I am bride and veil, the house that waits on the hill. I am the moments waiting between the silence and the roar of passing trains. I am the the rain falling down on the lake, the space between shadow and swan. I am waiting to be called and to be free and to be [...]
Writing words of milk and honey on your skin, my fingers, feather light and anvil strong, raising nipples and goose flesh mountains, indelible words of love and want all over you and into your skin: mine to touch and to behold, yours to offer or withdraw. Lower and lower the feather pen goes; milk and [...]
The minarets turn from the winter clouds, so full of threat and snow. And now they almost bow, reach down to all that walk below. They sway in rising (falling) vowels: this Friday chant that tells all true believers, that God is great and God is waiting to receive their prayers and their submission and [...]
And I await, like legends half asleep, half real, inside the flesh of dreams. As on the ocean floor a dark, cold, silent death rules all, till fires from earth’s magma core rise and life bursts through, so I await some moment marked by you; your healing warmth and silent touch now bringing life to [...]
Winter’s come and done a number on this town. Trams like syrup trail across the tundra streets. The trees, like frozen spider webs, now dream of forest fires. All is lack of moment, lack of sound. The ice-spread sky and frozen clouds are still; no birds   (not even snow) now flying   (falling). All is cold [...]
I’ve seen beautiful armour, surviving man by some seven centuries. We don’t give up easily, do we? We made Gods, now mostly forgotten, and altars too scarred for our tastes but we keep constructing these star ships Pandora, forever blowing up in our face. We have opinion polls and the will of the people, telling [...]
Some things you can’t describe: the pain that comes with breathing, knowing every minute like a cancer grows; thought a cold war enemy, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. Some things you can’t describe: the grace of being skin, open to all hurt but never hiding; knowing truth can be the end of you [...]
Take a painter’s brush – a genuine painter and a generous brush. Pull out every hair but one. That is what I do: small strokes, small strokes on paper. Even Rembrandt would have problems with a one-hair brush and I’m not him. Small strokes ripple through my brain: confusing thoughts and music, laughter and the [...]
It is an old building, held up and half-hidden by scaffolding. I’ve never been able to find it by day. It seems to rise up with the night, when Vinohrady shakes off the rest of Prague. The parks become forests; the soft slope streets turn into mountain paths. Then every detour leads to this house. [...]
The darkened pane becomes a canvas, where the rain now whips the night into a shape of mourning. The outside world is now a rumour and a darkness, where no-shape sculptures slowly walk the silent streets. I see my face, inside this drowning glass, has lost its contours and its stories. All of me dissolves [...]
Will I read these lines in some stranger’s years? Will I read these lines in time? Only parents know the baby, the playing child and ugly youth, the promise of humanity. We do not know ourselves. I don’t recall the baby or the playing child, the promises in me. Will I read these lines in [...]
I am that once upon a footnote and foot soldier in every fairytale that saw you through. I am that one footservant, who would wait a hundred years for your waking up – just to see you off.
I think that I was twelve years old; I know that it was summer. Dead wasps lay curled and dry against the window-panes and thick, black flies were stuck against the slowly turning fly-killing paper. It was hot and humid. We stayed at my grandfather’s cottage. I liked it up there – and yet, I [...]
I’m afraid and you’re afraid. We dance; We count our steps. Quick, quick, slow; we are in code. He loves me & she loves me not, not, not. Angel fur flying
In this dream I have become the fingers that pluck the last words from the dying soldiers’ lips. Above me, around me are the hills of yellow and rust-brown gas, the short white flares of explosions and the sounds that make craters in the night. Within me the fingers, the dead lips, the collection of [...]
(for Stephen King) They tore down the house. It only took a couple of hours of destruction. Children stood and watched; buses didn’t even slow down. An old man came to a trembling halt, took out his wallet and looked inside; studied it like some holy writ, like a favourite meal cooked by a long [...]
Take it to the river: let it ride a wicker Moses, past the wildflowers and the tail-ends of the holy crocodiles. (And take me to your temple, through the curtain, deep inside.) Take it to the mountain: let it climb like hoof and thorn, past some stranded Saviour. Let the sermon fit the crime. (And [...]
I cast these songs like stars: distant and small pinpoints of fire show me the way back home.