sunnuntai 31. joulukuuta 2017

A SONG TO THE MOCHE

In gold the Lords of Sipan slept,
in silver the Lord of Ucupe.

The years made hills of their pyramids,
the years brought down their towns.

In gold the Lords of Sipan slept,
in silver the Lord of Ucupe.

Empires rose and fell,
and from afar came death and ruin.

In gold the Lords of Sipan slept,
in silver the Lord of Ucupe.

But in death and decay lay those
who sacrifice bound to the dreaming Lords.

31.12.2017-25.02.2022
THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR

A bit of blue sky
thrown over the afternoon,
no Sun
(naturally, that would be too much);
a hasty end
to a year
that took so much -
took a an axe and chopped off
a chunk of my life with you.
Gone, so much and now
the blue behind
tattered clouds
a brief 'Happy End'
to a year
when my own death began.

31.12.2017

torstai 28. joulukuuta 2017

FATHER, TALKING TO YOU

The video is nine months old; you had been dead
for twelve days when it was loaded up. Thunder
in the background, rain falling
as the archaeologist explains
the rainwater collection system, the stucco
panels at El Mirador, abandoned
for two millennia. The thunder,
the rain has no effect on him. He is dead
as I read from the comments,
dead and with the kings and the artisans
and the workers who build the pyramid.
Dead, like you, dead these eleven months.
The thunder and the rain,
the snow and the gray ashen sky
don't trouble the dead. They live
in the past, walk the causeways in the
shadows of the red pyramids.

28.12.2017

keskiviikko 27. joulukuuta 2017

THE WINTER DAY IS OVER

The brief winter day is over,
taken over by the mystery
we call the past;
darkness has come,
a flood over the land -
we lie in the ocean depths,
we sleep in the trenches
of the night.

27.12.2017

tiistai 26. joulukuuta 2017

so quiet
day
not
seen a single
person
an empty
landscape
only
the graveyards
full
only
the graveyards

26.12.2017

THE PRESS

Nabi Saleh

whiny whiny whine
poor israeli occupation soldier
gets slapped
so terrible evil
whiny whiny whine

never mention
the 14-year-old
shot in head
moments earlier

just
whine whine whine
and praise
Guatemala and Honduras

26.12.2017
journalism is
prostitution
nine times
out of ten

one time
out of ten
the journalist
gets lectured
fired
or shot
depending
on the country

26.12.2017
THE FOURTH ESTATE

all the media
wants to give
to us
is propaganda

all the media
demands from
us
is to avoid
the 'wrong'
propaganda

journalism
as a megaphone
for the pimps
of journalists

- was it ever
more than
this?

26.12.2017
the dog is farting
beside me
and all
is good

26.12.2017
god
better not
exist
because I
will never
forgive
it
if it
does

26.12.2017

A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER

the youngest dog
is barking
at the neighbour's
snowman
and clearly
he's a very
crooked
one
almost falling
over

26.12.2017
the saudis
have been bombing
yemen again
great reformation
needs to be
built
with many
bombs

26.12.2017
what is there
to fear
when all
fears
have
come true?
a lot
I
have
found out...

26.12.2017

sunnuntai 24. joulukuuta 2017

CHRISTMAS EVE

For now, everything is okay.
On this horrible year,
that is peace of mind to build
a little bit of hope on.

24.12.2017

perjantai 22. joulukuuta 2017

AMBROSE BIERCE(1842-1914?)

Perhaps
you never went to Mexico,
perhaps you never faced
that firing squad;

perhaps
you went through the old
Civil War battlefields,
perhaps you went through death
same as the day's;

perhaps,
perhaps you just
disappeared, unknown
even to yourself -

perhaps the dusk,
perhaps the dawn mist
embraced you

faint light fading, rising -
faint light,
perhaps.

21.-22.12.2017 - 25.02.2022


#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

keskiviikko 20. joulukuuta 2017

EACH DAY

Each day this desperate struggle
to reach the surface, to breach
that film between the deep and the air,
to fill the mind with a feel of life.

Each day this desperate struggle
to stay afloat, not to
sunk back beneath the surface,
to be bereft of life and air.

20.12.2017
THE GHOST OF THE PAST

To Brian Aldiss(1925-2017)

He is here;
I hear his
rasping breath,
how he struggles
to fill his punctured lungs.

I turn in my chair,
and amidst all that is unclear to my
old eyes
he stands there
in his bloodied, dirty uniform
with bloody bubbles of air on his lips.

His gaze
is the same as it was
on that day in 1944.

It asks
'Why?',
it pleads
'Help me.'

Like then
I turn around
and like I put away my
rifle with its bayonet
on that day in Burma
I put away my
pen and wait,

wait for the rasping breath
to end,
for the last gasp -

for the hand
that one day
shall touch my shoulder
and the voice
that will say
in language all understand:
'Come.'

tiistai 19. joulukuuta 2017

23:54

The world sunk in darkness,
the world sunk in snow.

The house trembles
as the heavy trucks
plow the night
with fallen giants
on their backs.

