Chenard Walcker & Roy Chicky Arad - Street

Words: Roy "Chicky" Arad / chicky.org
Music: Chenard Walcker / chenardwalcker.com
Label: Free Sample Zone / freesamplezone.org

The Street (Beirut Haifa 2006)

The consensus – its smell like a baby's corpse
The beautiful town has to be crushed and lost
Wipe down lovely girls with curls of oil
I'm a traitor, says "24 hours"* editor
A fifth column – suggests NRG** wet predator

Your deterrence is a sushi bar flaming like hell
Children staining autographs on a fresh copper shell
The second biggest bank and a trampled journal
Produce a window-car sticker "victory will be ours!"
In Haifa & Beirut at a golden dawn
a pair of balding infrastructure workers were blown

Did they receive compensations? Have tenure?
Maybe they were just affiliated from HR
Had a nose and two testicles, each
On sunny holidays, loved the beach
Both the deceased from Haifa and his mate from Beirut
Used to fish with a punctured bottle
They baited bread, the fish jumped around
In the saucepan it felt happy and sound
In a new pool that I bought for my roof,
From a haggler in the alley of Metalon
Floating among yellow rubber duckies
I feel just like Arik Sharon
"I am a liberal girl", Dana Kobalio mumbles,
"But they understand only strength and battles".
In the stupid sheets of my defeated bed
We turn around like two handles

"Soldier, there comes a time when
The nation needs sacrifice and tears",
The leader claims, examining the poll in fear
The tears – your mom's too. They will sacrifice you.
Go on, little lad, give Yatspan*** your thanks.

August 2006. The poem was translated from Hebrew by Adva Levin.

* A daily section in an Israeli newspaper
** An Israeli news website
*** Eli Yatspan - A well known Israeli TV host

The Owl

From the yellow sand,
to slaughter the falcons,
to blanch the adder’s visage,
the rock owl.
I’ve seen it all,
I haven’t seen anything yet--
the rock owl.

On every side,
an ad for R.C Cola.--
‘round his earlobes
Israeli Rap from the frenzy system,

--the rock owl.

Will strike and flee,
will crush and ascend,
the owl
will blaze in the desert wind,
brazed of a grainy mound of darkness,
the owl,

The first Israeli owl,
rattles his wings deep in the pit,
and upon him a man in a gay American shirt.
Right here!
Right here!

(ten years previously)
A blue sky like a tee shirt.
It’s the meanwhile of the desert.
On this spot will be raised the Negev Mall,
With a ransack of bones.
his rage is crystal and
his arrows metal
ringing to the

Hever owl born of Het.
And Yossi the assistant surveyor,
And the Beer Sheva city coalition.
And I and little Nir!
I and the owl!
I and the owl!

Erez Surveyors Inc!
Erez Surveyors Inc!

Wielding the sword
his arm runneled with wounds,
the owl
the son of Anath
Earth’s son, son of the crescent.
the owl.

Beer Sheva of the early Nineties,
and the former desert,
slowly spreading his wings,
bronzed and mortared,
and quietly revealing his sword.
What sense for me now
owl and love?

And then the mall,
three stories, octagonal with fluted skin, and a floor of restaurants
yellowed with dust,
standing five and a hundred cubits
clad in chill marble.

And the folks with their swords,
next to picantic-china
across from I.M.P.
The Fox-Man store is next to a pile of orange clothing,
and the Fox-Man salesgirl,
a pretty gumchewer aged one score less two
her face pitted, chewed, blue-green, gleaming with
fire,
her heart chewed
with lust and passion.
(On her chest a freckled shirt that will never by stylish, whatever may come
to pass)
And in the volume of the mall
shouts the owl with zeal
with a torch-cry
I am immortal
I am King Kong of the desert,
I am Godzilla of the Negev
The Golem of the Negev Mall.

His grandfather?
Baal.
His grandmother?
A Canadian real estate developer of Jewish origin,
massing and buying,
racing with their dumb shopping bags
down the neon corridors,
in the formike passage.
And the local paper’s photog flashes,
And then the guard, brave and proud
(He already fought in Afghanistan, a Lau missile powdered his
nose),
he draws his gun,
Looks at the Fox-Man Girl, the foxie human’s girl.
And the owl, there’s the cool and quiet flint,
weary, his eyes today are dry,
the beat of his wings is aureate,
his feathers are pure creolite,
he smiles.

Raise the fire and consume the mall and its daughters,
conflagrate the merchandise of Fox-Man,
the wild bull of Burger Ranch.

I’ve seen it all,
I haven’t seen anything yet—
the rock owl.

Who will re-inter the rock owl, the fire owl?
What transgression made I on this dread world?

Mall nation by the owl accursed.
A human being by the owl accursed.
An owl by his smile accursed.

Special for Michal Helfman’s exhibition at Venice Art Biannale 2003.
The poem was translated from Hebrew by Pesach Slabosky.