Beirut, October 19th

What a nauseating day. It starts with the trail of messages asking if family and friends in Lebanon are OK. Then awareness hits you that something serious, very serious must have happened. The news pierces your screen like a knife would your heart, sharp and painfully: a massive explosion in the heart of Achrafieh. You pause. Achrafieh? Of course, your undeniable love/hate relationship with Lebanon stretches equally throughout the country’s10000 kilometer square plus, but this bittersweet district you regard with special affinity: your grandmother’s house, your highschool, your independence… your first nightclub, your cafes, your first boyfriend’s house, your mall, your hairdresser, your first car accident (well, you like to say the car was parked…), your civic awakening… demonstrating as a teenager against occupying forces… Wait, weren’t you there just a couple of weeks ago cursing at the traffic at the peak of rush hour. You look at your watch. 2h46pm in Beirut. Rush hour. It suddenly becomes too personal. It suddenly becomes a massive explosion in the heart of You. Apprehension settles as you imagine the line of dreadful scenarios: your mother going to run errands, your father on his way out of the office, cousins, uncles, relatives, friends all of whom work or live in a 100 meter vicinity of the scene. Obviously you try the phone lines and the networks are all blocked by the call congestion. Like a broken record of your most loathed songs set on replay you resonate to the bitter tempo of past assassination attempts and bombings that took place in a not so distant part of your memories… on one occasion too many… That’s when the real disgust comes in; the frightening realization that this situation is dangerously too familiar. Even more so when a colleague in London asks you: “with everything going on in Syria, wasn’t it about time?”. NO your soul rages. It was most definitely NOT about time. Lebanon like many nations has in the past yielded to the pressure of wars as it avoided its more profound adaptive challenges. Achrafieh in itself has once been shelled continuously for a hundred relentless days. It is difficult to speak on behalf of our mediocre political class although one must admit they have displayed some effort to resist drawing us into the heated neighbouring conflicts. But if the social media sphere is by any means a proxy for a Lebanese referendum on what direction the country ought to take, then the people have spoken. We understand way too personally the dreadful consequences of conflict now more than ever and it is NOT a path we wish to undertake. We refuse to let these coward acts enter any repertoire of our normality and refuse to let horror define any aspect of our identity. My thoughts and prayers go out to General Wissam al-Hassan and the innocent people who lost their lives on October 19th. General Wissam al-Hassan is a true compatriot who shined, upholding his civic duties and genuinely working to shield the country from harm. On a personal level, my admiration goes out to my friends and family whose offices were devastated by the bombing, who had to escape through pieces of shattered glass, who drove into a cloud of black smoke just as the bomb detonated and who are counting their blessing for being alive, those who braved the rubbles to pick up their children from the day-care centre across the road, those whose stores were destroyed but who are stoically cleaning-up the debris as we speak to open tomorrow morning. Most importantly my unconditional love goes to the citizens of Lebanon whose resilience and determination is stronger than any act of cowardice seeking to pull them into a conflict that we have no need, desire nor interest of even remotely entertaining.

Damaged Goods

Why do we torture ourselves? Physically but even more so… mentally.

Where does this hunger for bitter masochism stem from? Do we all secretly suffer from masochistic personality disorders? – I am generalizing here in a rather hypocritical attempt to alleviate the burden off my discomfited conscience. Perhaps my questionable morals would in some reader’s mind find a bit of sympathy …

Why is it that when one is on the verge of relationship ecstasy from which flows a beacon of peace and mental serenity, one would actively jeopardise the whole package brushing elbows with pandora’s box of vices, throwing oneself deep into a precipice of emotional suicide. We find ourselves harvesting yet again the same sentiments that we loathe and have once promised ourselves to avoid like the plague. Insecurity, despair, pain, anger, more insecurity, nervousness, sadness, anxiety, violence – the price you pay (at the expense of your sanity) for those acts of “passion” that resemble nothing more than acts of foolish impulsive juvenile irresponsibility.
Do we all have an emotional death wish? Is it genetics or just outright stupidity? In an attempt to see how far one can experiment with his heart, soul (and immune system for that matter), are we all programmed to be sentimental fatalists? …

If our brains are in everlastingly expansion and if our DNA is evolving from a hunter-gatherer paradigm to a more sophisticated set of mental reasoning skills, when will our hormones start expressing themselves intelligently as well?