A lamp flickers, dies.

The world sunk in snow,
the work sunk in darkness.

19.12.2017

maanantai 18. joulukuuta 2017

SNOWFALL

Snow falls slowly,
it feels like it has snowed
for months. On one
day in the last month
a patch of blue sky,
a hint of the Sun behind clouds.
One day, and this
snow falling
through me.

18.12.2017
TO MY FATHER, LOST FOR 324 DAYS

Yesterday you would have been 70.
Today it's 138 years from the birth of your grandmother
you never saw; the maternal one -
you didn't see your paternal one either,
neither your paternal grandfather.
Your grandson will never see you,
your grandson 28 days old
on whose face I see you.
We have him, we have
your grand-daughter who asked,
when told of your death,
why couldn't your heart be replaced?
Why couldn't you be brought back,
made good and given back to us.
I ask the same
and I ask myself
why didn't I listen to what you said that night,
why did I sent to your bed
and to your death
with a magnesium pill and a glass of water
when I always, always
looked your symptoms online otherwise.
One day I have to tell your
grand-daughter and grandson of that night.

18.12.2017

sunnuntai 17. joulukuuta 2017

TO MY FATHER ON WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY

Snow on ground,
snow in heart,
snow on your grave.

We are all frozen.

17.12.2017

torstai 14. joulukuuta 2017

A POEM BY FRANZ WERFEL(1890-1945)

I am reading a declaration written by a now dead man
how he is alive; capturing a gone day
he shouts that he is alive, that he lives
for yet another day; words
on the screen of a computer, long
distanced from the moment he scribbled
down the words transported by time. A
dead man, a mind
gone like the light of that day. Just
the desperation remains
and reminds.

14.12.2017
THE PAST IS

The past is
still an open wound, bleeding
through this night
running through this night
as a stream
that connects the days and weeks
and months and years and decades
back to the spring gaping
sprouting the blood black
in the night's embrace
down
here to this night
that is always.

14.12.2017

keskiviikko 13. joulukuuta 2017

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

For the first thirty minutes of my walk
through the dark December afternoon
I don't see a single person; only
when I step into the apothecary
do I enter the world of human beings
again. Such desolation; I
remember how it was,
when I was young -
and now, empty streets
and black windows, and I
still here, in this
quiet loneliness of a county.

13.12.2017
MESOWEB

Laying on my back in the small room
that I should be using as a wardrobe closet
I read about the different strategies of Piedras Negras
and Yaxchilan; how the latter build defenses
on its borders, and its enemy up-river did not.
All the 'least cost' routes open, Piedras Negras
- the vanquisher of Tonina - fell
to Yaxchilan and it's
last king; a Pyrrhic victory which
bought - what? Twenty years perhaps, thirty?
I don't recall; when did Yaxchilan fall? 830? 840?
Almost a life-time then, thirty years.
Almost a life-time, now. Six died of cold
in Chiapas; indigenous - of course. (This
I read from retweet by Ubique.) And
I, in my wardrobe, my back on
blue jeans bag full of
old magazines of geography and astronomy,
my feet as cold as the snow outside,
blood, essence of soul
in Mesoamerica, so slowly flowing
- and how fast waters at the rapids of Usumacinta,
the whirlpools at Piedras Negras.

13.12.2017

sunnuntai 10. joulukuuta 2017

The Phoenix from the fire rising
leaves behind the ashes
of its past lives;
a rebirth in light, wings
beating, rising up to the stars.

10.12.2017
METAMORPHOSES

The water sloshing at
our feet yesterday
is today's ice we walk on carefully
with the same sorrows
with the same pain
with the same absences
never transformed

10.12.2017

perjantai 8. joulukuuta 2017

DECEMBER IN BLACK INK

It's hard to breath
when you are sunk
in this winter ink
thrown over the days.

No surface to reach,
just more depths to sink,
down, down through 
these wretched holes

that pretend to be days,
and weeks and months
- building blocks of existence
all-nonexistence, zilch.

08.12.2017
DECEMBER AFTERNOON

It's already dark.
Let it be.
It can never be as dark outside,
under the clouds hidden in the black
than inside
the skin, flesh and bone
where the 'I' hides in.
No pale morning
of ash-gray clouds
will ever break it.

08.12.2017
DEATH

What happened to him?
The same that happens to everyone.
One day he was there.
Living, breathing, talking.
A weft in the canvas of the world.
A current in the stream of life.
The next day he was gone.
Erased.
There was no absence.
No unravelling of the canvas.
The stream ran like it had.

08.12.2017

maanantai 4. joulukuuta 2017

AEGRIMONIA

Our grief
broods us
away

04.12.2017
THE NEW ATHEISTS

No atheists these,
but Christian Zionists
waiting
their death-bed conversion.

Their little world
shaken by two falling towers
they put their faith
in hate and Apartheid.

04.12.2017
D. H. LAWRENCE(1885-1930) VIII

...falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face 

D. H. Lawrence: Autumn rain

What kind of man images
raindrops
falling on his face
as semen?

The kind of man
rolling in the hay
with the 'wrong'
gender.

