Elif Sezen #2 - Wombtales 1 - responding to Béatrice Machet's Cherry-Lackered Nails (#16)

in response to  Béatrice Machet's Cherry-Lackered Nails... (#16) https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/16-beatrice-machet-cherry-lackered-nails.html

Wombtales   

1.

A woman gives birth to herself as the womb

becomes invisible

She covers the ignored spaces of a planet

unpossessed

loved but not talked of 

barely hung between the just-opened and the just-closed

                                                   a lace cloth

she makes the invisible visible

Elif Sezen #1 - Hyperion of the future

Hyperion of the future

for Friedrich Holderlin

Your 36 years of silence freed

36 thousand birds from the

hegemony of nonsense,

but you already knew that this

was going to happen, didn’t you?

You, an eremite in

Greece, a remnant from

Periclean antiquity

You, created the Hyperion

of the future, a little monster

—for them

Your Aias smile

makes me weep

When I grumble

you become quiet

so we both can grow

Your silence makes us live longer.

Melinda Smith #7 Interrupting the bread-making, after Hecq and Machet #5 Lénfance des mots

After Dominque Hecq and Béatrice Machet #5, ‘L’enfance des mots / the infancy of words’

Interrupting the bread-making

The frost has woken her early
She pads into the freezing kitchen
sniffing the yeasty air
She is discovering for the first time
her father’s secret early morning life
She is almost younger than words
She cannot say to herself
I am intrigued
I am curious
I am awed
can only stroke solemnly
the ears of the knitted rabbit
cradled in her arm
and watch as her father
clapping flour from his grey hands
wrenches open the door of the pot-bellied stove,
prods a roaring orange monster mouth
with a long metal wand
There are nuggets inside, blurred with flame
They flare and settle, the mouth
spits little pellets of grey
onto the hearthstone
like biscuit crumbs, like bread crumbs
She reaches for them, too late
there are loud words in the air
and from that moment
the word No is black and orange and ash,
is the sound of skin sizzling,
is the texure of a fingertip,
puffy for days, and Don’t touch somehow smells
like coking coal and yeast and father, and
forever after curiosity, stubbornness, defiance,
sting like bare feet on a winter mountain morning,
chafe like coarse woolen rabbit
and the frayed pink cord of a dressing gown
tied too tight
a cord which is not umbilical
but is
a species of tether

Béatrice Machet # 17-The Water and salt you are made of- (after Magdalena Ball)

Béatrice Machet # 17   The Water and salt you are made of 

after Magdalena Ball

 

(Magdalena Ball #18 The Idea of Sound Responding to Dominique Hecq #13 Fish Dance : https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.fr/2018/05/magdalena-ball-18-idea-of-sound.html)

these

things I find  in the dark of streams

                        in the opaque of sand

reaching for you    whoever you are

as an evolution process   with bones

mine and yours    parts of skeletons

to write with

unearthed letters of a body for a common language

seeds for new sounds echoing some old ones

let them flow in one’s vibrating voice

let the strange syllable explode

let the mermaid sing with an open throat

let the friction of tongues warm up the phonetic

then

let the eyes pronounce  MNI WICONI

all around and around and around and

never forget the water and salt you are made of

Dominique Hecq et Béatrice Machet # 5 L'enfance des mots / The infancy of words

L’enfance des mots

Sur la plage, l'enfant creuse

                                        un trou

y installe ses fesses 

                                       enfouis

ses pieds

                sous le monticule de sable

hallucine un volant   

                              broum brroum brroummm

la formule trois s'emballe

                sur la voie royale du rêve

ne crains pas les archaïsmes   anachronismes   clichés

la grammaire étrangère

                                  à elle-même

Sur la plage, l’enfant creuse

                                       un trou

imaginé tunnel géant qui

                                       le conduira

plus bas

      à l’autre bout de la terre

il ne sait rien de l’enfer

du purgatoire ni même du paradis

il se glisse

petite taupe fouisseuse

vers ce qu’il ne sait pas nommer   mine de lumière

le vocabulaire aveugle

                                 à lui-même

Sur la plage, l’enfant creuse

                                        un trou

et l’eau infiniment salée

                                     monte

plus avant

                 comme un demi-monde

une mer à créer à l’œil

                                    qui seul peut s’ouvrir

sur le spectacle

                          des anges dont le sang

coule dans les veines

du ciel où sa mère aphone

                              l’attend

Dans les nuages, la mère creuse

                                          un trou

au bord duquel à plat ventre

                                                elle s’allonge

ses coudes soutiennent le bourdonnement

                                                  de sa tête

sourire béat elle regarde

                                         en bas

sur la plage son enfant

                                     et contemple

 la possibilité d’allers-retours

                                             ne craint pas

 l’éblouissement

The infancy of words

On the beach, the child digs

                                             a hole

places his bottom in it

                                             buries

his feet

             under the mound of sand

hallucinates a steering wheel

                                    vroom vrroom vroommm

the formula three takes off

            on the royal road of dreams

Do not fear archaisms   anachronisms   clichés

on the beach the child digs

                                            a hole

imagined to be a giant tunnel

                                                leading

further down

            to the other end of the earth

he knows nothing of hell

                        purgatory nor even paradise

he slithers down

            the little mole sniffing

for something he can’t name   well of light

vocabularies veiled

                        from his sight

On the beach, the child digs

                                        a hole

and the incredibly salty water

                                                rises

ever higher

                        like half a world

of sea to create by ear

                        that could speak

of the spectacle

                        of angels whose blood

courses through the veins

of the sky where his speechless mother

                                                   awaits him

In the clouds, the mother digs

                                          a hole

bends and lies down

                        buries her elbows in it

her hands cupping the hum

                            in her head

mouth agape she smiles

         down

on the child on the beach

                                    and contemplates

the possibility of round trips

                                    does not fear

dazzling sights