poetry
Born to freeze
Born to freeze
Born to get blacken toes
And red nose
Born to see the night
Even during the day
Born to catch a cold
Born for frozen fingers
And no alcohol
Born to bear a 105 degree fever
By a minus 40 degree day
Born to freeze Like a Popsickle
Born to put ice cream in your coffee
Born to be sick
And tired
Born for the snow and the wind
Like a slap in the face
What have I done wrong?
Born for the open space
And the full-time breeze
Born to freeze like a dog
Outside the supermarket
Making small noises
Born with frozen fingers
And a mouth so full of ice It cant spell any word
Born to grumble and mumble
Born for blasphemy
Born to keep your mouth shut If you dont want your teeth to fall in the snow
Born with a spell
But without spelling
Born to keep your mouth shut
Around the nozzle of a bottle
Born without a country
And only the wind to blame
Born to die and wait outside
For the ground to defreeze
So they can shovel a small room for your ashes
Inside the womb of earth
Three feet below
Where you can stay warm forever
Did I ever tell you why
I didnt want to grow old?
Did I ever tell you
Why I didnt want to grow old?
I dont want to see the skin of my hands
Shrinking
Because, you know, it is the hands that go first, arent they?
Ducks with toenails, thats what we are
A web-footed species
With wrinkles
My creased hands In front of my eyes
While everything else about me cannot be seen
While the rest of my body is trying to flee
While the three quarter empty glass Is slipping from my fingers the tea cup makes a rattles on the saucer even if there is a handle to hold it
Sometimes, before touching my lips
The glass disappears from my fingers
Where is it?
Where has it gone?
Transparent, invisible
While the liquid, the damned liquid is spreading
Among the shattered glass
On the floor, there is blood
There is blood on the kitchen floor
They are looking at you
Those who think they are still young
Those who call you elderly
A word that sounds like a sickness Leprosy, syphilis
You are infected by a deadly sickness
No penicillin
No vaccine, did you get your vaccine?
Did I tell you
Why I didnt want to grow old?
I dont remember doing so
I didnt have a childhood
Why should I be a child again?
I dont want anybody to take care of me
I dont want to have someone holding my arm in the stairways
My God, nobody wants to touch me anymore
And what I see
Through my used eyes
Will never be mine again
You havent seen anything, lady
Life is only beginning, my old man
Ok, then, let me tell you something, my child
Death is longer than life
This, one day you will learn
Some way or another
Try, try to stand up like a soldier
When you are holding a cane
Try to stand up with a straight back
It is the cane that is holding you
At the tip of its wooden finger
Tapping on the floor
Pointing down its wooden finger
It’s there, it’s there
Thats where you are going
Dont listen to her
She is only talking to herself
How can you cry when you dont have a voice anymore?
Did I ever tell you why I didnt want to get old?
Help! Help me, please!
They are hurting me
My skin is caught in the zipper
My arm is paralyzed
I cannot move it anymore
The water is too hot
The water is too cold
The water is too lukewarm
The water is too wet
I’m dying
I dont want to search for my keys anymore
Forget about counting the small change
I’m scared to death at the ATM cash dispenser
Because there is someone yellow
Or someone black waiting
How come he doesnt have his debit card ready
The one who is looking at me when I’m pushing mine too deeply
Into the mechanical wallet of impossible banks
Checks from the government
Retirement plan
And income tax refunds
That you must claim
Because they made some changes in the fiscal law
For the elderly
What a poetry, my God!
What an horrible poetry
When you are reading on the first of the month
Your allowance stub
The pension fund check receipt
Old age security
Social security
For the elderly
Security
Security
Did you see that guy?
Alert!
Did you see her?
And did you see her arm?
That strange tattoo
A strange character
Showing his prick
Yes, I know it is a penis
The Devils penis, a forked one
And do you know
What she said to me :
“You have beautiful eyes, still”
Why “still”
Have I told you why I didnt want to be old?
I claim the right to go to the bathroom alone
Or not to go
Think now, think of everything
But theres nothing to be thought of
Only the past comes in easily
“Come in, come on”
This is an old song
In my time it always begins that way
In the old days, there were animals in the city
My neighbors used to have chickens in their backyard
And rabbit cages
Not only cats and dogs
And a tweeting bird
In my time, in my days
We were going on a short trip
Six of us
Taking the tramway or taking the bus
Or twelve maybe, all packed against each other
We were going to the end of the island
On the other side of the city
And a lot of men were looking at us
Their hats pulled down to their noses
There used to be farms around here
Where now there is the metro station Montmorency
A metro tunnel
My God, there are tubes everywhere
To pump us in
To eat us alive
They have installed entrance doors that are impossible to move
Stairways so high that we wont be able to get back to the ground
And look at them looking at us
Looking at the strange character that just came in
Looking at the old guy
The old person
The worn-out fellow
We are used up
They are scared, there are afraid to be contaminated
It’s time that contaminates everything
Workers are repairing the ceramics at Laurier Station
There is something black sticking
Like tar
Like vomit
Behind the tiles
My God, how could it get there?
Did I tell you
That I dont want to be the last one
When the world will crumble
At the end of the world
When the skyscrapers
Will be falling like rocks from the sky
Used up, worn out
By the inside
Rotting from the interior
And we continue to install new elevators
Inside of slums
The roads are collapsing
The concrete sidewalks is returning to sand
The telephone poles are blackening
And you can put your finger in them
Inside the rotten wood
And the rust
It took me years to understand
This is the ultimate warning
Everything is falling down
Everything will be destroyed
But nobody hears my prophecies
Announcing the end of times
Will always be suspect
When your hair is white
“Yeah, sure, grandpa
it is the end of the world more precisely,
the end of your world”
Young people dont know how to read anymore
Graffiti on the wall doesn’t mean anything
Back to pictograms
It is a sign for the sake of a sign
A sign for the surprise of seeing a sign
While I am looking for a souvenir
In the drawer, a photograph of my daughter
A message on a strip of paper
Hell will always be a private matter
Did I tell you why I didnt want to be old?
Stopped suddenly At the corner of the street
Or
In front of the bathroom door
Not knowing why I
Am here
Why was I going there?
Why am I here?
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