(Longing to
some heavenly realm
beyond this bowl
of blood.)

04.12.2017
THE JOB OF ALL ART

Sometimes the job of all art,
poetry included,
should be to
grab the people, 
the so-called society,
by the throat
and showing
them their deeds,
shout:
"Why you stupid fuck?
Why!"

04.12.2017
SNOW GLOBE

A crisp morning; snow
has fallen and ceased. Sky
the same never-broken cloudscape;
beyond, the long-rumoured
celestial realm of quintessence,
of perfection in blue. Here below
all is change, all is decay,
a river roaring from melting
snow and rain, coming, going
in this clockwork mechanism
we inhabit with dread and grief.

04.12.2017
Tri(e)ste

It has
come to a stop
this life
at the edge
of yet another
oceanic trench
of grief
waiting
for the long
dive to
the bottom
to begin

one time
our cracked
bathysphere
will
break
under the
pressure
of a life
lived
through
deaths too
many

a
moment
of existence
then
nothing
nothing
all our
sorrows
& pain

04.12.2017
D. H. LAWRENCE(1885-1930) VII

To some people
the Great War
was just
sun and hay
in Cornwall.

04.12.2017

sunnuntai 3. joulukuuta 2017

A VISIT TO PARADISE FROM PURGATORY

So hard not to cry
at my old home
when a year ago
everything was fine

and now I am
just visiting
an empty house
where you died

and the dog
can't run well
anymore and hides
not wanting to leave

03.12.2017
READING LONGFELLOW'S POEM CHAUCER

You would never know
based on this
hagiography
that our
man
Geoffrey Chaucer
was a rapist.
His
victim's
name was
Cecily Chaumpagne.

03.12.2017

lauantai 2. joulukuuta 2017

they walk towards the sea; there is no need for words

and on the beach they stand in silence
watching the gray waves the sea hurdles forth
on the gray rocks and the brown sand
the snowflakes descending entering the water
like the landscape in that moment their minds
forever connected to what had gone before
and the separate paths leading to the forlorn
town brooding in solitude on this winter day
dividing their lives and what was one

02.12.2017

perjantai 1. joulukuuta 2017

IT SHOULD BE SINKING TO THE GROUND

Don't you think that the statue of
Philip Larkin at the railway
station in Hull looks a bit
too tall, too lean? Suspended
in the last moment before
it would leap into the air? A bit
too fleet-footed for a man
whose spirit descended, burrowed -
not soaring like a gull over
the ashen waves of the North Sea
and the cranes lamenting in the
harbour, but going deep
down in the soil like a mole,
throwing up to the surface its
discarded discoveries...

01.11.2017

FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

Everything in life that
comes in its wake will be a
disappointment, everything
afterwards will be an
attempt to escape the
knowledge we learned:
That we are mortal and
we must die.

01.12.2017
FIRST DAY OF DECEMBER

At ten in the morning, surfacing
from dreamless sleep to electric light
on the sofa in casual despair, I
go to make coffee and look out
of the kitchen window, at the white
snow and the black trees
and the dim red bricks and the gray clouds
and the mud on the ground
where snow finds its bleak apotheosis. I
turn on the radio, and
they are singing about Christmas
and advertising, offering that redemption
through gift giving without a cross
- such a strange revulsion it evokes,
this enforced cheerful happiness
in the voices repeating 'It is Christmas' -
while the landscape
etches itself to my mind with
all the devotion of an ear-worm
converted to sight.

01.12.2017
Death will erase
all our mistakes
with their victims.

01.12.2017

torstai 30. marraskuuta 2017

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER'S(1525-1569) HUNTERS IN THE SNOW(1565)

They seem already tired, those hunters
in the snow, going downhill with
their dogs, the vast mountains looming
in the distance, the jagged future -
and who or what are we; a raven
looking down from a bough?

30.11.2017

tiistai 28. marraskuuta 2017

THE SEA THAT IS, THE SEAS THAT SHALL COME

The land falls to the sea, ragged and gray,
and the sea in white and gray rage rises
endlessly to tear down the cliffs. It
has time, the sea,
yet the Sun shall rise over barren and dry
Earth, where ragged cliffs, shimmering
in heat, will fall down
to bottoms of oceans yet unborn
where wind raises sand in endless rage
against the eroding rock.

28.11.2017
MILD RAIN ON TUESDAY MORNING

A morning of faded colours,
a sky of unbroken grey clouds,
water and mud and melting snows;
a late November for our broken times.

World isn't ending in these sorrows
that so crudely carve our minds
with memories and pain as dual knives;
no, the world ended - these are the last rites.

28.11.2017
OF A CERTAIN TYPE OF PHILOSOPHER

A philosopher who claims the separation of
the spirit and the body,
and the supremacy of the mind over matter,
is like an unhappy child, who
watching his parents argue late at night,
comes up with a fantasy to comfort himself
that he is of not this family, that
he is adopted,
and that one day his true,
beautiful and harmonious family
will arrive to take him
to its bosom forever.

28.11.2017