Cuisine

A.J. once reserved a table a year in advance Chez Robert where a huge, icy gourmet broods over the greatest cuisine in the world. So baneful and derogatory is his gaze that many a client, under that withering blast, has rolled on the floor and pissed all over himself in convulsive attempts to ingratiate.
So A.J. arrives with six Bolivian indians who chew coca leaves between courses. And when Robert, in all his gourmet majesty, bears down on the table, A.J. looks up and yells: "Hey, Boy! Bring me some ketchup."
(Alternative: A.J. whips out a bottle of ketchup and douses the haute cuisine.)
Thirty gourmets stop chewing at once. You could have heard a soufflé drop. As for Robert, he lets out a bellow of rage like a wounded elephant, runs to the kitchen and arms himself with a meat claver.... The Sommelier snarls hideously, his face turning a strange iridescent purple.... He breaks a bottle of Brut Champagne....'26.... Pierre, the Head Waiter, snatches up a boning knife. Al three chase A.J. through the restaurant with mangled inhuman screams of rage.... Tables overturn, vintage wines and matchless food crash to the floor.... Cries of "Lynch him!" ring through the air. An elderly gourmet with the insane bloodshot eyes of a mandril, is fashioning a hangman's knot with a red velvet curtain cord.... Seeing himself cornered and in imminent danger of dismemberment at least, A.J. plays his trump card.... he throws back his head and lets out a hog call; and a hundred famished hogs he had stationed nearby rush into the restaurant, slopping the haute cuisine. Like a great tree Robert falls to the floor in a stroke where he is eaten by the hogs: "Poor bastards don't know enough to appreciate him," says A.J.

(William S. Burroughs, extrait // excerpt, Naked Lunch)

Wrestle

The group of laborers seated at noontime with their open dinnerkettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child .... the farmer's daughter in the garden or cowyard,
The woodman rapidly swinging his axe in the woods .... the young fellow hoeing corn .... the sleighdriver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers .. two apprentice boys, quite grown, lusty, goodnatured, nativeborn, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
The coats vests and caps thrown down .. the embrace of love and resistance,
The upperhold and underhold -- the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes -- the play of the masculine muscle through cleansetting trowsers and waistbands,
The slow return from the fire .... the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again -- the listening of the alert,
The natural perfect and varied attitudes .... the bent head, the curved neck, the counting:
Suchlike I love .... I loosen myself and pass freely .... and am at the mother's breast with the little child,
And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with wrestlers, and march in line with the firemen, and pause and listen and count.

(Walt Whitman, extrait // excerpt, Leaves of Grass)

Prix

Sur mes refuges détruits
Sur mes phares écroulés
Sur les murs de mon ennui
J'écris ton nom

(Paul Eluard, extrait // excerpt, Liberté)

Annie

Up in Sturkeyville, eight or ten years ago, there was a man named Harvey Lawson, whose wife was a worm.

(Bob Leman, extrait // excerpt, The Time of the Worm)

Edge

Don't smoke
Don't drink
Don't fuck
At least I can fucking think

I can't keep up
Can't keep up
Can't keep up
Out of step with the world

(Minor Threat, Out of Step)

Transition

Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides;
Va te purifier dans l’air supérieur,
Et bois, comme une pure et divine liqueur,
Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides.
Derrière les ennuis et les vastes chagrins
Qui chargent de leur poids l’existence brumeuse,
Heureux celui qui peut d’une aile vigoureuse
S’élancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins;
Celui dont les pensers, comme des alouettes,
Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor,
- Qui plane sur la vie, et comprend sans effort
Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes.

(Baudelaire, extrait // excerpt, Elevation)

Extinction

I'm just like anyone
I want to feel
The road of tar beneath the wheel named extinction
And evolving from the sea
Would not be too much time for me
To walk beside you in the sun

(Pixies, extrait // excerpt, The Sad Punk)

Key

up there -- there is a sea
up there -- there is a sea
up there -- there is a sea
the sea's the possibility
There is no land but the land
(up there is just a sea of possibilities)
There is no sea but the sea
(up there is a wall of possibilities)
There is no keeper but the key
(up there there are several walls of possibilities)
Except for one who seizes possibilities, one who seizes possibilities

(Patti Smith, extrait // excerpt, Land)