Lying on the floor of a Paris bar, I began to write

Paris has been my home now for a little over four years. I’ve lived abroad before, but I knew within a few months of arriving here that I wanted to stay long term.

Paris is so vibrant, a labyrinth of bars and culture and people and beauty. During the day I teach kindergarten in an international school, and in the evening I play music in bars.

Last Friday, I was supposed to be playing a gig with a friend in a bar near Saint Michel. We were waiting for the match to finish when the texts started coming in.

The bar closed down soon after the attacks started, but with metros closed, and taxi ranks overrun, we ended up turning off the lights, locking the doors, and staying in the bar for the night.

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people I love, in safety, but that night will stay with me.

Lying on the floor of that bar in the darkness, I wrote the first poem below. At the time they were reporting 140 dead. The number has since changed, but I did not want to change the poem from its original form.

The second poem was written in response to the news of the death of a friend at the concert at Bataclan, and the third poem was written about Monday, and the city’s attempted return to “normalcy”.

These poems are very personal, and I was hesitant to publish them anywhere, but I feel there’s been too much written about the politic of these attacks and not enough about the people.

i.

13/11/2015

In the dark of 140 deaths,
nothing is silent.
We make jokes about
cheese
and flinch at each passing
siren
and stare at a muted screen
as the same numbers and figures flash
état d'urgence
état d'urgence
état d'urgence
140 morts

Where are you?

There's the ping ping ping ping ping
of Facebook
but our faces are as still as
mountains
or ill grey walls
and tired bricks
holding tear-ripped cheeks
up and together
while muscles twitch
and in the seconds
between breaths
we shiver and wonder
after the whys of death
and why are there so many
windows in here?

We were supposed to be playing music,
strumming songs
and fucking up
and worrying that our set list
is too slow for
a Friday night with
a football match.
Allez les bleus.

There are too many
supposed to's here.
Should I try to go home?
Will I ever go home?
Is it still home?
Will the air in my apartment
taste different?
A tang of blood
and bullets and held breaths

Terror,
here is terror.
We never stop talking,
we're making jokes
that I think we're not
even hearing anymore.
But if we stop talking
a wet wail might slip out
and what terrors
might hear,
might answer,
would we become the siren,
our pain and fear
a sore, pulsing target
in the city of lights,
a glistening night
that booms
booms
booms

Who are the bodies on the street?
We are all as alone
as each other,
dead or alive,
there is no together in terror
we are solitary
in our own flashes of
what if
and worry and love,
or do we feel love right now?
I'm not sure if I feel anything

So much misinformation

Twitter, texts, hushed talk
headaches, headaches,
no one says what they mean
we're keeping secrets from each other,
from ourselves
because what else do we have left to hold
in our fingers
but our own unsaid things
wound like rings
around clutching thumbs
and digits.

Happy Friday the 13th
Paris is burning
even if nothing is on fire.

ii.

14/11/2015

For Romain, and all the others.

I wake up and wait
for the what comes next.

Mostly this involves
hitting refresh,
an infernal, pointed
incomplete circle
that I click and click,
feeling a vicious
relief
and disappointment
in the unchanged feeds
and unanswered messages.

I want tea,
there's no milk,
will Carrefour even be open?
I pull on wool that will scratch,
and don't wash my face,
and on the street there are
dogs being walked
and children
with their parents,
alive
shops with tentatively open doors
and the world lives on
and I wonder if I weep here,
would somebody open their arms,
could Paris have changed that much
all at once
and would I have wanted it to?

I get my milk, and chocolate
and cigarettes,
and watch white faces
in long lines,
with arms decorated
with wine,
and sweets,
things we can share
when there's this
awful wealth
of things we can't.

In the 15 minutes it takes
to leave and come back,
a single message has come through
on a chain of words
that previously boasted
declarations
of love
and solidarity
and life.

You're dead,
my friend.

iii.

16/11/2015

I could not go to work today.
I could not face
combing my hair
and settling
the miracle of my
still living
mass
of skin and organs
and radically red cells
down on a seat
in the guts of Paris
with all these other bodies
moving
through the warrens
of an ill city,
buried before we're even dead,
an airless grave
waiting to happen.

And even if I made it there,
how could I look
upon my class of children,
tiny lives just starting
to grasp pencils
and form opinions
and preferences
and by god she loves the colour purple
and why? Why?
Why do we become so fervently attached to things
and pick up beliefs
and hold them in hands that used to be
so tiny they couldn't even cut their own meat
but one day can pull triggers
for ideals
that are nothing
compared
to the way a three year old
needs their mother.