A
rms like wood
Lackaday, what do we know about life of the mighty, in this world where everything goes wrong? This century – bread, gold, gun – barely ten years old and it has already exhausted all the finery of life… This century is dull, unjust and lethal. The American express colour and a rancid stench of a false Russian, a real immovable scoundrel, the skin texture of an old multimillionaire, folds of white stuff, in pursuit of his harried bitch heiress, the taste of wags without their habs on an outing to the Silver Tower, the music of an off-road horn after a bloody hunting in the Kruger Park. It’s a century, wait… a century of fuckers! Fuckers of what, have no fucking idea, but I tell you, number 6 was a calamity. Calamity? Calamity nothing… Bread, games and coke, it gives no hard-on even to a hangman from the dead zone! A bed in a five-diamond hotel for comparing your dick in the locker room… Ssssons of the bitch! Listen, talking about diamonds, quite a luck, here in the South of Africa… they sold you an exotic junk next to the filthy mines of de Beers and consorts… Soccer City in the secessionist style, not even a cavalry at the end, but 22 assholes who did their best to miss the ball… Stock faints, our stadium gods in automatic mode, theatrical movements and penalty strike… they could encourage shantytown kids to kick themselves in the teeth! Do you remember, it happened a few months, a few years, a few centuries ago. Soweto resembled an amusement park repainted into football. Waiting for the African consecration that was supposed to come (as alimony) from this nymphet sport! Damn it, that was pathetic: black pride happened not to be Lumumba’s hagiography, Mohamed Ali’s rage or Martin Luther King’s dreams, but a fucking football team… Ok then, a return match of the humiliated, we’ll come over in a hundred years. As to the society, since then, Mandela has greyed dangerously while Jacob Zuzu was playing vuvuzela as a clavichord… The polygamy of presidential customs didn’t make goddess Europe wet, she was cooled down by the crisis, which vigorously introduced itself in the Anglo sphere cottages… Not even a Boer racist to boo. Eugene Terre-Blanche doesn’t have to count his limbs any more, the fascist jackass got his pigskin pierced with a 12-12 lead shot … Poor Gene, stomach gratefulness was lost, “your niggards” understood nothing! You taught them how to bend their backs, they treated you with a firing squad. Oh, pa, South Africa is the past of the past! Jokes apart, what was still there on this continent to dream about a new one? Dirty lads in Savognan pants imitating Pritchard while Evans and Brazza got the look of plotters… I won’t even mention the explorers’ pout when realising that their game was up. You could later sue Milou, the collaborator and this queer Tintin. But it should be admitted, when waiting for my gavroches, there wasn’t a slightest virgin land to identify: all was there before our eyes, and it was scarce… Try to remember, it was yesterday. People at the bottom, noses at the grindstone and arms on the cross. No virginal apparition to wake up the frozen pen. What ruled was the helpful web and speed. The speed with which we revelled in the useless, in the vain, the void… The speed with which we surfed from a miserable article to a sterile commentary… The speed of prevailing stupidity was literally mind-blowing… It couldn’t be faster, nonsense would have to become the new measurement unit… Imagine we said, “This comet exceeds the nonsense of light! It wouldn’t be nice neither to the comet nor light. Try to remember, it is now and yet it is already the past. The dice are cast. The flour is rising. The bread is crunchy even if it swarms with weevils… It is time to get lost. I remember… it’s tomorrow, it’s never, and perhaps it is… One beautiful morning I will leave. Copying Rimbaud, I’ll put a rucksack on a coat. In my imaginary bundle there will be a bottle of palm wine, Coltrane’s disc, Dongala’s book and a reproduction of one of my friends’ paintings…
18
I will certainly settle at the confluence of the Mbomou and Uele Rivers, at the Ubangi River; on one hand because I’ve always liked the name, on the other, because it seems a perfect starting point. Besides, the mission will have an aim – a slam! Yes, a slam of an absurd medieval complaint, disguised as a testament to the crocodile song… It is time. It’s time for a magic flight. On drums, a pod of hippopotamuses in rut. On harmonica, a shoebill’s sad blues. On bass, a group of cane toads from the nearby pool… and on triangle, my God, on triangle… Sorry, no idea for the triangle. But coming back to the slam, the poetry barely hummed, the text in prose without excessive rhythm, the song by no means quiet… Oh minstrel, this ballad is inspired by a painting I own… The one I’m admiring at this very moment. Here, at this late hour… in the forest oozing tropicality by all its leeks… at the Ubangi River. Hear ye, hear ye Messieurs, Mesdames, lend your ear to this grand complaint which begins as a blow: At murky waters, Queen Charlotte stood in a flood of tears, tousled like a peasant, her attire all dishevelled. Her arms hang along her body, she was looking at her King in a pool of blood, “But my Little King, your veins are open… You are bleeding dreadfully. O my miserable King, I pray thee, say how can I come to your aid?” “O min king, wae to him that did the wrang to me, my arms are like wood. Little King, it is the end… it is our perdition. I see the end of the miry path! There is no way to cross…. This fetid river spoils our prospects. Can you hear, King? Can you hear? She comes from afar… from the ends of Gehenna, in her hideous chariot, this mad Parca with her villain cohorts… Wretched Morta advances through and her sickle wheels grate as hell…” “O min king, wae to him that did the wrang to me, my arms are like wood.” “Here she is, the hollow – cheeked death. Grim Reaper… the cursed mischief-maker! And the river encircles us. This big motionless river, this strange ocean where reign horrible reptiles shedding crocodile tears… By Morta, Little King, do not count on me to save our skin… I yield to the worst and take your memory with me… For it is too late. Oh, how I’d prefer enjoy your male vigour and your celestial humours… But fear paralyses my pussy… and my limbs go stiff as a board…” “And you, Little King… are bleeding!” “O min king, wae to him that did the wrang to me, my arms are like wood.” “My Queen, enough,” whispered the King. “Don’t make a molehill out of Muhammad. Right, you love not my crown. I concede it wilfully, its thorns are heavy to carry. Just don’t hammer it into your head: cursing your long arms will lead us nowhere. Abastanzza, my Queen,” repeated the King in an unknown language… “Put me into the river and join me, we will suffer no harm… harm… arm… If it’s true, your arms resemble wood… Hear ye, correct me if I’m wrong, my lady, it happens that wood floats as a Dutch fluyt.” In this way, in the year of grace Super 8, the King of Timbuktu, thanks to Queen Charlotte’s wooden arms, escaped sure death and crossed two tributaries of the Ubangi River, where there are no ships that pass in the night… They lived happily ever after and had many children. Even too many. That’s why after some time the Queen imposed a vasectomy on the King, which he accepted reluctantly because he had converted to Catholicism in the meantime. Happy end… However… When writing these words, the world’s nonsense has scored more points (and, it should be admitted, this text fixed nothing). It has never been more mobile. With its hyper-drive it will soon exceed the speed of Millenium Condor … As one has little to do with the other, let’s just conclude briefly, “If zebu grease drips from the butcher’s block, just sell the hump”. trad. Monika Morawiec