Or is the divide between our innate animal instincts and this growing “acquired” capacity to “reflect” just deepening, creating a recipe for utter disaster by which we now have the power to not only witness our emotional destruction but also judge and willfully experience it.
Whichever way one looks at it, be it environment, genetics or viral, we come into this world with an open mandate for self-torture doomed to fail emotionally; and to add insult to injury, we actually thrive on it.

Hymne à Elle…

Songeuse devant cet écran banal, je médite sur Son absence…
Trop longtemps je l’ai attendue ; trop souvent je l’ai guettée… A bout de force et de larmes, au bord du désespoir je plaide naïvement qu’Elle vienne rapidement à mon secours… On me dit que c’est trop tard… je l’ai perdue. Pire. Je suis perdante.

Désormais Elle ne reviendra plus. Je suis un produit infecte dans un inventaire périmé...un genre de marchandise pitoyable qu’Elle méprise et dont Elle se moque.

On me traite de métamorphosée voire d’anti-christ. On me bannit de mon monde originel, ce monde auquel j’aspire, là ou résident mes folies, mes joies et mes espérances… ce monde d’artiste qui m’a vue naître, évoluer et produire.
On me répète que l’enfant prodigue est une invention post-modernisme et révolue… je ne suis plus la bienvenue….

Mais je l’espère toujours… Elle est au centre de ma hantise et je persévère à la voir renaître…
Au loin j’entends ces voix odieuses du cynisme et de la raison : Cède a ton environnement ! Succombe à cet univers ingrat et mécanique ! Sois un pion au service de l’opportunisme des uns et de l’hypocrisie des autres. Simplement survis.

Je refuse. Je m’obstine. Je m’acharne dans mon idéalisme. L’adolescente éternelle et sulfureuse ne courbera pas face à cette défaite absurde ! Je préfère périr pleinement dans mes désillusions fertiles plutôt que vivre une réalité frustrée qui n’est pas la mienne.

A bas le cynisme, je suis révolutionnaire ! Je tente le diable, je provoque, je lance les dés… Incitée, Elle se met au jeu. Elle connaît les règles ; mieux, Elle a l’expérience de mes faiblesses, de mes failles et de mes vulnérabilités. Elle se fait précieuse. Elle me taquine. Elle marchande avec mes émotions, Elle négocie avec mon âme. Elle a l’avantage, Elle qui me connaît plus que n’importe qui.

Je suis une accroc, une dépendante… une intoxiquée. A la fois, Elle me définit et m’illégitime à son gré.


Soudainement, je réalise que l’encre défile et la page s’étoffe… Les poignets qui m’asphyxient se relâchent. Lentement, je grimpe du fond de ma noyade. Les eaux s’ouvrent au milieu du déluge qu’est mon quotidien et j’expire. Je revis. J’écris !

Ma peau capitule aux frémissements de l’émotion, mon sang oxygéné bouille à nouveau et mon cœur bat en unisson avec Elle.

« Au loin les cloches de mon quartier résonnent »…Il y’a de cela une heure, je méditais sur ces mots et sur ma spiritualité disparue…
Maintenant, je prie si fort qu’Elle reste, qu’Elle m’apaise et m’attendrisse. Je ne veux plus la perdre… je ne peux plus la perdre. Je péris en son absence et je rayonne en sa présence. Elle qui réside dans ces verres qu’on me loue parfois, ces syllabes qui cavalent au bout de mes doigts, ces mélodies qui m’enveloppent, et ces rimes qui se composent… Elle est spirituelle par définition. Elle est création. Elle est unique : mon Inspiration.

Lehmanized

“Why Lehman?” was the first question asked as I walked through the glass doors of my interlocutor’s New York office.

I had prepped an answer earlier the night before, scrolling through the Vault Guide to finance interviews as I had for other banking prospects. These included different rankings, performance numbers, Lehman’s historical reputation as a bond house (I was looking for a position in Fixed Income at the time…) and other bullet points Vault had revealed of utmost importance for the industry.

However, this time something was different: the ingenuity of the environment would have me stray from the standardized route I had generically prepared. Lehman was not your ordinary bank. It was much more than the regular workplace and had a sense of purpose that transcended any conglomeration of mere financial figures; Lehman in its distinctive way was a sensorial experience.

