SEE, O GODS

A gray sky,

a white earth.

There, in that landscape,

between the cold

heaven and the

frozen soil,

a predestined pawn

in a game of oblivion.

An illusion

of a choice to

make one's own mistakes.

Crowned by a headstone.

30.10.2017

THIS POEM DOESN'T WORK OUTSIDE A LARGER CONTEXT

(NOT PROVIDED)

They are alive

and we are

dead.

They are alive,

they must be -

because surely

this is Hell!

30.10.2017

If you say you understand life,

then I will call you a liar.

If you say I've claimed the same before

- then thank you,

for finally remembering!

Remembering and admitting

that you are

not only a liar,

but an intellectual thief also.

Oh, the hurt!

30.10.2017

A LITERARY ROMANCE

Such a lovely bleak day,

the weather below freezing for now and thus, snow;

but rain will come, cold freezing rain

on its way to apotheosis as ice -

and I have run out of milk,

and thus have to drink my bitter coffee black;

it looks like the night

has taken refuge in the depths of my coffee mug,

that I drink the night,

all darkness inside, all white and gray outside

the windows, and here, twilight

in the electric light, and in my hand

some hefty novel with long dead

angry author in the cover looking accusingly

at me, eyes like burning coals

like we would have been

personal enemies over some dust-buried

issue from the days of Louis Philippe or Nicholas I.

Hush, my dead marble-head atop

the canon bookshelf of the 'Western Civilization',

its cold outside, its cold inside me,

and you have long been a shadow among

shadows beyond Styx,

so let's embrace each other

through the printed words, my neurons

connecting with your long-decayed ones.

Tomorrow, we don't have to acknowledge

we ever met in the streets beside Neva or Seine.

30.10.2017

Itztlacoliuhqui

It's a very early morning,

those hours when the light like a mouse

comes from its hiding place

and warily comes

across the landscape almost

tenderly, and

grows, grows

to be one of those huge

rodents the humans encountered in the Americas

after coming in their boats down

from the now sunken Beringia.

The day awakens,

touched by the light's paws,

an October mix of water, mud and snow

emerging from the night flowing

away, the low tide

revealing the fossil landscape of

a bygone era of Áine.

30.10.2017

God is a lion in the night,

according to H. G. Wells,

but now that we have artificial

light to drive away the night

and weapons that have

decimated the lions to the

brink of extinction, why

are we still afraid of the

beast lurking in the darkness?

29.10.2017

D. H. LAWRENCE(1885-1930) VI

Forty years after your death, the men

in Eastwood pubs would still say about you

'The father was worth ten of the son.'

I wonder what they said, those

men in Eastwood pubs,

when last year the council closed

your 'Heritage Centre'.

I guess they smiled,
ordered another one,

and said

'The father was worth ten of the son.'

27.10.2017

WHERE THE BLAME BELONGS TO

Remember, dear Milton,

that Lucifer fell

because God allowed him to fall -

because God had ordered

him to fall;

it was part of a divine plan,

or, if we want to be gracious,

a divine necessity;

the hell and its twisted angel lord,

its denizens and horrors,

that concentration camp for the souls.

27.10.2017

FALSE HUMANITARIANS

People who can't feel empathy

towards all oppressed people everywhere

don't truly feel empathy

towards any oppressed people;

what they think as empathy

is something else: Tribalism

of ethnicity, ideology, language

or religion. True

empathy soars above such

petty divisions drawn

to dissect humanity.

These false humanitarians

are just partisans,

or perhaps, liberals.

26.10.-27.10.2017

D. H. Lawrence(1885-1930) V

He whines about 'idealists' -

those people wanting to make

the world a better place to live in.

What a terrible, unforgivable sin!

They believe in what they say and

even try to do it -

that he can't accept, that

he rants against, the old

idealist;

idealist who lives

in a world of mirrors

seeing and resenting

himself in others; those

contradictions that make

him into a collage not a man.

