Beatrice Brérot
From Sisco to San Fransisco
(extracts)
Translated by Mary E. Mann
... Angel Portugal and Clara the United States until the middle of our twenties Bowery, New York the street of the unemployed the shoe-shiners the resellers the beggars the drunks the street of souls along the sidewalks the street the wandering and drink a hearse passes stops at a light yaps a dog a funeral wreath and the exhaust pipe smokes Bus station, 50th street There also the angels of misery alcoholics passers-by travelers blind people men in black in dress coats high hats and deep pockets "come up" says the driver we're leaving on the long ribbons of highway America America we roll Badlands, South Dakota it's chaos life's energy and its chaos life's abuses and addicts the dry earth, bruised she drags her tectonic cracks and her animal cadavers Remains of rain in the cracked beds the streams and run off sediment between rocks covered with rags It is here where fire wind and water it is here the stars we can touch them here their remains here the universe its beginning the beginning of time the big-bang and hell the firmament ______________ At the Mexican border under the rising moon we slept A lost car and the desert we are in its warm mouth its drought its wind The motor and lights off night spreads out fear alone illuminated animal noises creaking spiders sreeching groaning and the black desert hooting and fear screeching and there exhausted we fall asleep At first light I sleep but as prayers rise in chant the Indian and upright in the air the earth vibrates and upright therein the air vibrates and the earth the instant of the chant and upright in the air the earth is red the earth is red and sings I swelled tensed I burned my eyes in the light I burned in two my guts I want to sound them there was nothing I sounded my soul there was this rift this void burns me and yet I see a red-skinned warrior and I hear a chant and I know this warrior dies and Angel upright towards a rock Angel also sings and dies Angel also sings and dies and dies Angel faints or maybe me or maybe I don't know the wind this void this void again burns my eyes but I hear the wind coming and going I hear my skin the sun on my skin I hear the earth vibrate she roasts in the sun and Clara I lean against Clara In a cave we fuck and I am flooded with fear this earthly cavity full of human bones and animal totems hollowed into the wall I vomit and Angel grasps me Are we here ? Are we here he runs and the other as well on the ice they run or in a dream In the shadows In 8 mm they swim in the water of the stream they float naked above the stream coming from the earth, the dreams of cemeteries, the bodies the imaginary bodies of blood and flesh of which we have suffered ... My brother, my friend listen the turbine in reverse the universe return it and the earth My brother, my friend my angel archangel of death who hurts so much we wipe away so many, so many failures and life itself we steal from ourselves my cock leaks I wipe the sperm my cock leaks I caress myself and I leak steal and my flesh leaks my body and my heat torn out We swim we dance and float no more now it is here and above the streams the waters have withdrawn our dreams die listen, listen ! the moan tightened in my heart the earth is hollow and filled with grief listen to it dissecting my body She straddles me like death She straddles me like death my cock leaks I come and in the heather my sperm in the heather I turn the matrix I turn the universe, the cavity and ask myself if the earth where I stand and walk the earth is not an egg the earth my friend my brother as a whole is an egg where in a movement the galaxy ________ and Clara in the starry dark in the sky her pupils her eye posed in my cranium and all against my damp head there is her silvery hair ... I was gamete I was planet I wandered vagabond drunk broken I had my feet in my head I napped and in the nap was the void and in the void in pieces drunk vagabond touched in contact of the void touched the feeling of being born and my body sweat misery but pride ... In 8 mm in Hi 8 as well he runs the cherub love he runs in life light he swims in the water of the stream he floats naked above the stream and his translucent laugh comes from a dream, from the sky from our bodies from blood and from flesh which we have suffered from Angel my eternal friend was smiling and singing and drawing from his soul at its source and shining, becoming clearer in its light from the work of his muscles his warmth spreading and Clara trimmed the rose bushes in the universe flowing without ever freezing in place and me between the greenhouse effect and the wars and the wars and the wars I create a cancer and me in the beauty of the evening its fragileness I stink of my kind I hide in the earth at dusk at dawn long my nights barely human while others never question life while others never question life I question even the air I turn the sun upside-down I turn upside-down in a circle under the Earth in the evening its slowness I am humanity which is dying and I am dying I am dying anew as we have several deaths perhaps even we are already dead I neither abandon myself nor free myself in silence I bend am I substance am I light I live the mystery the universe and the quantum body life and death death and life I know and yet I revolt with raised fist binding together my anger and my pain and my chains I want to be a pebble or some fucking object a crane or a bike wait, why not a good bike that has torque pipes with a noise that rumbles and I straddle the bike and I hurl myself through the city as in the void I straddle the bike and my body voilà my death voilà and I die and I dream that I live and I dream that I live and I die I have only enough time to murmur my name Just before my death Clara could die as well but she lives and I hear her cries Those syllables it's my name she tells me Just before my death I have only enough time to murmur my name she says it she says it she says it before giving way and walling herself up she tells me so as to refuse she tells me so as to erase she tells me so as to return to before so that I exist I am she tells me Just before my death she doesn't know it yet but beyond my death she must alone walk along the banks the streams the river Just before my death she doesn't know it yet but beyond my death she must alone walk alongside grief dive and convince herself of a flux a current a passage in the sweetness as just before death, opens up at the moment of death open up
and like the river
flows
the universe, I sparkle from inside out