World War COVID Guerre mondiale: From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld; Learner, begin... De la terre en armes au monde paisible ; Apprenti, débute

Asleep with the enemy

learnermarkv Season 18 Episode 128

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0:00 | 2:51

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/13366779

LEARNER full text (2024)

PeaceWorld or death

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/13381922 

APPRENTI texte integral (2024)

Le monde paisible ou la mort



WORLD WAR COVID
Poems, mine and theirs  

Asleep with the enemy  

Neither alert nor in repose,
Neither awake nor asleep,
Stuck in endless repetition. 

Across the static pattern of a dim television screen. 
Darker patterns drift and float:
Momentary thoughts, dreams and memories. 

It has stopped being your dream; you are not here.
Your life is no longer your own.
Something else rules it. 

Your normal dreams have gone off the rails. 
This roller-coaster ride has no off switch. 
There is no other channel to switch to. 

This unwelcome monolog is your cross to bear.
It calls up thoughts you never knew you had,
Yet so familiar and transparent. 

Those patterns of yours die one by one. 
Replaced by inert cuneiform
In the ranks and files of zombie legions. 

No matter how long that takes. 
For each of your proposals, an unanswerable reply,
Insistent, immediate and nonstop. 

There is no valid appeal. 
Your thoughts are exposed under the thought butcher's heat lamp,
Trussed up, naked and afraid, 

Flash frozen into mirror-image fossils. 
Was there ever a gradual wearing down?
No, never; just yes-no substitution. 

It was you before; now it is some other,
As microbes explode your body cells
Like sea foam melts sand walls. 

It grabs your thoughts without invite.
Yours beloved, unique and intimate;
Its own, bio-mechanical, identical, undead. 

It is not like taking a spill while out surfing,
Brought down by a wave too big to resist,
That chokes your body and scrubs the bottom with it. 

No. It just erases your thoughts beyond repair ;
It replaces them with evil twin inversions. 
Even though yours be vibrant, vital and alive, theirs are gray-tone zombies. 

While your next thought bubble goes pop,
And the next one, proposed in support, fails in turn; 
And so on in mirror hall repetition. 

Your mind is a rag doll
That roles and drops over and over 
In the tumble dry cycle of fever dream.

This struggle exhausts your sleep. 
Your mind lowers its rusty shutters. 
Your fever dream quiets beyond recall. 

You wake up in a cold sweat of incomprehension 
Or dead, or in between. 

Your fever dream is more deadly 
Than every accident, battle and murder put together,
More cunning than anything we can see. 

It has spared you once again,
Sent you toddling to your pitiful handful of billions,
A one-eyed guide sent back to those blinded twice. 

That is the COVID dream. 
A trillion times our numbers, age and comprehension
This vision confirmed by other fever trials.

IN FRENCH

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