Some days start by playing chess,
some end in chess,
others check and mate,
tightly sealed chess days
shockproof packed.
Maybe there are no more seasons,
no more episodes,
no new unexpected characters, cliffhangers, final episodes
nor twists and turns of plot.
Maybe this time we will buy the rights ourselves.
I see I see :
a collection of schoolboy errors to avoid cropping up
in the memory of humanity;
that we still can't really fly, nor next season either.
In the meantime, the sky sometimes shifts its firmament so drastically
that there is thought of heavenly mismanagement.
Sometimes the role of things
to go somewhere else
squarely in another season, for example,
bringing together a season or two,
a matter of bridging some time,
less time to waste
and maybe even gain something.
As for the seasons, everything has changed.
All seasonally.
Everything in fact,
In the very end
including love and everything else.
Temperance has surpassed it all,
the median with no more margins,
the average without anything more that exceeds,
on average simply obeying
including love and everything else.
On opposite sides of things happening.
Old versus new buildings
to reduced, modest utopias,
steadfastly floating, varying between the two.
Much of everything goes unnoticed,
like the truck on which is written in dust:
“EVERY DAY AT THE CAR WASH. »
Lies reign in the land of slogans.
Hierarchical chaos
democratically justified.
Open 24 hours,
resiliently distributed purchasing power,
slowness marked inexorably:
Every day at the car wash.
If the chairs hang from branches, the winner appears, so goes the old Anderlechtian saying. Chairs and branches can be found not far from the quay where the barges have been moored since time immemorial in Brussels. On the other side of the canal, on the gravel path running between the housing blocks, five lives come together each late afternoon. Paepsem-style petanque: a six pack of beers, DIY point system hanging from the nearest lamp post, a place for everyone.
They used to use monoblocs, white plastic garden chairs that stack easily on top of each other. They were hidden in a monster bush under a low-hanging tree, but the council green space services or Bruxelles Propreté intervened.
The chairs are made of wood now, hanging upside down from the branches of the small tree; the bush and the weeds are gone. It looks a bit “cleaner” now, even more nostalgic.
In the background, The Gentleman is only a shadow of his former glory. For years, the tavern on the ground floor of one of the residential blocks has had a gloomy look. In theory, however, there is a profusion of customers in these buildings, they easily house a few tens of thousands of Anderlechtians while the district has practically zero popular cafés.
There is an autumnal calm here, even in spring. The merit goes to the petanque players.
A fragile calm, at set times broken only by the yapping of small dogs, group outings with their mistress or their master. Last summer, I saw old people make a big mistake: they used the fenced-in dog toilet as a petanque court. Which probably only happened once.
Walking around in the middle of all this stimulation and impressions, I decide to put on my headphones: at times, it is necessary to disturb the calm.
In a newly invented blue, the day begins its comeback.
Expectations as high as luxurious apartment towers,
today carries home with it, automation and underfloor heating, as well as all-you-can-eat sushi.
What would the world be without this new blue?
Poorer in color and enemy of ambition.
Nighttime fun of an adventure
flying fast as if
summarizing past and future
no today in flight.
It is too often assumed that news should be new,
my collection of old news argues otherwise,
old news flips faster.
It's less stimulating.
The illusions of the day before yesterday no longer have a hold on my state of mind,
to say nothing of the six-month-old ones.
The latest news is for show-offs.
Sooner or later, timelessness puts them in their place.
Very occasionally, it becomes topical again.
There are many things one would rather not have written.
That’s why it’s good that almost everything
is written by other people.
This way it's possible to live.
Sometimes whales appear in the channel.
The whales promised by the aldermen of fish species
at work in front of offices and barges.
Of the whales we know that they google nothing
and turn a blind eye to Netflix,
of the eye
which they keep open while they sleep.
The predicted winter arrived more unexpectedly than ever.
If all the birds remained small,
would the trees limit themselves too?
It’s true that anyone who gets a centimeter tattoo on their arm
measures things at the least appropriate times.
In an attempt to be a voice of its own.
Overlooking itself, the sun came back to shine
those damn cold sunbeams.
Dogs near the sun bark at it,
In hoarse panic.
Sometimes I think to myself:
if comprehensibility is everything,
Well, very often, however, there is very little of all this.
Anyone who loves talking to butterflies
still cannot deny their wings.
Silence and what it is
Silence for what it was
Came to call
Left broken
Silence without clockwise
Summer never comes alone.
Margin framing
rubs itself with an essence.
There is nothing wrong with being firmly grounded.
Many titles have failed to do so.
But even the alphabet has a name.
In this way everything is said and nothing,
what they said,
and they fell silent
on whole pages,
on full pages.
If language confuses
at least she did that.
A lot of bla-bla leads to silence
it is better to be
a poet
of words
on rough roads
anonymous panoramas.
credits
from Tussenbruggen,
released October 22, 2022
Voice: Peter Russell
Translation: Emma Flynn
Poetry: Alex Deforce
Sound: Paulo Rietjens
Tenor Sax: Kyle Coppens
Typography: Harrisson
Alex Deforce (°1984) made his debut as a poet in January 2019 with Nachtdichter, by Victor De Roo, on the Amsterdam-based
label Knekelhuis. The same year he featured on Brihang’s Casco album, for which he recited poems by Georges Perec. September 2020 his first solo 7” vinyl was released by Lexi Disques....more
Poet Douglas Kearney and composer/producer/drummer Val Jeanty link up for a a compelling LP that feels like the written word come to life. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2021
