LE SURVIVANT (du COVID-19) — 2021.
Eux, ils disent …
que c’est maintenant le moment
de s’accepter, et d’accepter les autres
tels qu’ils sont.
Les rides du visage
me réconfortent
à l’ère de la nouvelle peste.
Je suis vieux,
mais je suis toujours un survivant.
C’est si bon.
Mais je veux vraiment savoir:
Quelle est la valeur de cela?
Par exemple,
sur le marché boursier
de l’amour
et de l’attraction?
LE SURVIVANT (du VIH/SIDA) — 1993.
Oh oui, c’est un survivant …
sa mère alcoolique a le cancer du sein ;
et son ‘père’ l’a quitté bien avant
sa naissance.
Vivre dans un parking à caravanes
a ses avantages : les gens
s’en fichent que vous découchiez ou non …
ou que vous restiez absents des jours entiers.
Oh oui, c’est un survivant …
sa soeur était une prostituée ;
elle ne touche plus à la came
afain de conserver son emploi
comme caissière chez Wal-Mart.
Son petit ami, un vaurien,
vit à ses crochets …
il n’est même pas foutu de recycler
les bouteilles jetées à la poubelle
ni les canettes ou les récipients.
Oh oui c’est un survivant …
il se fait tabasser un jour sur deux
a l’école ; et giflé une fois par semaine.
a la maison. Il y est habitué et
a présent il s’en fiche,
depuis peu il porte sur lui
un couteau à cran d’arrêt
pour voir s’il peut se défendre …
comme à la guerre en Iraq.
Il rêve de posséder un revolver et espère
qu’un jour un mac connu de la pègre
croisera son chemin
et retapera sa vieille gimbarde
pour en faire un vrai bijou.
Oh oui, c’est un survivant …
Il prend ses médicaments contre le sida
uniquement lorsqu’il s’en souvient.
La vie est un doux mélange :
parfois ‘paradis’
et souvent ‘enfer’ …
cela dépend s’il est camé,
s’il a baisé ou s’il n’a rien fait du tout,
ou les deux à la fois.
Un voisin punk l’a traité une fois de pédé
Il a souri simplement … l’enfoiré a eu peur
et a pris la poudre d’escampette.
Ni chaud ni froid !
Tout cela est d’ailleurs aussi aléatoire que futile ;
comparé au réchauffement climatique,
à la menace nucléaire,
aux tueurs en série, au terrorisme …
et que dire de ces satanées galeries marchandes !
Les posters qui ornent sa chambre
sont des photos de victimes :
de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale,
de catastrophes naturelles,
d’attaques terroristes …
ceux qui lui rappellent
qu’il a de la chance
peuvent aller se faire pendre !
Sa mère joue à plein volume
ce vieux tube disco “I will survive !” …
la rare fois qu’il décide
de faire ses devoirs.
Oh oui, c’est un survivant …
THE SURVIVOR (of COVID-19) – 2021.
They say …
that now is the time
to accept yourself, and to accept others
as they are.
Facial wrinkles comfort me
in the era of the new plague.
I am old, but I am still a survivor.
It is so good.
But I really want to know:
What’s the value of that?
For example, on the stock market
of love and attraction?
THE SURVIVOR (of HIV/AIDS) — 1993.
Yeah, he’s a survivor …
His alcoholic mother has breast cancer;
and his ‘dad’ left long before he was born.
Living in a trailer park has its perks:
no one really cares if you stay out all night …
or for days on end, for that matter.
Yeah, he’s a survivor …
His sister is an ex-whore;
struggling to stay ‘clean’
so she can keep her job as a cashier at Wal-Mart.
Her loser live-in boyfriend is a ‘good-for-nothing’ …
a fucking bum who won’t even bother to recycle bottles
discarded in garbage receptacles or containers.
Yeah, he’s a survivor …
He gets beaten every other day at school;
and slapped once-a-week at home.
He’s used to it: doesn’t care anymore really,
but he has recently begun carrying a switchblade
to see if it can be a deterrent …
like going to war in Iraq.
He dreams of getting a handgun,
and is hoping that someone famous
will one day pimp his ride.
Yeah, he’s a survivor …
He takes his HIV-meds when he remembers.
Life is a sweet mixture:
sometimes ‘heaven’, and oftentimes ‘hell’ …
depending on the ‘high’,
the sex or the lack of either (or both).
A neighbor-punk called him ‘faggot’ once …
He just smiled …
causing the asshole to run in haste and fear.
Who cares?!! It’s all temporary anyway;
what with global warming, nuclear threats,
serial killers and terrorism …
and those fucking ‘super malls’.
His favorite posters in his room are pictures of victims:
from the second world war, from natural catastrophes,
from terrorist attacks …
anyone who reminds him
that he is one of the lucky ones.
Doesn’t matter.
For the moment anyway.
At least that’s what he thinks
when his mom blasts the old disco hit “I will survive!” …
the one time in a blue moon
when he sets himself down to do his homework.
Yeah, he’s a survivor …
… i cannot hear you!”
Photo: Adam Donaldson Powell
WHISPERS…
I
Differentiate dream from vision: I heard a voice
telling me it was
so softly
in whispers become fingers insistent each
a separate story in whispers become
a hand coming to rest assurance
on my brow smudging wrinkle away from shadow
Shadows become whispers
sliding into sleep, dreams descending
to a new crescendo to vision turning
on its heel and reminding
in whispers as indifferent as relentless
as ocean waves
going about the business of being ocean waves.
II
SPLASHING whispers gone amok;
red paint SPLATTERED on white sailcloth …
one green eye and one brown
talking with one another
but without seeing;
leaving me DISJOINTED but not perplexed.
