Are you a half-cooked pancake? Cuz you seem soft and fluffy but your insides are a stagnant reservoir of sweetness and lifting you up may reshape you.

Labels: echo, numbers, one-liner, writing

Calvaire, mon cher
Calvaire qui me serre

Écriture obstinée
Description d’éraflures
Cris de freins déchirant l’oreille
Frictions qui allument le corps désolé
Mollesse humaine, la bouche accablée de braise

Calvaire, mon cher
Le mot gisant

Séduisant silence qui tue le franc frisson
Gémissement gracieux d’une ouverture ou deux
Au sein des certitudes, une douce humilité
Prendre sa peur tel un prisonnier

Calvaire, mon cher
Le mot gisant
Calvaire, mon cher
Mourir seul parmi la foule

Se donner sans te résister
Dormir sur la vague jusqu’en février
Offrir la nuit pour obliger le jour
Voir venir l’orage...
Exploser l’émoi qui rend sourd

Voir venir l’orage et refuser toutes ses brises
Avaler le déluge la gueule fermée
La goutte qui fait sombrer l’amant lunaire
Lui qui boit de la main de la noyée

Calvaire, mon cher
Le mot gisant
Calvaire, mon cher
Mourir seul parmi la foule

Calme mon sang mercenaire, libère le cœur
Armé d’amertume
Calvaire, mon cher
Calvaire.

Labels: artform, echo, jargon, poésie, winter passing

This is one of the first poems I wrote. Still living with my parents, I wrote after midnight in the darkness of a home office, in front of a beige computer. I was a member of an online art forum...

A few computer nerds with a penchant for word porn, before any of it was hashed out to tag trends, would gather and write to find a place in the universe where we could be a pair of heart eyes. Just a pair of heart eyes. Bleeding soul meetings were attended from Sacramento, London, Montreal, anywhere with dial-up.

Our emotions were celebrated and we tried to find more of them through a poetry community. It was the birth of my sky, made up of all these wordy constellations. Not one, but many stars guided me through some tough moments. At some point, I followed one's song to the west, but that's another story for another road.

This poem, Skinned, was written around 2001. On the mathematical scale of my growth, I was at 2+2. Perception was the main theme of the year, and remained a major traffic light for a few years after that... The fertile silence of that room was a treasure I continued to seek every time I opened a window.

This poem doesn't resurface with a nostalgic tune to take me away from my seasonal dive, it's a breath of compassion, filling my lungs with a cleansing sound. The vibration of a sun swallowed whole.

How many times will we be reborn?




More tracks on SoundCloud.

Labels: alarming truthness, artform, cult, echo, From Obscure Light, Homework, must i say what this is

Tu hésites
Là, autour des braises
Ici, entre mes bras

JE VAIS TE FAIRE L'HYPOTÉNUSE!

Labels: echo, jargon, poésie, words

Labels: conversations, curiosities, duck duck, echo, experiment, wave

Labels: echo, lord huron, music, video, winter passing

It's too easy to forget
how hope pumps up the chest
how it makes my skin reflect
on stars your eyes are set

we dance out of place
why would we skip our turn

The branch forgets the fall
when hope pumps up the sap
when a green mistake is made
little bumps in the bark

we dance out of place
why would we skip our turn

It's so easy to forget
how pain plumps up the mouth
how it shakes your hand in fear
words ringing in my ears

we learn
we dance out of place
we dance out of shape
taking chances
making haste
why would we skip our turn

It'll be easy to forget
how hope pumps up the chest
how it makes your skin reflect
on stars my eyes are set

Labels: artform, echo, musical, video

Labels: deux, echo, mercury

“It's my firm conclusion that human meaning comes from humans, not from a supernatural source. After we die, our hopes for an afterlife reside in the social networks that we influenced while we were alive. If we influence people in a positive way -- even if our social web is only as big as our nuclear family -- others will want to emulate us and pass on our ideas, manners, and lifestyle to future generations. This is more than enough motivation for me to do good things in my life and teach my children to do the same.”