26.10.2017

PHOTOGRAPH OF FRIEDA WEEKLEY(1879-1956)

She looks like a mouse who

sees herself as a feline;

we can only imagine

what she felt when she

tasted rat in her mouth

- and the poison

the rat carried;

in the end, the

only thing we know

is that she

developed something

of a taste to rats.

When one died,

she had the

replacement ready.

26.10.2017

AT THE GORGE

Below the rapids

the river runs as swiftly

as when I was young

and went over the old bridge,

long since fallen.

Fallen trunks of trees

bath in the dark waters;

I think of the years

gone, yet still there,

upstream in time.

I have known these

steep hill-sides

before this road

started to snake through.

I have known them,

like they must

have known my forebears,

eking out a living and dying

around the gorge, going

without much fuss

with the dark waters

roaring in the gorge

when the time was

to go. Yet, even they

are still there,

in past years, upstream

in time, watching

the waters rush downstream,

watching the years

bath them in its dark waters.

26.10.2017

ALAN HOLLINGHURST OR THE MODERN NARCISSUS

An author, who couldn't write

about working-class or lower middle-class

characters even if his life would depend on it.

We could be reminded of John Fowles'

whine, how he himself wanted to write

about people of his own class.

We could, but we know how it is:

Lack of knowledge

and lack of interest

towards everybody who

isn't like them - the majority -

and their lives and experiences,

Yet they expect the majority

to pay to read their books. The

single book that Alan Hollinghurst

has been writing his entire career

about the same single character

whose same experiences he clones

with endless vigour. There is

pathological belief that this

one subject Matters to All:

The university educated, artistic,

white gay man from upper middle-class

and his out-of-proportion disappointments.

Yes, we know Alan - its you.

All of you protagonists are you.

We know that is the extent of your talent.

You can look away

from your reflection now

- try to remember Narcissus' fate.

24.10.2017

THE DEATHS OF SOCRATES

Socrates had to die

so that he could be reborn

through Plato and Xenophon's

reed pens; such

a rebirth that we still

in vain seek the man

among the roles

he was made to play. Is

this a piece, a word

of the 'true' Socrates?

Surely the manner

he is made to speak

is his, if not the words?

So we wonder

after the hemlock-drinker,

seek him, that myth

that poison made -

Athens, Plato and

Xenophon's alike.

24.10.2017

LOOKING OUT

The snow that fell on

the morning has

melted.

You can't disturb

the universe.

Dare or not.

Even your indecision

is pointless.

Your are but a

ghost passing through

existence.

The leaves

keep falling from

the boughs.

Buridan's ass
starves to death.

24.10.2017

WORDS FOR WAT TYLER

For the sake of us all,

for the common people's

good and salvation,

all men born high

must be made low.

So that forever more

on equal level they stand

take a sharp axe

and with the gleaming blade

cut off their feet or head.

23.10.2017

HART CRANE(1899-1932)

Poor queer bastard

only the sea

could welcome you

no dolphin for

our late Arion to ride

just the jaws of sharks

- the blue abyss'

sharp greeting

embracing

& and the myth

- that potted plant

watered by the future

cultivating your

misery making you

jump again and again

'See him go!

See him become

a myth, lost!'

23.10.2017

OCTOBER NIGHT

Above the bright sparks

under the cold path of fallen leaves

between the breeze heralds

the first snow-flakes of winter

23.10.2017

IT COULD BE ANYWHERE

To survive under oppression

is to compromise.

Only the dead

are not

collaborators;

even the men and women

in the hills

with guns.

They had to

walk past checkpoints,

not to interfere

when people

were dragged away

or lay bleeding,

they had to

keep their face obedient,

utter no word

of resistance

until the woods

liberated them.

22.10.2017

NICHITA STÃNESCU(1933-1983)

He had the face of

a Romanian in Paris,

a face only a

Romanian

could love.

22.10.2017

ABYSSUS ABYSSUM VOCAT IN VOCE

No one has come for days.

