La Tordue - Lola

Year: 1998

During the free-for-all²
I've placed your hand in my paw
And gripped so hard
Against my palm your heart beats
The wind of madness
Slowly towards the river
Pushes me into its bed
The folds of the sheet are the sea
Where from waves to foam
My vague heart fills itself with her
When the yards at the topmast
Beat the sky with their wings
- And while rounding Good-Hope
It's again
It's Lola from Valencia
It's her body
Which is dancing in my head

In this loneliness
Populated with so many stars
The heart obsolete
And the hands on the canvas
This song is coming back to me
From the country I come from
It's a nameless country
It's your heart on mine
This song it's Lola
Who sang it to me one evening
In the hollow of that ear here
Which does not recover since
It's again
It's Lola from Valencia
It's her body
Which is dancing in my head

It's crazy how poetry
Can take us for a ride
Towards incredible port of alls
Where the ink of the words throws us
The flowers of evil a page
Having invited me to the journey
It's your perfumes I'm picking up
Sailor on the sly in your blouse
And I pinch myself to know
When I wake up by your side
If that pink and black jewel
Was just a dream washed ashore
But it's your turn to wake up
My lady of heart my beauty
Did you sleep well, my love?
Oh you my Lola for real.

² little play on words with "grabbing/fist fighting event/chaos" in french

La Tordue - War

Original Title: "La guerre"
Year: 1998

Rot war machines!
Tons and tons of iron
Stored ready to roar
Ready to redden
the earth

Fellows against idiots
Generates a rhyme ending in 's'
Yet Prévert had told it to us
"What bullshit
War!"

Nuclear slyness
Hip pocket submarine
Napalm candies chemical taste
Outfit of panic-sapper
Imagination can't be stopped
In order to blow our own head off.
A hundred time what's necessary to get some
What's necessary to shoot the sun down
What's necessary to turn off
The sky

I am the stronger nananère
What a hiding we gave you
Tons and tons of iron
In the enemy's flesh

But shake my hand dear colleague
You weren't bad yourself
This time it's the very last one
Before next one of course
The big wigs go away while signing
First-rate treaties
After having bled white
Share land and money
Draw phoney
borders

Secrets of our pitiful states
Money is king and marches
Tambourine, underling* and moneyboxes
1,2,1,2,1,2 and 3
On 4 we fire
Into the crowd

Rot war machines
In the warehouses of memory
That's enough let's stop crossing swords
No more slaughter, nor more slaughterhouse
Now we are going to lower the blinds
Forget about stupidity
There are no more amateurs for that sport
Noone under the banners
Why not have the pretty utopy
Make a professional assessement
A successful redeployment
Beat it, go over the wall
Enlist in the party
Which makes war to war Get your nose out of the khaki
There are tons of things to do
With your equipment and your engineering
In order to do earth up
Put your awful toys away
Share the peace pipe
And leave us in peace.

*Pun made which would also mean under-fife

La Tordue - Moon

Original Title: "Lune"
Year: 1998

You have the age of your craters
Oh old moon
Midwife² of the universe
If there is one
You rule over the flow of the seas
And over Neptune
What are you hiding in your behinds?
Some fortune?
Be wary of those who planted
Into your dunes
Their warlike banners
Brothel with feathers
The vanity of worms
Inopportune
Of those big beer drinking feet
Without any embarrassment in the slightest

Let the one who said
Idiot like the moon
Go to hell.
And if to each one his own
It's you I prefer
I like at night and without costume
Of sea bathing
To swim in your reflections of foam
In your light
As if I was flying at
a loved one
Made of an enchantment of lagoons
of winter circuses

Burning with hopes to see your mists
That are thirst-quenching
The nectar of the wine we inhale
When comes brumaire
My soul stroll in there as a
Deleterious funambulist
That the song free like the air of an
Ephemeral rose
In curls of incense which smoke
in the skies
To you, muses among all, Oh moon
Let it be offered to you

Let the one who said
Idiot like the moon
Go to hell.
And if to each one his own
It's you I prefer

² in french midwife is the said "Wise-woman"