mon voisin aime me taquiner / my neighbour likes to tease me

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn.”   –  Jane Austen

 

“Listen, you only tease the ones you love.”   –  John Boehner

 

“I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life – to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one’s neighbors.”   –   Robert W. Service

 

Symbol d’Occitan

 

mon voisin aime me taquiner / my neighbour likes to tease me

jean est taquiner moi

he delights in telling

le monde

says i am a spy

for obama

the twinkling

dans ses yeux,

illuminating smile

gives him away

everytime

the hard rods of

steel

he shapes into

gates, railings,

le croix de Cathar

or the symbol of the

pays d’ Occitan

the flames of the

forge

a mask

outside

l’ atelier

le masque

tombe

*

bisous,

léa

Bone speak

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” 

–      William Shakespeare

 

 

 

Bone speak

Not yet

Brittle

Yet perhaps

A bit of a rattle

De temps en temps

Where I have lain

Broken

In the past

*

That speeding car

Stopping in the back

Of my own

Fracturing C2

The axis

Of my revolving

Kindly you didn’t

Sever spinal connections

*

So many years ago

Even a scan doesn’t

Find a trace of you

Yet the coldest wind

Tightens its grip

Rappel de mon cou

Of what might

Have been

*

The only evidence

Lies buried beneath

Long muddy brown locks

Burr holes, for traction

A puzzle for future

Anthropologists

Pas du tout

My ashes will not

Be found

*

Bisous,

Léa

Inarticulate

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

–  Elie Wiesel

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence”

 –  Leonardo da Vinci

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself”

–  Harvey Fierstein

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

–  Martin Luther King Jr.

***

Inarticulate

Writer’s block

Is sometimes

Symptomatic

Of the things

So repressed

Like being

Tongue-tied

Stuck back

In the dungeon

Called childhood

The words

Won’t appear

Keyboard

Silenced

Somewhere

Between the past

And anywhere else

My fingers

Loose their way

Freeze in a hover

Over the keys

Separating truth

From the fiction

Exposing it to

Light

Like pollen

Lifted by the

Wind

To begin

Anew

***

Bisous,

Léa

Le berre de rivière (The River Berre)

“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”

–      Vincent Van Gogh

“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”

–  Joseph Conrad

Le berre de rivière  (The River Berre)

Tables and chairs

Against an ancient

Stonewall

Across from le

Café

If you are lucky

A seat can be yours

So many tourists

Pageant of color

Paints the sky

As the sun disappears

West

Below

La berre

Dried up

Fish to dust

Few remaining puddles

Disappear rapidly

To be return with

November rains

Un verre de vin rouge

For now

A book

As I wait until

Stars

Take center

Stage

A show that takes

My breath away

Bisous,

Léa