Recording the Other

 

On se permet de me le signaler

Je suis l'affaire de chacun et de chacune

À tout moment, n'importe qui pourrait se sentir libre

De me le rappeler:

 

"Viens là.

Dévoile toi.

Sois comme moi,

Mais reste là-bas.

Que tu t'approches,

Que tu t'éloignes,

Jamais tu ne seras au bon endroit

Nous ne vous comptons pas."

Un Lot de Deux (Playtime)

 

J'ai une amie, elle est très gentille;

et une autre amie, très douce aussi.

Elles se ressemblent comme deux jumelles,

elles ont une langue et une semelle, mes deux amies.

 

Elles se rassemblent, elles vont partout ensemble;

elles se ressemblent au bout de mes deux jambes.

Elles me protègent courageusement

contre la pluie, la neige, le vent,

mes deux amies.

Sad Ebb (Giving Out)

 

It ends

Sad ebb

He was bad egg, God knows

But love,

But sadness ebb

It all goes

Lot’s Wife (Playtime)

 

I’ll be Lot’s wife and you be my foul beloved

Cities of the Plain.

I would rather gorge my eyes on you and die
with your outline inside me

Than survive

By grace

Of this flavourless God

Who towers over us.

 

As I look back

All I taste is the savour of interruption

The salt of a whole life expended in the moment of our parting

And my fruitless lifelong tears over your unavoidable fate

Concentrate.

Entre îlots (Playtime)

 

O, ma maman,

ne me quitte pas,

je t’aime tellement

que je ne t’aime pas

et j’ai mal à toi

 

O, mon enfant,

ne me quitte pas

je t’aime tellement

que je ne t’aime pas

et j’ai mal à toi

Vacant Lots (Playtime)

 

Closed roller-blind, yellowing

At the bottom a ring

Covered with string

Gaps at the top and sides

Dark outside

Lights out inside

And open eyes

Not watching but seeing light

Crossing the ceiling

 

The Wolf from Broken Bone (Now We Are One Two)

 

The pain was too great.

It was like a 45 being played at 78

and my grandmother

DANGER!

saying

12-FOOT DROP!

“C’est ça que chantait Britou

Pour sa première communion,

C’était si beau, comme des anges...

Mais je pensais que c’était un homme qui chantait là-dessus?

Tu vois? Je perds la tête.

Je perds la mémoire.”

 

The pain was too great.

I did not see the sign until it was too late,

And there we were,

Hurtling down a one-way street the wrong way.

 

“Hola, chica...

“Eh, Chica! Where you going?”

(Broken bone, broken bone, broken bone)

 

“Mmm Hmm, Lobo.... Where you from?”

(Broken bone, broken bone, broken bone)

“I understand that’s a place in Nebraska, right?

Which is more BEAUTIFUL than paradise.”

 

“No, you’re wrong, actually.

You’re thinking of somewhere else.

But I got my name the same way.”

You Can't Afford This 3

by Caroline Kraabel

27 June 2020

 

Punk was my personal Perestroika – a few moments of freedom and possibility preceding a takeover by the most rapacious, the cannibals, getting fat on us. Mines, shipbuilding, steel, gas, electricity, water, telecoms, airlines, railways, housing, prisons, schools, universities, care homes, roads, parks, rubbish collection, forests, land, buildings, tubes, buses, pensions, post offices... sold off, privatised or destroyed.

Those with no ballast of scruple, love, or conscience floated effortlessly to the top, stealing from past and future generations. Once the tangible assets were gone for good, they used the technology of creators who dreamed of freedom to turn our ties of friendship, family, interests; our communication, curiosity, creativity and individual constellations of relationships, into PRODUCTS to be sold to the highest bidder (States, Parties, advertisers, corporations). YOU have now been privatised online.

When the ideologically committed state facilitators of overweening greed, whose sickness dictates their beliefs:

Fuck everyone else but me
Buy cheap and sell dear
There's no power but buying power
Enclose the commons
Poison the well
Everything has a price and if you have to ask what it is, you can't afford it…

when they come up against a novel sickness that can't be bought or sold,
what happens?
An orgy of denial, buck-passing and empty bravado. The murder by omission of thousands who could still have been alive. The handing over without tender of vast contracts to inexperienced and incompetent private companies run by cronies. Because if they can't buy a cure, they can at least keep finding ways to turn a profit from all the sickness and death. Lie after lie after lie, over PPE, Dominic Cummings; Test&Trace; the tracking app; "immediate end to NHS surcharges for workers from abroad and their families"; "World-beating response". The exhortations to get back out there: herd immunity by the back door, cynically jettisoning the old, the poor, the very workers who are just holding the scraps of our society together. In the UK, the USA and Brazil, the most dangerous co-morbidity with Covid 19 is deadly extremist neo-liberal capitalism.

c and p C Kraabel

all rights reserved

https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/track/you-cant-afford-this-2