Redactie | 29 Februari 2004My Personal Body Computer (english)
"I USE MY PERSONAL BODY COMPUTER..."
I use my personal body computer
to play 'adventure games'
My brain
confronting me with choices nigh impossible
from a massive memory of video signals
I must choose
Producing this unwelcome pressure
wrinkling between my brows
The choice is between a girl
in a sweater of virgin wool
or a bench somewhere in the Ardennes
The girl looks like some kind of ad
Picking up a flower
she shows it to the viewer and waves
Blocks of standard housing loom
up slowly in the background
A parkside neighborhood in Amsterdam-Zuid
Little squares and courtyards
Green gardens locked behind fences
Signs that say no trespassing, keep out
A street with sign-boards
Badly faded sunshades
along the Willemsparkweg
A little wooden fence
of weathered jigsawed swans
in the Vondelpark
French boys in puffy
blow-up coats, mop haircuts shaved up
high behind walk by
This leads nowhere
Try another
Through a cellar scuttle full of blackened spuds
a guy is looking up
The people bend
and order net bags full
Taking their food from the earth
A shopping line of gray old women's coats A
big fan turning above the heads
The women glance up in surprise
Nod to each other
discuss the things they see
The things they say cannot be understood
Back in the back
gapes the tumbledown storeroom
where you can bring in the bottles yourself
In among the cases
of moldy tallboys they say
someone once saw a gruesome rotting rat
A woman with a white apron and brown hair
is cutting lunchmeat on the counter
The smell of milk and soap
white whipped-up foam
Between the stacked displays of cleansers
light fades on paving stones
Frozen bread sorts behind bars
block the way out
I return
choose the bench in the Ardennes
A pebble pinging in a little pool
under clear water back and forth
Two plump gentlemen
sit bare-chested fishing
in a shady woodland river
Their car parked several bushes down
ditched behind all their natural beauty
One of them gets a bite
The pole arches humming
like a bow across the bubbling stream
The man leans back to counter weight
and pulls up
A halfway rotten bath brush
a few hairs still clinging to it
the bristles full of worms and weeds
He unhooks the thing
and brings it to the car
The man looks so proud
the way a man looks
walking along with a
big fish he just caught himself
Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett
Dutch original: Met Mijn PLC
From: Hup de Zee (Pow the Sea)
In de Knipscheer Publishers 1986
ISBN 90 6265 238 7
Reissued as: Stad Sta Stil (City Stand Still)
Globe Pockets 1993
In de Knipscheer Publishers
ISBN 90 6265 718 4
This poetry by Diana Ozon was the first Dutch poetry that was presented on a world wide performance with live video-link-chain between the Technology Museum in Delft, the Dutch Design Institute in Amsterdam, SCAN in Groningen, The Netherlands, Susan Kozel in London, Great Britain and the McLuhan Institute in Toronto, Canada. On October 5, 1995 for The World Series on Culture and Technology.