-Greg Graffin
Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God

Labels: echo, passages, social

Your map is my sail.

Labels: cult, echo, one-liner

One day early, the internet provider tech left me a message telling me my line was ready for connectivity. I have already spent a few hours poking around the web and quickly realized that I would never get to the bottom of it. To celebrate my comeback after a few years of disconnect, I deleted old pictures from my facebook and googled about thirty-twelve queries.

Labels: curiosities, echo, pictures

black coffee
one cream
one milk
one petite spoon

raw sugar packs
two punch rip
empty and wait
stir and unstir

open cream
pour in
open milk
pour in

fold empties
empty packs
into empty cup
into empty cup

stir and unstir

Labels: alarming truthness, echo, pictures

Labels: echo

Dear Future Ben,

This is Past Ben, writing to you from the darkest recess of your forgetfulness, or what I like to refer to as The Coffin.

If you are reading this, you probably are feeling like shit and are rehashing all the past mistakes of your relationship with Parker. You probably want to get in touch with her again by phone, text, email, through friends of friends, by walking by her house, hiding around her workplace or hiding in someone else’s bushes. Hold that thought, Douchey McDoosh-Douche...

DO NOT CONTACT HER.

How many times have you promised you would leave her alone? And you broke that promise how many times? You fucked it up man. You took the piss. You wrapped yourself in bacon and threw yourself to the pigs.

Remember this if you don’t care to keep anything else in that nut of yours: Every time you fail to keep away you win another karmic hell ring. Of all the bullshit you layered around yourself, one thing was true kid: She, of all people, does not deserve to be in proximity with such a pile of self-wasted energy as yourself. You waste everybody's time pretending to care about anyone else. Despite what your best bud told you, despite what your drinking buddy spat at you, despite what your dope dealer sold you, despite what your DJ repeated, you still acted like a self-serving prick and decided to text her. You freakish fool. Of course she didn't answer. You know why. Then despite your half-ass judgement, you called her while standing in front of her house. All that, you did because you felt like shit and you felt the need to apologize for the 46th time.

DO NOT CONTACT HER.

Don't dial her up. Don't google her. Don't be asking about her at the bar. Don't be searching her tags on Instagram, you asswipe. She deserves so much better than your lame ass excuses and your bloody god awful faux friendship. Dude, you need to keep yourself in check. You know she deserves something amazing. She deserves someone who will love her in all honesty, not constantly stab her in the back with a glass shard.

Hey Future Ben, I of all people know you don't want to be alone right now and you're thinking "Shit man, I need to talk to Parker." but guess what little man... YOU NEED TO GET A LIFE. Her life is taken already and probably promised to some Arabian Prince who rides a fair trade carpet.

If you can't be a man about this, write her a letter. I'm serious. Take a pen and paper and scribble away with all the pestering you would bother her with. Take as much time as you need to get that shit out of your system then put it in an envelope, write her name on it, seal it and slip it under your mattress. Then, take all your precious vinyls and layer them on your bed in alphabetical order. If after this job you still feel the need to talk to her, jump on the bed. If you can do that, if you can swallow the letter you hid under your mattress, if you can still picture yourself talking to her, punch yourself in the face. But whatever you do my dim-witted chum, do not succumb to the weakness.

Her world is no longer in your galaxy, spaceboy. And no matter how many rockets you try to build to reach her, the rings of fire you have collected will never let you get close to her breaking waves.

Labels: artform, echo, glass, suspicious activity here

It's 1:31 am in the morning and I can't sleep. There is no ball of yarn spinning in my stomach. There is no fan spinning in the back of my mind. There is not even a particle of gun powder around the sparks of my heart to signal some kind of do or die moment in this deserted night. All lights are off.

This is what it feels like to live in your shadow. Through all the familiar roads and the once sweet smells of breakfast I waste with every fresh step of regrets. There is no world without Verona walls. There is no north to guide me home. There is no biting cold to signal some kind of do or die moment in this aimless mind.

