David-Baptiste Chirot
It is a little street which makes your feet bleed . . .
For Sheila Murphy
It is a little street which makes your feet bleed. A chipped brick alley among collapsing garages runs away from it. Its blood streaked surfaces are flanked by fading flowers. Their dried out stems scratch against the brittle leaves of dying weeds. The use of water hasn’t been known here in a while.
At one end of the red streaks is a running man and at the other end a bungalow with a door flapping in the very dry wind. A rhyming contorted soundless scream is formed by the man’s mouth and a broken window.
Posters for advanced poets and backward politicians and their reverse shrivel and flake off of tottering telephone poles. From the decomposing typographies and images emerge dirty half-formed moths. Their grimy wings blur with the faces of the half forgotten VIPs. Monstrous new word slingers sprout their own Wanted Posters.
Entering this district the quiet is a decoy oasis in a desert of noise. Dried flower stems scratching brittle leaves of dead weeds are the only sound. The pen scratchings of a lie detector indicating a serial generator of falsehoods.
In the little street the running man is approaching. His mouth is contorted in an agonizing silent scream. His feet are bleeding, his arms and torso burned and mutilated.
A closer look reveals he has no tongue.
Among the grimy moth-wing blurred images of former VIPS become today’s Most Wanted his image and typographical identification must be flaking away.
At the other end of the little street, in the bungalow with the flapping door, there is no one. The new poets and politicians do not use posters. They are superstitious of shriveling and flaking away. Their message is the tongueless scream of a mutilated messenger running on bleeding dying feet like the hero of Marathon.
The dried up flower stems scratched against dying weeds’ brittle leaves. A broken window reflected a cracked up sky. The flapping door danced with the dry wind. In this district is a serial generator of falsehoods . . .
ROUGH SAINTS
For DH & Cristina de Figueiredo Vieira
Through a large hole in an upper story wall is a startling landscape view. Expecting grim roofs, chimneys, decrepit industrial structures, the eye finds tops of trees and among them sloping lawns. Traffic sounds vanish amid insect drones and bird calls. Slowly the myriad slabs and carved stones of headstones and monuments come into focus. The daily despair of the brutally violated present, with its continual humiliations of defeat and dispossession, suddenly finds itself infinitely refreshed in the fountains and flora of heroic rest. Though modeled in hardest stone, one finds in the statues an all suffusing relaxation of every cell of the body. Here there are no martyrs, here there are no restless ghosts of murdered souls.
Here . . . as the eye begins to soak in the balm of roots and loam, the songs of birds and insect hums . . . here the ground is suddenly shaking, splintering, cleaving, heaving, writhing . . . catastrophic contortions fling high the disturbed coffins, their lids flapping, so many jabbering jaws of skulls screaming in the bomb torn and burning air. Headstones and trees violently wrenched from their sockets slash and scar the ferro-chemically tortured soil. Monuments and mausoleums explode in mockeries of memories eternal. The ground is littered with dead birds, owls and squirrels. The eye, seared, desperately tries to flee . . .
In a mellow afterglow of late afternoon light and chemically colored flames of still burning pockets of debris and trees, groups of children make their careful way. With practiced eyes and hands they find and collect the most intriguingly shaped and colored fragments of stone, bone, metal, wood and unburied jewelries, heirlooms, and trinkets. Here and there a half burned face smiles through a shattered frame, a memorial text is condensed to a few poetic words. All is neatly cleaned and taken away.
Among the alleys threading their way through the wastelands of rubble, there have been small areas hollowed out and neatly shaped, interior gardens in half hidden courtyards. There one finds mosaics made of hand polished brightly colored bomb debris and bone. Images and designs shine and sparkle with vivid light-given life.
Children of crumbs and next to no water knew that no one can take away that which never sets.
David Baptiste Chirot "Essays, reviews, prose poetry, sound and visual poetry, performance scores, Mail Art have appeared in print and web 60+ different journals in over a dozen countries. Participated in 350+ Visual Poetry and Mail Art exhibtions, Calls. 3 books, 3 chapbooks and in many print and e-anthologies. My work is with the found, everywhere to be found, hidden in plain site/sight/cite. http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com"
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It is a little street which makes your feet bleed . . .
