FLUXLIST: Where Life had No Value, Death, Sometimes, had its Price

[David Baptiste Chirot]

                        
        Where Life had No Value, Death, Sometimes, Had its Price


                                                        score for voices
                                                        
                                                        for pablo x
                                                           & nancy e
                        I like a look of agony            

                        to a discerning eye


        camera eye a cruising vulture

        over rubble, unfinished buildings

        outskirts of no walls no stairs


                        humans who live after us

                        against us your hearts not harden


                                        stranger standing beyond novelty

                                        arrival a creak of laid boards

                                        materialized out of thin air


                        do not sham Convulsion

                        nor simulate a Throe


        makeshift camera sails past

        shadow of thistle, rusty iron

        broken color comics


                        the flesh chopped devoured rotten

                        we bones ash and powder


                                        stood examining a poster
                                        
                                        its sketch and customary legend

                                        Mexican fashion Texas style


                        Eyes glaze Death Impossible

                        Beads By Anguish strung


        camera zooms past bright flutter

        medieval flowers, tethered goat

        lean gossip cooking old folklore


                        of our troubles no one laugh

                        nor have disdain of we who hang


                                        
                                        faint sense of visible below

                                        stranger low-slung itching to kill
                                        
                                        stranger with no indication turned


                        straightway dangerous

                        like Stillness in Air


        Camera sweeps outlined sky

        here camera stops

        bright windy blue moon sings 


                        Never any time are we tranquil

                        but swing here, there, with the wind


                                        faint glint in slitted eyes

                                        uneasy hair-trigger violence

                                        reward on delivery, to Man with No
                                                                       Name


                        Eyes around me witnessed

                        what light I could not see to see


                        

words from:

Emily Dickinson,
"I like a look of Agony",
"Much Madness is divinest Sense",
"I heard a Fly buzz--when I died"
William S. Burroughs, 
The Wild Boys
Francois Villon
"l'Epitaphe Villon"
(translations chirot)
Joe Millard, Sergio Leone & Fulvio Morsella
For a Few Dollars More

arrangements
david baptiste chirot