Perhaps it was the sense of affability conveyed by the green wallpapered hallways and velvety carpets that greeted you at the main entrance, the towering bold letters unraveling proudly over Times Square, the colossal one block wide Lehman edifice that stood magnificently at the heart of the city or simply the green tie my interviewer wore matching the green stripes on his shirt… I was mesmerized.

I finally grasped the message behind the reviews, articles, and testimonies that praised Lehman’s culture. It inspired the answer I delivered to the green-striped man sitting across from me: “Lehman’s unique approach as a people-based culture seems to empower and nurture both professionally and personally all those who are given the opportunity to work here. For someone looking to invest in a career where people are valued as the beacon of success of an enterprise and treated as such, this is the best place to be”.

My eccentric answer amused my interviewer who replied that they trained us well in government school. He emphasized that my diplomatic skills would serve me well in the sales role I was pursuing.

I was made an offer to join the London office later that week. The news genuinely overjoyed me as I was eager, on possibly slightly juvenile imaginings, to belong to the grand image I had constructed of this company. Nonetheless, the burgeoning perceptions I was forging for myself would only consolidate in worth with each day that passed and each Lehman person that I was bound to meet.

I have been here for only a bare couple of months. This might rightfully appear as an irrelevant interlude compared to those who have dedicated their time, sweat, and devotion for years, sometimes decades, at the expense of their families, their health, and many foregone opportunities. Yet, by any mere standing I could ever pretend to hold I am branded to this firm. Or as I like to say, I am Lehmatised.

Lehman has defied many prejudices of a cynical and unrefined industry that I previously detained and has become as close to a home as an office could ever be.
Its remarkable people has precipitated my quick attachment to this place. Whether it was the exceptionally talented and generous colleagues of my analyst and associate class, the security guard who opened the door for me each morning with a smile as I scrambled with my dozen FSA folders in an attempt to make it to class on time, the Benugo staff member who by the second week knew how I took my extra shot extra hot soy latte, the senior management panelists in Prime Services, Equities and FID who thoughtfully and candidly addressed all our questions and concerns (nobody expected them to be foresighted at the time…), the Generalist Program Team who crafted an astonishing orientation and networking week to assist us in our decision making process, the Lehman analysts, associates, VPs and directors who endured hours of a tedious speed dating interview procedures amongst many other events with humor, finesse and then adaptability as we harassed them relentlessly at their desks for more info, the managing directors and group heads who against all odds accepted our meeting requests to discuss career trajectories… the “Lehman persona” in its many unique ways has inescapably captured my heart and admiration.

Even in the midst of the recent turmoil this past week where many are confronting new boundaries of strong uncertainty, betrayal, and complete dismay, the Lehman spirit has prevailed. Employees are providing strong moral support to each other and some managers have held desk relocation to different firms contingent upon having their team members on board. People continue coming to work hardly because of the administrator’s instructions, but more so because at least one person is considered as a family member by another in these difficult times. As idealistic as this may sound, the acts of dignity and respect I have witnessed here this past week has reestablished my faith in human nature.

It saddens me to see this grand symphony come to a halt when hardly a few notes of the prelude have resonated. However, in my humble opinion of a short-lived experience in its premises, even if Lehman as an institution will soon cease to exist, it will take much more than a credit crunch and a bankruptcy filing to fracture the gut, lifestyle and pride Lehman has generated through its people.

Le Liban à ma manière

Quand ils s'avancent accablés pour m'annoncer sa fin, pour me dire qu'il est au bord du précipice, qu'il n'y a plus d'espoir, qu'il n'est question que de quelques mois... je m'acharne à leur répondre : non.

Je leur souffle : c'est un secret mais il existe deux Libans…

Et je leur raconte l'Histoire à ma manière.

Le premier Liban certes, agonise sous le poids d'une hémorragie chronique de son potentiel, de son peuple, de son capital…
Mais la magie transperce au revers de la médaille.
Le second, lui, transpire aux cadences nocturnes des opening, des feux d'artifices, des talons aiguilles... Ce Liban, le notre, crache sauvagement sur un realpolitik sordide et se déhanche culotté autour d'un arsenal belliqueux qui cherche à l'abattre.

