Gratuitous piece of poetry from a regular contributor, posted today in preparation for the upcoming January issue, which goes live at midnight PST tonight. Please enjoy!

Last Day of 2015

By Christopher Bernard

As in any other year
each day the sun rose, it set.
Mothers, friends, partners, lovers,
after laughing at us for longer than we cared to remember,
vanished overnight.
Where they used to be now is a hole in the air.

The monarch butterflies move in mists of wings
across the plains between Canada and Mexico,
rain takes a stroll across parched California,
and the moon glows down on everything on the earth.

The snow lines the pockets of the mountains with rebukes
as sharp as memories of kitchens on winter mornings.
A crocus breaks through the whiteness, a small pink fist,
sleek as rebellion, calm, deceptively delicate,

wagging in the wind.

Your partner is ice, hollyhocks, poppies.

Your lover is a fox hiding under a felled cedar.

Your mother is the wind.

Every day the sun set, it rose.

_____

Christopher Bernard is author of The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs. His poetry can be read at The Bog of St. Philinte.

The Rude Mechs theater troupe

HEY AMERICA! STOP HITTING YOURSELF

Stop Hitting Yourself

Rude Mechs

Zellerbach Playhouse

November 19–22, 2015

A review by Christopher Bernard

Cal Performances brought Austin, Texas’s zany theater collective Rude Mechs to Berkeley for a weekend of their 2014 New York hit. And a hit it was, hitting me, at first silly, then awake, with its brainy provocations, savage wit, and the cruel tickle of truth.

The show is an inspired combination of a classic Hollywood musical, a pithy allegory on contemporary mores, sudden outbreaks of wacked-out dance routines, witty seductions into audience participation, moments of unexpected confessions by the cast, and a fable on the inner conflict, at the heart of American life, between today’s brutal culture of narcissism, rapacity and greed and ancient ideals of selfless love, kindness to neighbors, the sanctity of nature and the basic decency of the common man and woman.

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Paris: Les attaques, et après

Le 13 novembre

La ville des lumières

cette nuit etait

une ville de douleur.

Sois calme, mon coeur.

Le sang de Paris

ne se fait pas

de pleurs.

Le 14 novembre

La Ville Lumière

cette nuit devenait

une ville de noirceur,

à l’aube,

une ville de desolation et douleur.

Sois calme, mon coeur.

Le sang de Paris

ne se fait pas de pleurs.

Le 15 novembre

La nuit tombait

sur la Ville Lumière,

le soleil levait

sur une ville de noirceur.

Sois brave, mon esprit. Sois calme, mon coeur.

Sous le drapeau de la desolation,

sous le rage de la douleur,

sous l’orage des oiseaux

dans le ciel de ce jour,

l’esprit monte au ciel

d’esperance and d’amour,

et le courage dit au terreur:

La France va te ruiner,

elle va te détruire, elle va t’ecraser,

elle va te laisser sur la terre désolée.

Le sang de Paris ne se fait pas de pleurs.

(English translation follows)

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For the Paris Conference on Climate Change:

“I Am What Is Wrong With the World”

By Christopher Bernard

Yes, I admit it! All my previous girlfriends were right. It was, in fact, all my fault.

I reach this conclusion with the deepest reluctance, even embarrassment. It’s a horrible responsibility to have to confess to. It came as a surprise, even a shock. But one day I stumbled on it, staring me in the face. And ever since, it has never left me in peace.

I had always believed my sins were, at the worst, venial—I mean, I’ve never stolen, or robbed, or knowingly cheated anybody. I don’t do drugs, I drink in moderation, I stopped smoking ages ago.

I’ve never killed anything bigger than a mouse, and even that I mourned as, unable to save it, I watched it die miserably in a roach trap.

My lies are the innocent kind (“Doing great. How about you?” “No, it does not make you look fat”).

It’s true I have an occasional fit of uncharitableness, but as a rule I bend over backward to be fair-minded and I don’t discriminate against people based on race, sex, gender identity, mental health, financial status (well, I have problems with the super-rich, but I don’t think I’m alone in that), nationality, religion—whatever.