Walking from nothing to less than nothing, I am crushed by all these books on my back. I carry dictionaries of apologies everywhere I go, to make right by you if given the chance. The twelfth and final chance to prove how sorry I am. I was a dusty picture on a wall. I was the rust in the braids of your crown. You will always be the golden heart wrapped in the body of a simple girl and I, a miner wrapped in explosives lines. Not one word will bring you near. I am dust now. You are a tear I keep in the freezer. You’re forever free, rocked by the wild waves of an ocean of pearls, the way you've always wanted to be.

Labels: artform, book, echo, suspicious activity here

HOMEWORK
APRIL 21-27

Though sometimes it’s impossible to do the right thing, doing the half-right thing may be a viable option. Give an example from your own life:

Here lies my first time... taking on the positive outlook of a Rob Brezsny assignment. I find it quite fitting that it orbits around the mighty right. Being right has nothing to do with the torment or bliss shaped by the actions taken on the virtuous path. Righteousness, on the other hand, is a distinction that is acquired through a rainbow of morally high standards in action. Deeds that can break your sense of self in various fragile pressure points and leave your ego in pieces, in a mess of human remains that will loom over you at every crossroad. Doing the right thing is a never-ending effort to be true to and for others, even if that endeavour stabs you in the heart or mind. This said, doing the right thing can take a minute or a year and can involve the dissolution of self into the essence of a generation, a time and place.

Zeitgeist

When it comes to right and wrong, good and evil, the V2.4 combinations are endless. What can look fine to me might look wicked to someone else, making it difficult to find the juste milieu for anyone who has their heart in the right place.

A few months ago a puzzling email radiated my computer screen. It was from a dear friend who was experiencing a rough ride in her end of the world. What troubled me is that she never explained what the source of her pain was. My first reaction of course was to reply to the missive with questions and words of support, but she specifically asked me not to. She added to that request her concern for my safety, which fuelled her calculation.

What was left for me to do? Taking a plane was not part of the equation, unfortunately. I didn’t have the phone number of my pen pal so all I was left with was the choice to reply or not to the message. I felt I needed to reply, if not to inquire about the problem at least to let her know that I was now aware of her situation and that she was in my thoughts. But after much consideration I came to realise that sending those words to her meant comfort for me and for her, the possibility of a nightmare, or worse. Who could say?

Well the beauty here is, my dreamboat mentor, through this assignment flickers my intent to reach out to her without placing any risk on our communication. This is me, doing the half-right thing.


xox

Labels: confession, echo, Homework, secret

Allô ! sacrement.

C’est long.
Un tunnel de fille.
Pense-y. Ça prend du temps.

Pense loin.
Je ne cherche pas.
C’est le mal vu qui se montre à moi.

Le silence.
Pourquoi pas ?
Mais l’écriture de la faute se fait sans dire un mot.

Je veux écrire Simon Charles.
Mais j’attends.
Je ris.
Elle n’a pas vu l’erreur que tu est.

Labels: “Do I dare?”, echo, jargon, must i say what this is, there is no ship like championship

in the closet
hidden away
from dust and sun
a fortress
a bottle
choked with answers
like fortunes
stands alone
to negate
heavy metal words
never torn
maybe true
breath to catch
from golden mouth
scar to salt
groundbreaking
in case of doubt

Labels: artform, echo, shoot

Dear Charlie,

I know how you feel. I’ve seen those pictures too.

When I walked out this afternoon, I crossed the street and looked west to the sun. For a moment the wind slowed down and gently tickled my ear like a whistle. The sky was clean but of a Sinatra blue... This is not really happening. Winter is not melting. Spring is not up to kiss us with green lights. It will never again cover our hands like lace gloves. Our season will not return to us. Machinery chokes our breath and yes, wires cut our branches, but our pillows are full of seeds.

You are the sun, always.

Labels: bon iver, Dear Charlie, echo, titles

My face for a jar of ink is a hip replacement.

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

Charles Bukowski
(Factotum)

Labels: book, echo, theory