BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Another Journey

 

It’s still early

you’re through with work now

you go home and the streets are crowded with passers-by

there is like the deafening sound of a song in the headphones over your ears that isolates you more or less from the others

so you take off the headphones

but it is not you that I see in the street

but a stranger

and I don’t know if I am dreaming or not

as you have deserted me

so I don’t care anymore about anything

and I walk back home like a ghost

I eat my supper quickly and go to bed

in the mirror arises this reflection next to mine

you’re still sleeping and I don’t know who’s next to me in this bed

I look out the window and the stars are now moving backward in the sky

soon I will have to get up to go to work

I go back to bed

and yet next to me your body has vanished

I must have been dreaming I guess

I see myself walking along the shore

there are children playing with the sand by the sea

adults getting warmed up in the sunlight

It was a long time ago

I still remember

there is also your reflection all flattened on the sea then raised back up by the waves

it ends up stranded at my feet

yet on this mountain path

where I had abandoned you a long time ago

I saw this figure that I thought was familiar to me

I caught up with it on one fine day

you swung around to face me

you had turned into someone else in the meantime

I dream at night that you come back to lie near me

in darkness the shadows cover up the walls like my swift thoughts like dust on the walls of a very ancient grave

it is this still the very same dream

started again that contains me

but it’s not you anymore that I find next to me

the city wakes up

I get up

I eat my breakfast quickly

I go down the stairs

I’m outside now

I blend in the noisy crowd

and I say to myself

I’m not going to go to work anymore

I’m not going to waste my life anymore

you are no longer there but it does not matter

I walk straight ahead without knowing where I’m going

I raise up my head

clouds run in the sky

I smile

because it’s time to start once more our journey

within Time

 

 

 

 

The Roots of the Sky

 

here

I am at home

I touch with my feet the end of my bed

there is no one but me

in the room

I could go on sleeping for a while

but that would not get me anywhere

there is on the terrace

in the sun a few birds waiting

that I come to feed them

the staircase goes up in spiral

it leads to my place

I watch myself in the mirror

I barely recognize myself

I have to leave

walk along the shore

to go looking for my past

without really knowing what I will find

I open a door

I go on the other side

and as the sky is suddenly pulled out

behind me

the landscape is torn apart

I see there some animals of paper

they walk without moving

but there is someone that I know not far away

he is sitting on a big stone

he does not see me

he holds his head in his hands

there is a mirror hanging over him

and in which one can see

the reflection of his face

but it’s actually a dog’s head

but it is you too who’s reflected in this mirror

we should pick one by one the clouds

and put them beside the path

a bit like if they were made of white foam

behind each image

floating in the mirror

you think that you see another hidden man

and this man is wearing a hood

he is also carrying an ax

he’s ready to cut off my head

during my sleep

I fall asleep

I dream

I’m looking for you in the dark landscape of the night

scribbled on a sheet

haphazardly

but there is no trace of you anywhere

in my dissected memory

my hands are stuck to my belly

I try to remove them

like a stillborn child

which does indeed look like me

I wake up sweaty

I stare at the window

and my eyes flow over the panes

like raindrops

it’s time to go back to sleep

silence catches my dreams in his spider’s web

hands still stuck to the belly

I keep my eyes closed

the black landscape is changing

there is a dead man

he’s chasing me

I go through a window

and I come out covered with wounds

my body red and bloody

in this landscape of ashes floats

a disfigured child

with my face as a mask

and as made of paper

 

 

 

Tomorrow will be much better

 

I have never been able to walk sideways like crabs do

but my belly did remain open after the gunshot

we will have to go and pick up flowers in the garden of the mind

someone is watching you from the other side of the room

tomorrow will be much better

stars keep falling down your eyes and your brain is drowning

you hear knocking at the door you go to open it and it is the ghost of your dead father

or maybe it is a baby orphan who’s father has been killed at the war

maybe it’s yourself as an old man trying to get some shelter from the cold

clouds are glued to the window pane but as the glue melts down they slide along the glass to end up in a garbage can

you take the garbage out it is sunny and you decide to walk down the main street to the harbor to watch the wrestlers the singers the jesters

you remember your old love and you wonder if is was real or if it was someone else than you who was in love once

it is time to start again your journey in the valley of broken windows and of tilted roofs where crying seagulls keep you awake all night long as it is the mating season

tomorrow will be much better let me tell you that and we will be able to travel through space and time in order to come back to the very first day of our life when we were born out of nothing but the womb of a woman that we were told to call our mother

I wake up once more at the sound of a crying seagull

I walk out on the small terrace of the apartment I can sea Orion hung above my head in the sky

and as I reach out to grab one of Orion’s legs my hand comes off my arm and starts drifting under the old stars and the new born stars

and I sit there to watch my hand being carried away by the winds floating in space

and soon it vanishes under the arch of the horizon not far from Africa

I go back to bed with my amputated arm stuck in my pocket

I am a seagull now… when I look at the mirror I see the body of a man but with the head of a seagull in front of me

soon I will fly away with them

to then fall endlessly for the rest of my life along the cliffs of Time

unless I age no more

buried for good under the salt sea

 

 

 

 

 

Ivan de Monbrison is French poet, writer and artist born in 1969 in Paris. His poems or short stories have appeared in several literary magazines in France, Italy, Belgium, The UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and in the US. Five poetry chapbooks of his works have been published: L’ombre déchirée, Journal, La corde à nu, Ossuaire and Sur-Faces. His novels include: Les Maldormants (2014), L’Heure Impure (2016), Orgasmes et Fantaisies (2016) Nanaqui ou les Tribulations d’un poète (2017). To be published: “The Other Self” (2018) “La Cicatrice Nue” (2019 )“The Overflowing Body” (2018).