memories of you into my hair.
I don't want to remember. Not like that.
It's like your breath turned as cold as your hands,
you used to breathe into me the same way.
Maybe it's you.
Maybe you turned into the night.

When I wash my hands, the memories pile up in my throat and it hurts me.
You loved holding hands.
I would sneak into your room
through the window.
The air was cold and the night was not you, not yet.
No, the night was me,
bringing with me the breeze and the moon and only the brightest stars all wrapped in my love for you.
Your bed was a nest where angels survived 'till their wings grew big enough to fly.
Your room was God's paradise and you were Lucifer,
hiding from your creators in a corner of a place we made heaven.
The sheets- embedded in your scent- were sacred;

if there are gardens in heaven, the flowers smell of you.

I still worship you.
I do so quietly, praying into the city with my heavy steps.
I sigh and hear your voice tangled in my breath.
Long aimless trips that always take me to your favorite cafe.
The madeleines I taught you to have with coffee.
And there I sit, the cat meows and paws at my lap.
I can't pet the thing, for she too is a memory of you.
The same river of fur that came to greet us that night.
She nuzzles my shoe
and I drink whatever I bought.

It rains often these days.
The cafe home to neon lights that reflect on the wet concrete.
Brick roads, painted with the tears of God.
I don't cry anymore.
I stopped crying when I realized our love was not going to bring you back.

The taste of my whatever-it-is-tonight drink is my only reminder that yes,
this is a different night than the last.
It's all the same. The cat. The scent of god's blood, trapped in rainfall decorating the surface.
The other night, I bought that-other-drink, two nights before it was the sweet-albeit-with-a-bitter-aftertaste one.
These are my days.  I'll begin properly naming them soon;
Perhaps friday will become too-sweet-coffee or late-nite-kir.
Vanilla-wood-whiskey.
Carmel-scented-lies (this too would be whiskey).
Citrus-******-*****-of-a-cake.

I'm sorry. I always hated that cake.
You'd feed me a morsel of the thing every time you ordered it. You found my reaction amusing-- "How could you not like it?" you'd say, laughing. You never expected an answer.
You were so beautiful.

How could you leave me?

You left me with the cat and the citrus-y hell bouncing on my tongue,
bouncing like the I-love-yous I still have to shower you with,
bouncing like the leg that won't stop, its barely-contained urge to kick the animal and the coffee and the chair and the-

I don't cry anymore.

I'm done with the drink. I don't remember the taste.
There is some left, sitting at the bottom, almost whining at me. I leave it.
You are all there is, Guillaume.
You are in the cat's fur,  in not-quite-finished drinks, in the breaths I take to fill my lungs in some act of determination to stay alive despite there not being any reason to anymore.

Goodbye, Miss Cat. I'm heading to the bridge.
Why? No reason. The breeze is always stronger there (though this is merely an observation.).
My sighs and your voice, the night that is your soul breathing into my hair, caressing my neck and curling it's fingers around it, like you did those nights in your room. You really loved playing with my hair.

"I love you more though."

'I love you more.'
You loved me more than anything we knew existed.
And that's the thing, my darling angel, ******* star of my entire universe,

(The night, it pushes me back as I step outside of the railings, frantic attempts to keep me alive. You’ve begun to panic)

You loved me, but I still feel that wretched monster,
that thing that just won't let go of what remains of our heart, the hands of grief that anchor me to the wet concrete, the chains that don't let me go anywhere too far from the cafe and my room.
The chains that fall short of giving me the freedom to explore your room, our heaven.

The breeze has never been this strong.
Are you crying? Are you pounding your fists on an invisible surface, screaming at me from behind some divine glass wall that divides us?

"I know you're there." I say.
You're so close, yet so very far.
What a terrible cliche to die to.

My arms hook on the railings behind me, your whispers turning into a loud, cold wind no longer caressing my skin but cutting it-- this is how you scream now.
This is how you speak to me.
This is how you tell me to stay.

"No." I respond.
I'm not going to stay, Guillaume. I am not going to stay here any longer.
Nothing is going to bring you back.

I don't cry anymore.

I can't... continue this way.

I don't cry anymore.

I am young and I am in pain.
I'm bitter and angry at the universe for taking you. I hate Paris. I hate God. I hate the cat. I hate myself for feeling anger.
I hate that I cannot grieve properly. I hate that what we had was so great, it did not fit in this universe.
Maybe that's why you were taken from me, all in the name of order, balance.
But it's still too much. I don't fit in the world anymore. I don't want to fit.

Stop screaming, Guillaume. Stop begging. I won't listen. You know how stubborn I can be.

"Just try it! God, you're so stubborn."

You know I'll try anything for you, no matter how bitter the aftertaste.


I tried, I really did.


My fingers become weak as I begin to let go.
You hold your breath and it all goes so quiet.
The sound of fingers slipping off of the metal is all I hear,
death is so quiet, I think to myself
and fall.

I feel you cradle me, the air strangely warm now.
How warm must your breath be, how great your love, to alter the order of the universe so.

How slow the fall. How warm your embrace.

I'm not sorry. I love you and this is how I will show it to you.
If I cannot be with you, then I simply cannot be.

You know how stubborn I am.



I love you, Guillaume.










I love y-














. . .













*Float away, dear Thomas. Float ‘till you reach me.