Je leur raconte que mon petit pays, mon unique dette et mon inestimable fierté, ne cesse de m'émouvoir. Je leur demande de fermer les yeux et je les transporte vers un soir d'été…

On se rend à l'opening d'une boite : le skybar.
Je leur décris un setting spectaculaire qui leur fait perdre haleine: perchés au dessus d'une mer cristalline, entourés de relief qui luisent au clair de lune, assis parmi des palmiers et des rosiers autour d'un bar périphérique, un système sonore des plus sophistiqués projette le dernier air électronique et annonce au monde entier que le coeur du pays bat encore et de plus fort.

Ils rongent leurs tempes pour essayer de comprendre.
Inutile. Ils n'y arriveront jamais. C’est le mystère du Phénix qui renaît de ses cendres.

Malgré les avertissements périlleux, les attentats de jour et les explosions de nuits, les six barrages qu'il faut frayer pour arriver à sa destination, les Libanais s'entêtent à vouloir vivre ordinairement. Ils le font à l'unisson au point de s'entasser à coup de milliers dans un même endroit pour revoir les mêmes couples et les mêmes fausses poitrines, appartenir à la même guestlist et contribuer aux mêmes potins...

Ce délire que d'autres condamnent est tellement vital à la continuité du pays...

Cette superficialité salvatrice les intrigue. Nulle part ailleurs, l'orgueil d'un homme dicterait la garantie de sa réservation avant même d'assurer la sécurité de sa propre vie.

Voilà la singularité oblique du secret de sa survie.
Oui… Il existe un contrat tacite entre Libanais dont on est fier. Il est simplement question d'assurer une permanence spatiotemporelle pour marquer notre territoire. Tant qu'un volume ferme de citoyens participe à cette rotation d'âmes qui s'échappent sur les planchés des boites de nuits, l'agonie politique épargnerait une agonie sociale qui cherche à tout prix un remède à sa fatalité....

Ils me rétorquent que je manque de cohérence.
Je leur dit qu'il ne faut surtout pas rationaliser juste croire à l'euphorie...
Le Liban est une perle rare, il faut patienter pour trouver celle qui brille...

L'Ombre du Levant

Au boulevard du Levant les courtisanes divaguent
Errant imprudentes les ruelles interdites
A chacune ses chimères, son colis d’étincelles
Qu’alimente un cœur souple à l’abri du mépris.

Sur le quai du Levant s’écrasent les vagues
Et mutilent les chimères des courtisanes pressées
Les illusions s’enfouissent sous un pas si frêle
Pour durcir de moiteurs un soir immaculé

Dans l’arène du Levant les vagabonds flânent
Une écume salive sur leurs lèvres brûlées
Leur mégot flaire les infâmes courtisanes
Une lame tranche la lumière enchantée

Au purgatoire du Levant on sévit les sirènes
Qui invitent au soupir les marins voyageurs,
Injurieuses elles supplient séductrices à sa traîne
La miséricorde oiseuse d’un Lucifer vengeur.

The Realm of the Living

Sunday afternoon I was sitting at the hairdresser indulging in the whims of my, at moments, dramatically superficial life. I was flipping through a people magazine frustrated at the idea that I could have possibly missed an important episode of the Britney Saga.

Suddenly I received a text message that read: “Call me now.”

It was Karen, a friend of mine from New York.
I smiled; surely she had the dirt on Saturday night’s madness in the City: Who was wearing what, who showed up with whom, who went home with whom… I called her eager to quench my vanity with mouthfuls of shallowness.

She picked up the phone and before I had the chance to teasingly greet her, in between strangled words shadowed by cries, she uttered: “Something awful just happened.”

The first thought that raced through my mind, as if I was on autopilot mode was: Damn it, another attack on Beirut, just what we needed before the Harvard Lebanon Trip.
But No. The news was of a different nature. Our best friend Muriel who had left Lebanon a few years back with her family precisely to escape the jeopardy that transpires on every Lebanese household and was now living in Montreal, had just lost her dad of a heart attack.

I sat there numb. Incapable of speaking, incapable of responding, incapable of thinking and I just gazed absent at my silly self in the mirror while a skeletal man in the background was wrestling with my locks in an attempt to flatten not only my rebellious curls but any sense of pride I could have deigned till then to claim.

My phone slithered through my fingers. It hit the floor and the screen fell apart.
I started pondering on the fragility of my own life; how it too would inevitably slither through my fingers, how my own screen, the mask I constantly wear in an attempt to roam flamboyantly through this forged masquerade, will soon enough fall apart.
Ironically, through conflict or passion, through happiness or anguish, one fate is common to the mightiest of leaders as it is to the most frivol of devotees. We are all equally vulnerable in the face of death.

