I wake up from dreams
I half remember.
All I know
is you were there.
Some childhood stuff,
some broken toys
served as background
to these songs of need.
Where do we go,
eyes closed,
if not to find some meaning
and blind images of hope?
I crawled upon a beach,
trailing bits of you and bits of me
and building up
this shadow of a soul,
waking up from dreams
I [...]
Tu es si belle, comme le soleil
qui marche dans les rues d’hiver,
qui touche la neige
et les arbres nus et dormants,
qui est là chaque matin,
chuchotant à moi:
Je suis içi… et je t’attendrai quand tu reviendras à la maison du printemps.
Wolf to your forest,
moss to your dreaming of trees -
I await,
all teeth and all feeling;
both wild and tamed -
and unreal
till you call me.
Call me: I’m there
to be nothing or breathing.
Call me: I’m yours,
to live or to drown.
All must be yours to decide now:
who lives and loves
or will die.
The hangman shakes the hand of the convicted,
measuring his weight.
The priest who has no stomach for these things
holds tightly to the shaking holy Bible in his hands.
Last night the murderer confessed his sins;
confessed to him.
There was not one he hadn’t heard
so many times before,
from the judge who summarized the trial
or the members of the jury,
delivering [...]
The tip of your cigarette
dances through the air:
quick-quick-slow & ready to go.
The rising smoke’s just hovering,
happy to hang around
for another short while.
Today was not a good day.
The buzzards were circling low.
I only came in here to drink
and drink,
give up on thought for now.
(The tip of your tongue
now tasting every sentence
you will not pass on the [...]
Â
Storm the night and break the Gates of Heaven.
This the whisper in the trees
that turn their leaves to the rumours of spring.
Now done with death
and done with grieving,
they drive their roots into the waiting soil.
Hold her, hold her tight.
This the clamour of the cranes,
returning from the sun,
the shores of Lake Manyara.
Hold her to the light [...]
(For C: Each day you do become more beautiful to me)
What hand
What tremors raised these mountains,
filled these seas?
What forces tore my clay apart;
remade it into something new -
something strange,
and raw, and bleeding?
The hand that made you
made my bed
from broken stars
and fractured light.
The nails of the tree scrape the window at night.
The clouds are keeping very still
and the face of the moon
will soon fill out
with promises of angry blood.
Cats fight in the dark
over souls that dared not seek new territories.
Like mice they flee and are disassembled.
In bedrooms blankets are the key
to a safe passage through the dark:
tucked [...]
Enola Gay,
deliver us from madness.
Cleansing fire from Heaven,
take our Sodom hearts
and our Gomorra tongues -
and make us pay.
For we have sinned;
oh, how we’ve sinned
against our jealous Lord.
Tear up the Covenant:
we are not worthy of the rainbow
and Your light.
Send us Your son,
Your only child:
Enola Gay,
deliver us Your Little Boy.
Engulf us in Your flames,
for we have sinned.
No suffering is unimportant.
There is no greater good;
no units more important
than the individual soul.
Not need.
Need is a myth invoked to tell us
there are ends to meet,
that disregard the others.
Not love (not necessarily.)
What most of us call love
is too self-centred to be trusted
and too vain.
It can’t be fear.
It can’t be hope, whispering
its stories in the night
but [...]
In slow, slow motion the stick comes down:
a man lies bleeding in the street.
Soon the blood will stop its desperate running.
It’s not a sight or sound uncommon to the city.
Cars go by and sirens call for witnesses,
who need not carry red-striped canes
to tell the cops they didn’t see a thing.
No angels coming down to fetch [...]
1
The lone bird flies too high
to cast a shadow on the land.
The desert down below lies still,
lies simmering.
A stone clad in a haze of white and heat
leans into a wind that doesn’t show.
2
The branches of the tree hang low
and almost touch the river.
A stone breaks through
the surface of the stream.
Diamond-fractured, reaching
for the evening light, it [...]
That evening,
the shadow of the olive tree
came down from the hill,
where bits of cork
and crumbs of bread
were carried away by ants.
Our revenant embraces,
knotted and dry as wood,
flickered in the ashes of some fire.
Places to go (a chorus whisper)
places to go -
in haste and time.
That evening,
the olive branch was swaying in the wind.
Ants ate the carcasses [...]
Just in this moment - not looking at you
I can see the things that I would love to do:
to kiss a naked shoulder,
touch and tremble - trembling lips:
my lips would never be
at home with yours.
Forever strangers,
they would meet
in moist, exotic places.
So easy, again,
to get carried away -
so Goddamn easy.
Not looking at you
I can see everything [...]
Ink becomes crude oil;
my thoughts like seagulls,
coated in this thick black waste.
What makes it
so damned hard
to say I love you?
Fuck the seagull and the sea,
the tanker split and bowing
like a dream come true.
(Now would be the perfect time
to quote a bit - give rein: well-educated
and performing to the needs of poetry.)
Fuck that; I love you [...]
It is the night, the silent shroud that calls
upon these images of soldiers,
locked in trenches,
waiting for the order to arrive,
tomorrow or tomorrow:
to rise and leave the safety
of the dull and horrid clay,
the company of the newly dead,
and join the screaming and the silent;
those who were hung on the barbed wire
or lie half-drowned, half-frozen
in the [...]
The pubs are mostly closed by now,
the Prinsengracht all but deserted;
bicycles well locked or casually disposed of.
Stolen this last night, tomorrow the police will take them,
sell them off next month:
recycling’s just another game.
A February rain,
so cold it feels like fireflies stinging:
every breath and every word a comic strip balloon,
torn apart by harpies’ wings;
the cobble-stones, softly [...]
Torn from the dark
and delivered to reason,
the child, dressed in blood,
now is turned to the light
and explodes into tears,
and it howls.
Torn from the dark,
from the thorns of the stars,
and the top of this hill
I can suddenly see
this vision of silk and soft flesh,
made of longing.
Torn from the dark
and delivered to you,
all my senses explode.
I am [...]
A burning screen of summer sky:
the evening set alight
and touched with disappearing.
The island clouds, blue-veined
with purple hues,
as irreplaceable as porcelain -
a breath of marble floating,
so at home
against the rising shadows
of a dying day.
The stubborn threads of fading light
now move the dust that’s grown
on windows that grew tired
of the distances that must remain
between their liquid frame [...]
The early light,
like milk-fed ice,
slowly fills the room,
where all my dreams still smell of you.
My first smile and my hungry eyes
now look for some bright shadow
that the night has left behind:
something - some reminder of your flesh.
The winter morning curls itself
around my bed and like some sleepy cat,
with white fur sparkling and
with cold, cruel, sapphire [...]