For Sheila Murphy
It is a little street which makes your feet bleed. A chipped brick alley among collapsing garages runs away from it. Its blood streaked surfaces are flanked by fading flowers. Their dried out stems scratch against the brittle leaves of dying weeds. The use of water hasn’t been known here in a while.
At one end of the red streaks is a running man and at the other end a bungalow with a door flapping in the very dry wind. A rhyming contorted soundless scream is formed by the man’s mouth and a broken window.
Posters for advanced poets and backward politicians and their reverse shrivel and flake off of tottering telephone poles. From the decomposing typographies and images emerge dirty half-formed moths. Their grimy wings blur with the faces of the half forgotten VIPs. Monstrous new word slingers sprout their own Wanted Posters.
Entering this district the quiet is a decoy oasis in a desert of noise. Dried flower stems scratching brittle leaves of dead weeds are the only sound. The pen scratchings of a lie detector indicating a serial generator of falsehoods.
In the little street the running man is approaching. His mouth is contorted in an agonizing silent scream. His feet are bleeding, his arms and torso burned and mutilated.
A closer look reveals he has no tongue.
Among the grimy moth-wing blurred images of former VIPS become today’s Most Wanted his image and typographical identification must be flaking away.
At the other end of the little street, in the bungalow with the flapping door, there is no one. The new poets and politicians do not use posters. They are superstitious of shriveling and flaking away. Their message is the tongueless scream of a mutilated messenger running on bleeding dying feet like the hero of Marathon.
The dried up flower stems scratched against dying weeds’ brittle leaves. A broken window reflected a cracked up sky. The flapping door danced with the dry wind. In this district is a serial generator of falsehoods . . .
ROUGH SAINTS
For DH & Cristina de Figueiredo Vieira
Through a large hole in an upper story wall is a startling landscape view. Expecting grim roofs, chimneys, decrepit industrial structures, the eye finds tops of trees and among them sloping lawns. Traffic sounds vanish amid insect drones and bird calls. Slowly the myriad slabs and carved stones of headstones and monuments come into focus. The daily despair of the brutally violated present, with its continual humiliations of defeat and dispossession, suddenly finds itself infinitely refreshed in the fountains and flora of heroic rest. Though modeled in hardest stone, one finds in the statues an all suffusing relaxation of every cell of the body. Here there are no martyrs, here there are no restless ghosts of murdered souls.
Here . . . as the eye begins to soak in the balm of roots and loam, the songs of birds and insect hums . . . here the ground is suddenly shaking, splintering, cleaving, heaving, writhing . . . catastrophic contortions fling high the disturbed coffins, their lids flapping, so many jabbering jaws of skulls screaming in the bomb torn and burning air. Headstones and trees violently wrenched from their sockets slash and scar the ferro-chemically tortured soil. Monuments and mausoleums explode in mockeries of memories eternal. The ground is littered with dead birds, owls and squirrels. The eye, seared, desperately tries to flee . . .
In a mellow afterglow of late afternoon light and chemically colored flames of still burning pockets of debris and trees, groups of children make their careful way. With practiced eyes and hands they find and collect the most intriguingly shaped and colored fragments of stone, bone, metal, wood and unburied jewelries, heirlooms, and trinkets. Here and there a half burned face smiles through a shattered frame, a memorial text is condensed to a few poetic words. All is neatly cleaned and taken away.
Among the alleys threading their way through the wastelands of rubble, there have been small areas hollowed out and neatly shaped, interior gardens in half hidden courtyards. There one finds mosaics made of hand polished brightly colored bomb debris and bone. Images and designs shine and sparkle with vivid light-given life.
Children of crumbs and next to no water knew that no one can take away that which never sets.
David Baptiste Chirot "Essays, reviews, prose poetry, sound and visual poetry, performance scores, Mail Art have appeared in print and web 60+ different journals in over a dozen countries. Participated in 350+ Visual Poetry and Mail Art exhibtions, Calls. 3 books, 3 chapbooks and in many print and e-anthologies. My work is with the found, everywhere to be found, hidden in plain site/sight/cite. http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com"
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