Having witnessed death far too young and far too frequently, I had grown to internalize its horror to the detriment of my sensitivity. I despised myself because I could not bring myself to cry. I hated the cynicism which I learned to cultivate as a defense mechanism for survival. I loathed that I could not speculate on my own expiration date to assess the intensity by which I could allow myself to live: how much time could I waste procrastinating? How many mistakes in finding my professional calling could I afford to make? How often would I be able to gamble with love and lose? When should I initiate my first serious conversation with God…?

And then came the difficult phone call I had been dreading to make.
I dialed on a broken phone with a broken screen only to hear a broken voice that broke my heart and my emotional shield into a thousand pieces.

I mumbled to Muriel that I loved her, that she was not alone to overcome these difficult times, that she made her dad proud and that if she needed somebody to rage at, she could count on me.

But who am I fooling; no words could possibly mend such sorrow because no words can rationalize the obscure mystery that separates us from the dead.

I hung up, got up and paid my hairdresser. I did not go to the Viennese Ball that night. I stayed home in the company of my memories.
Fady, Muriel’s dad, will always be the man who waited countless hours for us to come home safely at 4 in the morning, the man who endured our furies in the midst of our juvenile adolescence crisis with a smile and a joke to make us laugh, the man who was an exemplary husband, who loved his daughters selflessly more than life itself and who treated me as if I was his own …

The hairdresser went home to his wife; Britney Spears is in detox with hopes of getting better. And I maintain the Faith that this life despite all its absurdities and injustices is still a battle worth fighting and a preliminary step to a greater journey that’s bound to commence.

Derniere révérence

La nuit flambe, un rayon bondit
Les murs tremblent au retentissement de midi
Dans un brouillard dense de fumée et de rage
La ville se fige conciliant son passage

Le martyr tire son ultime révérence
La douleur essore un souffle qui étrangle
Au creux du crépuscule, se dissipe son image
Une marée pourpre inonde son visage

Il tombe, il chavire, un tourbillon le ronge
La vitre se brise, le ciment se prolonge
Au loin la cloche du quartier retentit
Avisant la chute du sien qui périt

Vicious triangles

1958: Insurrection breaks out in Beirut.
Headlines read: Muslims push government to join Unites Arab Republic. Christians reach out to Western allies.
4 dead, Dozens injured.

1975: Insurrection breaks out in Beirut.
Headlines read: unidentified gunmen fires on church in Christian Beirut suburb. Militia retaliates on Bus of Palestinian civilians.
34 dead, Hundreds injured.

1990: Insurrection breaks out in Beirut.
Headlines read: Lebanese Army clashes with Lebanese Forces.
300 dead, Thousands injured.

150,000 were brutally killed in the Lebanese civil war, my uncle was one of them

100,000 were permanently handicapped by battle injuries, my father was one of them.

900,000 were displaced from their homes, my family was one of them.

A quarter of a million emigrated from the country, I am one of them.

Shiite, Sunnis, Maronite and Druze ruthlessly divided in hostility, violence and crime reconcile under the fate of one same scar: that of a child without a parent, that of a sister without a brother, that of a wife without a husband.
And Beirut lingers in the hopeless echo of a silent grief: that of a mother without her sons.

The soundless sigh of a thousand graves is more stringent than the loudest cry of a million living.
And Beirut drowns in an abysmal fall as the last drops of her competent labor force, her voluptuous markets, her vibrant economy, are drenched from her veins only to nourish the prosperous rise of foreign cities that surround her.

One would think that enduring days of pounding rifles and nights of rattling buildings would be sufficient to awaken the need for citizenship and accountability.
That each community would demand the Rule of Law sheltering the country from the perils of civil unrest.
But the toxic culture of sectarianism prevails.

One would think that the leaders of this precarious nation would recognize the flaws of a system that fosters mistrust, nepotism and corruption and acknowledge their own illegitimacy as a product of that system.
That they would remedy to that defect through a much needed representative electoral law.
But the preservation of their own power is far more important than the basis on which to build a solid nation.