My dream-catching whispers are now
quite rambunctious and I’m feeling rather
PURPOSELESS while
GASPING for words on the edge of an eternal
moment for moment
flirting with smothering cobwebs …
TURN ME LOOSE!
You’ve shown me more than my whisper can digest.
You’re falling far … far past the point of
being in love with yourself and
I want to cry more but
my tears have given way to
HOARSE, LICORICE WHISPERS.
Turn me loose … turn me loose …
A pale oyster-moon has just slithered past
the sweet nothings and penetrated my inner ear
STOP … PLEASE
III
Don’t speak.
SHHhhhhhhhhhh……………
“Speak softly,” my conscience says.
There is no room for doubt in such proximity and
waking hours spent running and arranging
and defending and
composing and planning and
(GRUNT)
Sometimes I think that our sounds don’t
really match anymore … a mad woman running from place to place in
sensible shoes falling
asleep on buses and subways snarling
at old ladies coming too close with their
dripping …
If only men
could bleed for love
as only women can … perhaps
then I could surrender to your whispering.
You do still hear me, don’t you?
Umbrellas. THEIR
LARGE BIRDS’ MOUTHS open and shut, open and shut in silence.
You stalk my emotions, steal my words …
(Openings rest there near rapture.)
SHHhhhhhhhhhhh…….”Don’t speak,” you say.
Fuck off …
Meanwhile an honest feast takes place
unperturbed
in the moonlight.
Just because you’re not actually being
followed doesn’t necessarily mean that you
don’t have a right to be PARANOID.
Hey! Are we talking about your experience
of my words … or mine of yours?
I
CRASHED but nobody noticed my shadow mingled
swiftly yet another meek
whistle
among their own; they went right on eating.
I just want to SCREAM In silence.
SHHhhhhhhhhhh…………… WHAT?!!!
IV
All I do is salvage the remains and begin
again A Broken Child
teeters with epileptic balance
down along the sidewalk. Paranoia reduced to one
crystal fragment fractured and reeling in
umpteen patterns,
each collecting and then returning
whispers
in its own fashion. I can’t
catch up with it: it shifts
quicker than I can move quicker than
the frenzy of my thoughts. Shiny white minnows fly
into sight like mirrors, now gone
missing.
TIT FOR TAT this for that Heads
Nodding in implied
Consent PUPPETS not the thing like
the thing itself. We accept this deception
and ravenously A broken room and all the while
the heart beats a dogged rhythm.
V
I get spooked when you corner me inside myself;
especially when you whisper those seductive,
unspeakable psychological assessments
against my ear-drum …
tango-like rhythms bouncing
in a stilted, jerking fashion
I follow your lead
’round and ’round, closer and closer until …
Our precarious showdown brings us
face-to-face with insecurity and dream.
An orchid unfolds an insistent
vermillion informs
pink petals distended …
endings mute into beginnings …
Screeching, flamebreathing dragons soar low over
violated plains of brainmatter.
As silk upon iron.
Vibrato persists
confused but undaunted as wings span
a trembling distance
Fires of fear incite waves of internal uproar to sear the
ulcerated lining of delicate abdominal tissue, while
glowing corpuscles ferry hysteria into distended veins
and scorch alarmed nerve endings
… crops fail, dams break, control centers malfunction …
eyelids clamp shut in retreat from the horrors
of imminent disaster but optic darkness is cruelly
marred by vermillion blotches — proclaiming realization
of all that was dreaded yet intuited
as inevitable.
Unprescribed; an estimate of
mute yet yearning finger
tips trembling search. Desist (as)
and as the war-drum heartbeats of
a million Amazons prepare to vanquish
my masculinity with insecurity at its
first indiscretion, I load my tongue with
silver arrows …
Darts soaring swerve and distort
Falling short to collapse
mid-flight. One lone note
And mercilessly catapult the words ‘I love you’
against your brazen shield and prepare to fall —
breathlessly —
into the fiery ashes of countless charred impulses
raining heavily upon furrows of creativity;
cultivating retrospect with expectation.
Tests timbre tone tenacity. Yawns
and swallows seeds of hope.
One lone orchid
unfolds out of my throat
an insistent vermillion.
VI
Our whispering draws to a close …
the stillness of space around us
empty of airflow and sound;
all confirmed by the syncopated
racing rhythms of my own heart …
unaffected by the rotation of the Earth
while breakdancing clouds laughingly roar
with all the grace of
SHATTERING glass.
And there our whisperings remain,
rather indistinguishable from the multitudes
and dulled by disclosure and dessication.
VII
Je m’accuse … je suis tombé(e)
(IMPLICATED ..AND FALLING)
Openings rest there near rapture: A pale oyster-moon
has just slithered past the sweet nothings
and penetrated
my inner ear: je suis tombé amoureux. (
Implicated and falling in love …)
BIRDS’ MOUTHS open and shut open and shut in silence;
one lone orchid unfolds silver arrows
loading for flight.
Je suis tombé amoureux de ton chuchotement
A hoarse licorice whisper on the edge of an eternal
moment for moment shiny
white minnows
fly into sight
like mirrors, now gone missing.
Copyright Adam Donaldson Powell and Diane Oatley, 2005 “Whispers” (a dialogue for two voices) had its world premiere in Kathmandu, Nepal (at Gurukul Theatre) in 2006. Diane Oatley is a poet, writer and dancer. She is also the author of “Swoon”, published by Cyberwit.net in 2005.
“WHISPERS” IS PART OF MY BOOK ENTITLED “THREE-LEGGED WALTZ”. ORDER “THREE-LEGGED WALTZ” AND SEVERAL OF MY OTHER BOOKS FROM CYBERWIT.NET OR AMAZON.COM
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