On the dusty roads Ficelle sang. He invents his choruses with his daily life, his setbacks and his gains — rare and too uncertain. He said: Some sing only in the bath. If I did, I would sing once in a blue moon. When you’re on the road all day long, showers and baths are a thing of the past. Done with the cast. At the long last!
What did he sing?
Tonight the Knight de la Ficelle
With many demoiselles
On a bed would sail
A giant clown car. Ficelle was not too worn on slap and tickle, and as he liked to say, he had never raped a fly. Songs are not confessions anyway. We sing to encourage or to forget that we are cowards. Ficelle sang like others fart. He also farted, able as he was to do. And when he peed, he sang this:
Pee with no fart is like a dart,
like a dart, like a dart,
Pee with no fart is like a dart,
with no target, with no art,
fart, fart, fart.
He liked to pee like-I-fart. He repeated: Who wants to be well, often pees like dogs! And he farted high again.
Or Maybe This
Ficelle was the best man growing up under the sky
Ficelle used to talk to fruit and to care for hive
Ficelle went cahin-caha up to eighty-five
When he was an old man, he came to say “goodbye
The earth is heavy to my feet,
Nice to meet.”
His music was not cheerful. Haunting, hypnotic, to help him walk. He could sing the same verse for hours, a single line, three words that sometimes twisted his head and prevented him from thinking.
Thyme and Wine
He sailed on land, sailed on stone fields, pulled edge by mountains high and down to valleys, everywhere especially, again and first. He skimmed the winds, sold his soul to the highest bidder, free of charge. The highest bidder was a demon of the South, a little devil who is not in the Directory. A demon selling thyme, fine for the skin and rhyme, he shouted at the market. And Ficelle walked. He who could pick boots on the powder scrub of a childhood in Provence! He had never left Paris, except in a dream. No sweat, no worry — since he doesn’t care.
Still, he subscribed to thyme for life against the gold watch that Lucky Uncle gave him for his umpteenth birthday. A thirty-twelve carat gold watch. Uncle Petty is not a rat. Every day that God makes, the knight receives a bag of thyme in Tibet, it’s so stupid, since he doesn’t live there. He never left Paris, he never sold his soul and Uncle Grunkle never existed, except on his tea box. In bulk, Ficelle prefers. He never drinks it, it’s to offer. But he doesn’t give it because he doesn’t have it because he doesn’t drink it.
Ficelle is (a bit) lying as he breathes. A toothpuller, a showman, a door-to-door salesman, let the thyme devil win. Logic loves me. Not him. He prefers love at sea.
Love At Sea
Love at sea, bitter love, said my mother who never took the boat. She went to India on foot. It’s a long way back. Mom didn’t come back. That’s why I didn’t know her. Only one thing is certain: I’m a real knight. I wear on my finger the ring that my father didn’t give me because he never wore it.
Knight of the Oval Table, alone by name. Proud of it. And I will stay there all the time, so much, so beautiful rose. Knight without horse, squire without ecu, I once slept at the foot of a cheese maker. Without cheese: it’s a tree. With a tree, a loaf of bread, it would be a pain in the ass. Missing but a French fry tree.
I had found one
which adjoined
the tree of vine
on the edge of a ravine.
I’ve sung this song for ages lying naked under a wood-pigeon tree. And giggling, cowardly! on a Gruyère tree. I didn’t know Grandma. She sold camembert in the subway corridors. The very first subway, line 1, Maillot-Vincennes, in 1900. I was two years old. My grandmother was riding me on her back in a carriage. Trucker strong she was. Since I didn’t know her, how could I recognize her? It killed her. I fell all the way (52cm) into the arms of my grandfather who never recognized my mother. How could he? He had never seen her. That’s my family way, we’re only boys from mother to daughter.
Birthday Party
One of my friends had a birthday party in a big apartment in Passy. I was 16. Not so dumb, I went with my crossbow. Corridors, marble stairs, antechamber, I’m for it. Bathroom, ball boobs, I come back. And now, what can’t I see? A tranny! In this kind of princely slum, frankly, it hurts. My friend arrives, very half drunk. A smack, and I feel embarrassed: who’s that stuffed bitch? He pulls me by the cloak in a dark corner away from the early partier.
“They’ll be gone soon,” said my gossip friend.
“I don’t care,” I reply. “The artist with the wig, she will stay long?”
“Quite a bit” he said. “He is my father.”
Not knowing him, I was shocked! To see such a girlfather. Made up like a cheating card. With hairy legs. Carnival dressed. Paste in packs on wrinkles. I ran to the toilet where my delicate stomach could empty. I vomited my five o’clok. And then I pooped. I went home pale. Tight ass. I sang aloud to reassure myself.
Tonight the Knight de la Ficelle
Together with a demoiselle
On a navy bed would sail
It didn’t help a bit. Again I was alone in bed.
From a major agreement
What we don’t have sticks to fingers
What we loose may fill your purse
A hidden nipple is no debt
Attribute to the epithet
Can all we miss be successful?
Insufficiency be the rule
Eyes wide shut’s a seeing baby
Happy to come and sad to be
Such a dazzling din
Under the deafening sin
In a desert of pines tall
Your picture on the painted wall
To a minor disagreement
Look at my pure accent
Homesickness undecent
Treat me tough and rude
On my bare skin tattooed
What happens and what I rehearse
To minimize my blunders
Tarantino the tarantula
Did the deed to the cinema
Turn right before the orage
Remembering the last outrage
Inflicted to Holy Trucker
Fucking son of a cocksucker
What I lost may be worth
Everyone before birth
Stronger with no power
Hard rain’s daily shower
I kept the final money
To close my night’s agony
Deep my sleep is like a log
Nude as fogg, you be my dog
Late warning
Ficelle cracked corn and I don’t care. To the old fools the best tools, says the Jôle in jail. He sticked to me around like a bond. A grain of my madness comes from him I guess. A good grain of pain pulls a chain gang. Free from the main stain, Ficelle’s not for sale. Wanna gin with pale ale ? Don’t overdo. My man’s been here with no beer, he’ll come back with a ragsack. Like a train, like a plane, he’s insane. Like the bird of freedom, Ficelle’s plane flies straight. No dead end in Frisco heights. Heavy load, big weight.