A Stranger At Ithaca

And so, that stranger who claimed to be

the long-lost old king Ulysses

 killed all the other strangers drawn

as suitors to the queen Penelope's court

and made a claim on the queen and the kingdom;

and the king's son accepted, for

he was no match to the stranger in arms,

and the queen, fearing for her son,

and left with only one suitor,

accepted and declared to all that

this was her husband and their king, regained.

But not one of the men who left

with the king to Troy came back with

this stranger, and afterwards

he often told odd tales of how these men

allegedly pershed in hands

 of monsters out of tales told to children;

and the people felt he mocked them

and their acceptance of him as their lost king.

He told how their fathers had been turned into pigs

and anger teared their insides.

But they did nothing, these

weak men of Ithaca, and from the eyes of

their queen Penelope

they thought they recognized the same

sense of humiliation.

30.07.-31.07.2017

Of Libertarian Suicide

Inspired by the final act of H. Beam Piper(1904-1964)

There is no greater act showing your individuality and love

of liberty from all constraints

than killing yourself; to die in the quest for freedom

is not only optional but a mandatory

to one wanting to escape the rigidity of a state

where the rights of the individual

to act as he chooses have limits put on them.

To him there is only death.

Let us send him on his way

and celebrate.

30.07.2017

The Last Years of Du Fu(712-770)

Wandering, wandering among the mountains and rivers,

in the torn world bleeding

the body cast away from home, the mind soaring, soaring

above the darkening world

on movements of brush on paper.

Adrift, adrift in the south with broken roots,

the brush a heart-beat inscribing breathing,

inhaling, exhaling; then, 

sailing, sailing on the Dongting lake. sight

dissolving, dissolving in the night.

29.07.2017

The Videos on The Screen, The Yard at Evening

Something about Cavafy, and Voyager in the clean room

in the year of my birth; the Grand Tour,

and an Alexandria lost, as Alexandria is always lost,

the light is fading, my coffee in the paper cup

grows cold, I hear the Greek words

I can't decipher, being no Ventris fated

for that most Greek of fates, struck

down at moment of triumph, the gods

true to their form, and in the interstellar space,

cameras frozen, the travellers you often asked

me about, my father, my father... You,

who flickering sit on the porch, so

thoughtful, on this summer evening six

months after your death, in the fading

light, fading... A signal through

time and space, flickering...

26.07.2017

A Lively Form Of Death

Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; O life, no life, but lively form of death...

Thomas Kyd(1558-1594): The Spanish Tragedy(1592)

Through the clouds like milk,

light piercing to faded eyes

and time stands, a stage set

for the unscripted to take

place, a sudden change -

a voice to break the silence

of days, a bird in black costume

falling to the ground, the

pale orange cat

with feathers emerging,

the curtain white torn

open with the blue sliver

of a heavenly blade, herald

to set the play moving. Let

it end here, this Kyd's

Hamlet of a life lost.

26.07.2017

Of God And Mortals

First take:

Give god
what is yours
and take from him
what is his.

Second take:

Take from god
what is his
and give to him
what is yours.

Coda:

Put the Supreme Being
on those rickety wagons
let him ride it
to the guillotine's steel blade.

24.07.2017

Beyond The Void

And then, what shall you do, oh my

stricken friend, when even that light

has gone out, when there is no hope

left to cling onto, when your god has

abandoned you on the cross?

What you will do, when you are laying on

the cold stone, and the creation recedes,

the doors of the universe close and

you, you oh my friend, are facing

the annihilation beyond the void itself?

You die, you die like one hundred billion

human beings before you, you die like I

will do, like we all will do, no heaven

and no hell, just that nothingness with no

creator, the emptiness that birthed endless death.

24.07.2017

Writer's Block

Words come, words go,

not into the corrals of a poem,

but escape free into the wide

plains of oblivion,

fading, losing shape

as they gallop beyond memory.

24.07.2017

Malaise

The clouds above terrible brightness,

pure white light hurting my eyes.

All around, silence. The birds

have done their duty for their species,

the songs of procreation

and territory no use now.

Soon there will be more rain,

on this landscape soaked with

water. The harvest will be bad;

but then, the fields closest lie fallow,

and I will be soon away, like

the birds migrating, to some

place where shadows will be

even longer, silence more deafening.

20.07.2017

The Hunter's Rest

Death comes in the night with sharp teeth,

ripping flesh and fur and tendons.

In the morning sun, on the leaves dew

and dried blood, and fur.

Among the evergreens, a hole in the ground,

amid roots of pines lies the fox

and what dreams she sees!

The flight, the fight, the flesh struggling

against the teeth, against death.

16.07.2017

The Time Of Miracles Has Ended

Picking up his decapitated head,

St. Denis started his march from the mountain of the martyrs.

Where he collapsed, the head rolling

a moment before stopping, they

raised the monastery for the kings' graves.

When it came time to behead

a king, the head just fell

into the basket. No miracle after

the God's Anointed, Most Christian King

had been put to the guillotine -

just five seconds or so of consciousness

and no ability to scream.

14.07.2017

Rain, clouds

and this day,

in a stream

rushing off.

12.07.2017

Light, silence

- and an absence

nature abhors

vacuum

rushing away

preserving it

a quarantine zone

in space, time

and a presence

felt

09.07.2017

What if?

The unthinkable is becoming normal

- curse my pliable mind, which

to each loss adapts, yet mourns

and asks 'What if?'

'What if you wouldn't have,

what if you would have.'

Yes - what if they would

all have had a chance and lived!

This mind of mine, it moves on

yet a chain connects it

to each loss, each world

splitting mistake others paid for.

A rusted chain, a so far endless chain,

pass the deaths and graves and indignities

heaped upon those I was meant to help,

not pass in disgraceful, cowardly silence.

I wonder how long it shall go on,

that rusted chain, pass how many mistakes

and deaths and injustices, until all taut

it stops me for the reckoning.

06.07.2017

A Woman of the Pharisees

Sunlight dances on the floor, the breeze opens and closes,

opens and closes the window. I am reading Mauriac,

and on every page I think; he's like a middlebrow Proust.

Sunlight dances on the floor, the breeze slaps the window shut.

My feet, with their bad circulation, for once are warm.

What Proust made deep, Mauriac made banal

- the slights of childhood metamorphosed

into wounds of adulthood, carved with a blunt pen-knife.

The rising wind throws the window open.

02.07.2017