One would think that a nation repeatedly shattered for more than half a century where land mines remain buried in contested areas, where tanks still roam the streets on the lookout for arms smuggling, would solemnly swear to cleanse itself from vicious bullets and fatal rhetoric.
But tolerance and integration lags far behind mistrust and cynicism in the race for national reconciliation.

2008 : Insurrection breaks out in Beirut.
4 dead, dozens injured.

A Tale of Two Cities

In a fragile Republic, that is Lebanon, two distinct projects of a nation are boiling at very high frequencies. Cohabitation has become an ideal irreconcilable with the reality shaping the country. The current system, be it in the form of a dubious Lebanese Constitution or the duplicitous factional power sharing scheme in Government, is no longer apt to contain these rough dynamics. It is in terrible need of a revision. As the two conflicting factions respectively boycott each other’s demands, the country is plummeting into its demise.

When a malfunction occurs in a defective product, companies tend to instantly proceed to a product recall. This is the standard approach to limit liability for corporate negligence. After the sequence of perilous events that ravaged the country, in the form of political deadlocks, fatal explosions and armed clashes, one would expect a sense of urgency to question the sturdiness of the Lebanese “political product”. However, as centuries of civil turmoil have repeatedly proven, in Lebanon this is not the case. Those who seize the reigns of power prefer to uphold defects rather than challenge a status-quo that might endanger the preservation of their faction within the larger power structure. Reconciliation in Lebanon is conducted on the basis of relegating one’s allegiance to an outside factor. This is precisely at the heart of the pact of conviviality, the “National Pact” of 1943, where one faction rejected its alliance with the West and another faction rejected its alliance with Syria. On the absurd basis of two tainted negations, one chaste nation was expected to surface. As soon as one faction deviates from this arrangement, the country plunges once again into confrontation as seen in 1958, 1975, 1989, and 2006.
This tacit agreement for conflict resolution was barely functional until the nature of the relationship between the different actors flipped permanently damaging the structure of the arrangement. Ever since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, the two competing movements “the March 8th” at its head Hezbollah and the “March 14th” at its head the leaders of the anti-Syria protests of 2005, have defined a new archetype which reflects a different story. In fact, each community is defining itself by affirming an alliance with an external factor as opposed to the previous “negation” format that would dictate the norms of sectarian cohabitation.
This new format prevailed on February 14th 2008. On this traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other, two divergent waves of peoples of one same country, simultaneously hit the streets in demonstration of their own infatuation with their respective causes, martyrs and ideals. Some say love hurts. Well indeed it does. Two antagonistic movements are leading the country into an even deeper divide in an attempt to claim larger political authority refusing to accept that there is only so much pie to go around. A harsh economic recession is being felt, internal security as well as border security has never been so low which allows for external extremist groups such as Al Qaeda to use Lebanon as a safe-haven for their terrorist plots. In this state of total anarchy, the population is merely collateral damage attempting to survive a system that slowly captures it into an annihilating fall.

A critical solution needs to be reached without further delays taking into account that the rules of the game have been altered. It has become clearer through the stringent political discourses that two cultures are materializing in one State with contradictory beliefs, concerns and identities. While one seemingly aspires for modernity and progress the other aspires for power and recognition. The two most pressing issues in the country are the election of a Presidential candidate (a void in place since last November) and the functioning of the governmental institutions through the reintegration of the March 8th block into parliament. To avoid an imminent escalation in violence in a worn-out country it is likely that the first power concession will obviously benefit one party to the detriment of another. Indeed, the balance of power has shifted in favor of the March 8th movement who possesses the key to the rehabilitation of Government. One solution, although painful to the March 14th movement, would be to yield to the March 8th demands for an increase in Parliamentary representation to 1/3 of the seats. Hence by untangling the deadlock, one might hope to alleviate the mounting tension and generate room for negotiation between these “two cities”.

La Condition Barbare

Acrobate qui jongle, au loin la lune scintille
Edith Piaff ronronne, le monde soudain faiblit
Mais trente chocs en deux ans et personne ne songe
Au désastre inédit qui saillit et qui ronge.

Blasés, écœurés, la sensibilité s’efface
Quand le deuil récurrent s’affirme à sa place
Le premier mort on pleure, le second on frémit
Le troisième immunise, le reste anesthésie.
On fait semblant de rien quand le trentième retentit
Le malheur se retire derrière l’horreur qui asphyxie.

