The boy, a drink and a war

Today

I promise you as a proof of committed love that I will never drink again

But then the war will come

And your European passport will push you into going to the front

You will be only twenty-five

When you will die

But back to this day in this bar

You tell me with a sweet charm and a smile that you don’t drink

And that you don’t want to try

In this old-fashioned city

The way everyone else moves so adequately

Makes me feel in a slow motion movie

Unnecessarily uninteresting horizontal white

and gray unwell conventions make

Everyone pretend and masquerade to be paying attention to banal conversations

While something different happens to their hearts hungry for passion waterproofing a sordid fire-secret-romance

They can show me nothing wide or new

But chemistry is a magical dew

that can play tricks on the most rational of men

And first time you passed me by

I was so enchanted that I obeyed my desire

And learned that I wanted immediately to verticalize my time

with you

until your spirit and body could be transparent fluorescent and blue

To me only

Today

I want to be held in your arms

I want to be hell to your eyes

I want to kiss and unfold your twisted mind

I want you to want me to be kind

So in the future I will let you go to your grave

unpredictably insane

thinking about today’s hot summer days at Nouvel Institut

Where you could have lived the best of life with me (but you have not)

Before your soft hands grab hard a weapon

And you dissimulate that you know how to shoot a man’s

heart

Here

I will continue to be

Six years in the future

Watching the news empty still cowboy whiskey down my knotted throat and I’m thrilled

In my middle-class apartment full of intellectual bullshit tedium and nothing

Telling people

I will be to old to fight

And I am also a foreigner

I cannot be called up

And in my country we don’t do wars

Not even for the fair reasons…

Here you are

Twenty-five years old

in the second line of the second battalion

Scared to death before you die

But no one cares or hear your words of fear

For they are all busy

With their own torments

And have more to do than paying attention to a mere young soldier with no friends

In this context

I won’t even remember you exist

(one failed night with a boy is not enough to mark a promiscuous man)

But you’ll think of me everyday

For I was the only true person you could have loved if you wanted to back in 2022

And it is this sweet memory that gave you the courage to go on

Before being shot in your right big toe

Something so unproblematic in a first sight it won’t seem to be nothing

but a generalized infection will prove doctors wrong and consume unhurriedly your sanity during almost a month

And while you cry and have mad dreams about your infancy you will see me as a kind of a savior offering you a sip of my drink

You’ll cry my name and everyone will think I am your brother or your father or even a great friend

But not a stranger you once dated in a cheap suburban bar of Paris’ left bank

You will smile and cry and then feel nothing

When you’ll be finally released from life

Young and traumatized

And lonely

How can someone so healthy and so alive

Pass away without ever tasting

A single drop of love or alcohol?

28.6.24