I am a homeboy, so independently loner that if you'd jail me for twenty
years, i'd just shrug my shoulders and say, 'fine'. ha! life for me isn't
serious, it comes like a wind, a puff of smoke and k-booom, it's over.
life for me is like this - i broke my ankle while playing basketball
yesterday so, now, i can't walk because my ankle is swollen.
and you say i need see the doctor. whoa! who the f--- are you fooling?
you think that because i came to this city from a small town, with
mud stuck on my shoes, with my accent different from yours, you think i'm
that stupid to believe a quack could heal my swollen ankle? you think I,
Me, yes, Moi, can't heal myself? i ain't smart but i ain't no fool. my
bone will heal if i keep it aligned, and i won't pay no doctor to set it
right. in due time, calcium will spring out of its fragments and cement
the whole damn thing and that is natural, like the earth. and the earth
is free. because, i'm tough. oh yes. i'm a tough businessman. and, i'm
bound to make money. lots and lots of money from import/export deals. If
only my bosses understand my potential. oh i've got potential lem'me tell
you! with sufficient capital in this remote country, this country where
the likes of me are treated as dogs, i'd make lots of money! talk your
fancy to me and i'd provide it to you. ask about any product from the west
and i'd ship it to you. request sex and i'd wrap and send it to you
via air mail. your king haven't paid me for the last armament i shipped.
and he's supposedly a man of honor, i was assured. honor my ass! i've been
to different places in the globe - paris, vienna, java, cyprus, ethiopia
- and never heard so much lies in my life until i met your king!
but i'll make him pay boy! if only this stupid painful ankle...
my whole leg is swollen! damn. something is wrong. it must be
poor circulation. i'm gonna write my mother - i'm gonna ask her to order
me tight fitting socks, socks worn by old women to reduce leg swelling.
look here, i'm only in my thirties and i've already got varicose problems!i'm
in such a miserable lot!or maybe i'm suffering from gout. yeah how about
gout? if i've got normal leg, i'd make it through. i'd walk across africa...
but really, what the hell is this varicose vein doing in a young leg like
mine? ah if the world has ears i'd cuss it with venomous words - hey world,
you savage-useless-inebriate-world - what are you doing to my leg? why
did you spawn me in your bosom and make me suffer? you want me pour you
gasoline and burn you to hell? hey world, you hear me, do you recognize
me? i maybe lookin old now, my leg a-limping, i maybe screamin at
these people working under me in this remote coast of unknown country of
an unknown continent - because - yeah - i wanna make money....my mother
and sister would soon be proud of me - for my money...only if this painful
ankle stop killing me.
aaaah! this really hurts now, this leg, and i'm having a temperature....damn,
it must be infection! this is what i get for all my hard work. and i won't
get my stockings till next month. damn it! damn it all!
let me tell you something my friend, i'd never had a pain like this
before! listen to me! don't throw me into this dilapidated hospital and
be treated like a goddamn leper.once young and beautiful, i became the
toast of paris, i savored the women of my youth, i gave myself to men who
fancied me. i sought freedom in the arms of my poetry and my poems
were considered works of genius.
no i can't take the pain anymore - i've got cancer - please, cut my
leg....
damn you Cunt and Dick! you made me this way.(illustration and text
by a.mask)
from the cover of the
book authored by Paul Schmidt
Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every
heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
One evening I took Beauty in my arms - I thought her bitter -
and I insulted her.
I steeled myself against justice.
I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care...
I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of sullen
beast, I have downed and strangled every joy-----
"You will remain a hyena, etc...." shouts the demon who once crowned
me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all
selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly sins."
Ah, I ve taken too much of that: still, dear Satan, don't look annoyed,
I beg you!
If only I had a link to some point in the history of France!
But instead nothing.
I am well aware that I have always been an inferior race. I cannot
understand revolt. My race has never risen, except to plunder: to devour
like wolves a beast they did not kill.
When I was still a child, I admired the hardened convict on whom the
prison door will always close: I used to visit the bars and the rented
rooms his presence has consecrated; I saw with his eyes the blue sky and
the flower-filled work of the fields; I followed his fatal scent through
the city streets. He had more strength than the saints, more sense than
any explorer - and he, he alone! was witness to his glory and his rightness.
Along the open road on winter nights, homeless, cold, and hungry, one
voice gripped my frozen heart: "Weakness or strength: you exist, that is
strength....You don't know where you are going or why you are going; go
in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if
you were a corpse."
I am reborn in reason ----
Boredom is no longer my love----I don't imagine myself I'm off on a
honeymoon with Jesus Christ for a father-in-law----
I have said: God. I want freedom, within salvation.
No further need for divine love or devotion to duty. I do not regret the
age of emotion and feeling. To each his own, contempt, Charity: I keep
my place at the top of the angelic ladder of good sense.----
What an old maid I'm turning into, to lack the courage to love death!
Ah! My life as a child, the open road in every weather; I was unnaturally abstinent, more detached than the best of beggars, proud to have no country, no friends - what stupidity that was! - and only now I realize it!
Hadn't I once a youth that was lovely, heroic, fabulous - something to write down on pages of old?.....I was too lucky! Through what crime, by what fault did I deserve my present weakness? You who imagine that animals sob with sorrow, that the sick despair, that the dead have bad drams, try now to relate my fall and my sleep. I can explain myself no better than the beggar with his endless Aves and Pater Nosters. I no longer know how to talk!
Autumn already!...but why regret the everlasting sun, if we are sworn to a search for divine brightness - far from those who die as seasons turn....
A SEASON IN HELL, 1873
Arthur Rimbaud was a disreputable, mean, ruthless, hateful wretch. He was also one of the greatest poets who ever lived.....(from the book backcover)