A quoi bon espérer, notre étoile en otage
De renards féodaux qui occasionnent les mirages.
Dans l’attentisme aigu, on défile automates
Suppliant un réveil vif d’un cauchemar qui dilate.

Obsessionnel tourment

Mélancolie que me veux-tu ?
Le tonnerre qui s’écrase sur mon pavé d’argent
Éclate l’armure qui contenait mon âme…
Et elle court abattue, furieuse et fugace
Vers un horizon isolé pour réclamer sa flamme.
Etourdie sans répit elle plie et elle casse
Le rai souple et ludique qui vient distraire son passage
Car ce n’est que la nuit au fond des ténèbres
Qui abrite le philtre rédempteur d’un étincelant calvaire.

L’aile du diamant

Et je résiste acerbe a la déficience anémique
De l’ultime recours de la femme assiégée.
Celui qui accompagne une conviction puérile
Qu’elle seule peut sauver celui qu’elle aime
De sa chasse au destin assassiné.
A trop vouloir le libérer d’une fatalité qu’il poursuit obstinément,
Elle s’asservit dans des chaînes d’un fardeau, inutilement.
Elle s’enlise aveuglée dans le gouffre d’une clémence envoûteuse,
Agrippée à l’homme aux semelles de vent…
Et la fuite déchire sur son passage celle qui osa espérer.
Implorant une délivrance, elle recueille en vain les morceaux d’un espoir brisé
Qui résonne aussi fort que le cri d’une rose qui se fane,
Muet.

Dilemmes locaux

Décembre : je suis de retour en terre damnée... ce pays m’inspire l'esquisse d'une nouvelle qui porterait le nom d’ "intoxication légitime". Voila en huit syllabes abruptes le quotidien du peuple libanais...
Dans un organisme où se prolifèrent vertigineusement des cellules cancéreuses, la condition fatale incite au vice, à l’autodestruction, au dernier recours. Tout devient dès lors permis.
La science, le progrès, les institutions, les scrupules, les ceintures de sécurité (au sens propre et figuré) ne sont qu'un luxe que nous autres engouffrés ne pouvions nous permettre... En guerre comme en amour, tous les moyens sont bons pour vaincre.
Quand l’ultime souffle menace dans une foule de cyniques, vaut mieux s’esquiver avec des remords qu'avec des regrets... Bien entendu, on fume pour se lamenter et paraître davantage pitoyable ; insoucieux on bannît les lois qui veulent gérer les ébats passionnés présumant qu’une atteinte plus créative que virale déciderait de notre destin.
On redéfinit les limites de vitesses routières afin qu'elles s'accommodent à nos états d'âmes plutôt que sévisse un code pénal déjà si précaire. Et le pays régresse et régresse jusqu'à son effondrement à une vitesse inversement proportionnelle à celle qui régit l'escalade prospère des pays qui l'entourent.Maudits d'un cortège cérébral qui alimente une lucidité atroce, on assiste inertes à l'amnésie collective de ceux qui nous gouvernent. S’activer ne servirait qu’à croître une métastase institutionnelle démesurée. Par contre, on aspire à l’unisson à l'euthanasie de la formule libanaise. Et si quelqu'un assistait ce gouvernement de plantons à orchestrer un suicide collectif…

Elle… Lui… Vanité.

Empressé il se blesse sur sa lame meurtrière
Ne sachant résister aux ébats qu'elle fournit
Sous ses draps, attentive, elle se glisse toute fière
Délirant il se donne insatiable et aigri.

Imprudent il régale une toxine jaillissante
Impatient de jaillir maître de son temps.
Amnésique plaisir, trompeur, assassin
Accompagne un parfum qui émane du venin.
Mais ce philtre perlant intimant sur ses entrailles
Démantèle et mutile a chaque goûte qu’il tiraille.

Vacillant et rongé, lui, s’écrase aplati
Le rêve s'estompe de la strophe qu'il écrit
Il l’eut accueilli pour assouvir un dessein
Et bâtir un monde périlleux et malsain
Dame s’installe et vandalise une âme souillée
A coups secs d’éboulement, d’ordure et d’impureté.

Elle, Vanité, dans sa gloire et splendeur
Triomphe face à celui qui ne sut dire assez
Abusant de ses craintes, de ses hontes et malheurs
Elle l’oblige à se rendre honteux et décimé.