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The Unheard of World. Joan Howard pictured center. Photo by Robbie Sweeny

(IN)COMPLETELY ABSURD

The Unheard of World

By Fabrice Melquiot

Translated by Michelle Haner

Exit Theater

San Francisco

A review by Christopher Bernard

Even with the best of intentions, to say nothing of energy, intelligence and talent, world premieres can be treacherous things. The premiere of an English translation of a modern French play can be more treacherous than most, given the great differences of premises and expectations between French and American audiences—including such things as their different senses of humor and attitudes toward philosophy, which can quickly become awkward in a philosophical comedy.

The latest production by one of San Francisco’s most audacious companies, foolsFURY, which in October premiered, as part of its Contemporary French Plays Project, Michelle Haner’s translation of Fabrice Melquiot’s magical realist Le Monde inouï is a textbook case. (Melquiot is a prominent contemporary French playwright; foolsFURY produced The Devil on All Sides, in artistic director Ben Yalom’s translation, to much acclaim in 2006.)

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Image from Stakeholder 360

Mother Earth

“…‘our Sister, Mother Earth’ … now cries out to us, …
burdened and laid waste …”— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’

You throned us in your belly
down countless generations,
unfolded us to the light, fed at your breast
the children in us that grew to be women and men.
You taught us wonders:
each star in the night, each flower in the morning,
singing and beauty, each word, each thought,
the rites of courtesy, discipline of goodness;
praised us, scolded us, comforted us, held us.
All thanks to you, Mother Earth, all thanks to you.

The sun strides across the sky.
The birds pierce the air.
The rain startles the ground.
The seas are renewed without end.
The mountains dream in the morning.
The flowers are boundless.
All thanks to you, Mother Earth, all thanks to you.

And in return, what have we done?
We have cut out the heart of the world,
in man’s mad cunning, and burned it.
We have ransacked your home and fouled it,
and we have set your house on fire,
destroying the loom of the earth that made us,
the seed we grew from, the withered blossoms.
We are like a drunken man driving fast toward midnight,
intent on destruction out of a nameless resentment.
Forgive us, Mother Earth. Forgive us.

Free us.
Free us from our darkness,
the fear and need that drive us,
the cowardice and greediness of desire,
our craven weakness before brutality;
cast out the insanity of mankind,
past the crimes that strew our lives,
our refusal to see
the evils that are ours alone.
Save us, Mother Earth. Save us.

Show us the way—remember when we were children?—
of holy life.
Teach us how to walk again
lightly upon the earth.
Teach us to heal when you are ailing,
to comfort when you grieve
and no longer make you weep in the trammels of the night.
Free mankind from itself, Mother Earth,
and teach us to be loving to you forever.

All thanks to you. Forgive us. Save us.

_____

Christopher Bernard is the author of the forthcoming novel Voyage to a Phantom City, to be published by Regent Press in 2016. He lives in San Francisco.

A Little Talk Between Brain and Soul (Laudato Si’, Pope Francis)

By Christopher Bernard

The Brain and the Soul are meeting at Philz. The Brain is dressed in computer geek togs: leopard-style TV glasses, a shaved head, a tee-shirt reading Code Earth, leatherette flip-flops, and ragged but expensive-looking jeans. He has an iPad in one hand loaded with a document he is making sure Soul doesn’t see, and the latest iPhone in the other, which he consults every so often to fact check. The Soul is dressed simply in a white shift and sandals, and wears a warm smile. The only possession she brings with her is a ring on her left hand. She is near-sighted and occasionally squints.

We find them already in mid-conversation. The Brain is doing what he does best: talking nonstop.

The Brain:
(Thinking: Got to speak in antiquated tropes,
pre-memes and metalanguages
and undeconstructed syntagms,
but that’s the only
parole and langue coding that
my ol’ prefrontal-cortex-challenged friend Soul
gets.)

“And” “I” “bring” “good” “news.”
(“Does” “that” “ring” “a” “bell”?)
“Guess” “what”?

(Soul smiles even more broadly.)

“You” “don’t” “have” “to” “be”
“a” “scaredy” “cat” “anymore”:
“There” “is” (!)
“no”
“hell!”

(Soul grins happily.)

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