Hastings
La traduction française suivra sous peu

I’m gonna move to Hastings
pick up where I left off
I’m gonna get drunk every day with drunks who piss me off
I’m gonna move to Hastings
become the fancy blow-job queen
get a job in a dirty dog pub
with a broken ice-machine

I’m gonna move to Hastings
where it’s two quid for a triple house gin
I’ll go mental, crazy-eyed, wear no shoes and go through bins
I’m gonna move to Hastings
sleep with bouncers – not the bands...
in the toilets I’ll have fishermen finger me with hard rough corn-rough hands

…It gets worse…

I’m gonna move to Hastings
spend my benefits on the booze
get off with people’s boyfriends
get in catfights which I’ll lose

I’m gonna move to Hastings
smoke cheap fags and sport shit gear
get bloated on chips and vodka
have weird sex beneath the pier

I’m gonna move to Hastings
baby mothers pissing on the street
white stilettos without irony blistering on their feet

I’m gonna move to Hastings
where it’s as cheap as chips
and the bad boys they crack on
even when the condom rips

…Nice...

I’m gonna move to Hastings
go as low as high can go
we’ll suck on Hastings rock
it’s the hardest rock I know

I’m gonna move to Hastings
bedsit with a vague view of the sea
sign on the six, save my medication
burn these poems when they burn me

Patti Smith

La traduction française suivra sous peu


In a Greek bar in Paris, drinking Ouzo in St. Michel with a pencilled moustache like Salvadore Dalí I see a familiar figure with a big coat, woolly hat and spectacles peering in the window. “Ey, Patti!!” I holler without thinking. “Patti Smith!!! Oi, Patti Smith!” I chase her up the street: “Excuse me, oi, you, Patti, are you Patti? Are you?”
Really cool. Yeah. She took off her glasses and she shakes my hand. I say: “It would be a great honour for you to join me and my friends for a drink.” So softly she replies: “Oh man, I can’t you know. I got to work back in my hotel room on my new album.” Her voice is so gentle it throws me. I’m star-struck. I search in my pockets to find a gift, I want to give her something. I find my black eye pencil. And I blurt: “Then, can I give you a moustache? Just like mine. You like?” She looks at my face. For a long time. And then she says: “Man, I was kind of born with one.”
There’s a deathly silence. I say: “Yes, oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah.” We shake hands and she is gone, lost in the crowds of St. Michel.

Can’t be bothered

Of course it’s difficult, that’s the whole point you cunt/can’t – be bothered. Tell me something I don’t know, is anything easier what I do? That is the whole point of hard and difficult things. What is the point of doing something easy, what is easy? Is it easy being a total can’t - be bothered? Is it easy being a bank robber, or a pilot, or a heroin addi, or a disabled lesbian, or a lion tamer, or a millionaire, or is it worth, easy, worth, is it, easy, is it easy – to be honest? Is it easy to be first? Anything worth doing is hard and worth doing. Really hard. Of hours and hours and hours until it aches. And every hour until you have it down, you’re doing the best you can, otherwise it’s pointless doing it you cunt. Even being a total cunt takes hard work and hours of dedication, you should know that you cunt. Every day you’re shown evidence against being a total can’t be bothered but every day you insist on being a total can’t be bothered, you’re lying there in your hot little bed, planning on what you can’t be bothered to do next, what you can’t be bothered to say next, if cunts like you had your own way no books, no songs, no paintings, no buildings would’ve ever been completed ‘cause it might be just a little bit of work...
“Hello, my name is Jimmy Henwhatsoever!”
“Hello, my name is Ludwig van Bebothered!”
May as well stay in bed, stay in bed, stay in bed. Picking your nose and wipe it off on the sheets, ‘cause it don’t matter, don’t matter, whatever, can’t be bothered, can’t be bothered, can’t be bothered...
“I had a dream!” Yeah, whatever. Can’t be bothered. Can’t be bothered. If it was left up to you, churches would be left half built and Armstrong would still be on the moon waiting for a ride home, people would die in the middle of can’t be bothered... brain surgery... can’t be bothered, can’t be bothered. Can’t be bothered going to galleries or reading books ‘cause it don’t matter, don’t matter, you want pizza and lots of telly, lots of telly and lots of pizza, lots of pizza and lots of telly, ‘cause you can’t be bothered, you can’t be bothered, you can’t be bothered, now... once upon a time, when you were a baby-can’t-be-bothered it was very hard and very difficult to learn to stand and then learn to walk and even a can’t be bothered like you managed that. Then it was very hard and very difficult to learn to speak cunt/can’t – and you speak “cunt/can’t” fluently like it must be your first language or something. Then it was very hard, very difficult to learn to read and to write and to build ideas, do you understand, theories, histories, to create things and that’s where can’ts/cunts like you stop up the rest of the world that evolves and involves in spite of itself. In spite of you, you can’t – be bothered. Outside it’s filthy with life, thinking and questioning perfection of gifts and talents and finding fantastic ways to communicate dreams and visions. It’s called looking through. It’s called being awake. It’s called being alive.