Just one message from a

relative, like a farewell,
a photograph of
our grandfather in a

uniform in 1940.

I dare not call,

fearing to find

out why.

I am Schrödinger's

Cat, hiding in its box,

and the world outside

in all possible states

not yet collapsed into

one inescapable reality.

22.10.2017

GRAVES OF MY PARENTS

These these grass-covered

pieces of earth, crowned

with fallen leaves of yellow and

brown are

the Paradise. To

stand beside them

is to be in Purgatory;

to be away and remember, Hell.

22.10.2017

We live like

our death

would have

a meaning.

21.10.2017

SEPULTURA

A bit of a flu, a mug of coffee

and a table full of books beside the sofa,

darkness beyond the windows,

universe in one room, a life...

21.10.2017

Reading Malcolm Lowry(1909-57) In The Toilet At Midnight

These strange lands where no one knows us,

where the languages are as alien as the wind,

where the Sun cold like the Moon hovers,

these strange empty lands, deserts to us,

these strange lands where the high tide of time

has left us, bizarre creatures drawn

from the depths and cast on the sand,

marooned and dying, so far from where

we belong, those years in old photographs

watching us with eyes that knew us.

20.10.2017

STATUE OF ANKHESENPEPI II

Circa 2250 BCE

So faded the eyes

of the wooden queen,

decapitated by time.

The sands of Saqqara

have for four millennia

embraced her

as her lover.

19.10.2017

TO MY FATHER

As Kevin De Bruyne's shot hits the crossbar

and bounces clear, one

thought blooms and takes over my whole mind:

We should be watching this together.

Then, achingly, comes the thoughts

of how you would have reacted -

almost like you would be here,

watching with me, again.

17.10.2017

CRAIGLOCKHART HOSPITAL

Because only sane men

can be send to die,

the broken minds

must be made whole

for death to claim.

From their sheltering madness

they must be saved,

so that in the trenches of the

twisted land of razor-wire

they will know the horror
enclosing; so that when the

shelling ends and

the whistle rangs

they will know that

their death awaits.

That is our duty -

to heal a broken mind

for the body to

reach its destiny,

a bullet or a shell to crush,

mangled to the mud to sink.

15.10.2017

Now remains

only the

straight path through

the years to

the end.

Walk.

14.10.-15.10.2017

DON CARLOS 1568

Driving away

the burning sun

from your cell

with ice water,

your innards

in blue flames¨

like the villages

of Moriscos

on mountains

where snow glimmers¨

in the sunbeams

and the crown

one heart-beat away

slips from your

fingers and

your grave opens,

o mad prince!

14.10.2017

NEURASTHENIA OR DECLARATION AGAINST THE GREAT WAR

Clearly it is madness

to lose belief

in the justification

for the war,

the war embraced

as purification

of the civilization.

What was

started must be

allowed to run

its crimson course,

Mad Jack.

13.10.2017

AN AUTUMN ODE

The stream sings its clear song

carrying foul-smelling foam

downstream from the mill.

13.10.2017

REQUIEM

In the end,

in the end

what shall we do?

Give up.

13.10.2017

HOW I PLAN TO DIE, MY DEAR READERS

Painfully.

13.10.2017

SOMME

A bullet met a bishop's son

at Mametz.

The bullet lasted, rusted

- still in soil it sleeps.

But the bishop's son

rotted and rats

gnawed his bones.

13.10.2017

LAWRENCE DURRELL(1912-1990)

You could never bother with the locals,

the people actually living in places like Alexandria

or Avignon. No, you

disliked them, couldn't stand them. Thus,

enter the god-like foreigners on

these 'exotic' stages, to play through the acts

you had written for them. A kind

of literature equivalent of a Near Eastern

bazaar existing in a Hollywood movie

studio, or a couple in a car 'driving'

against a fake, filmed background, detached.

Orientalism of sorts, even in Occitania.

09.10.2017

D. H. LAWRENCE(1885-1930) IV

The 'Italian stallion' who was fucking your wife

threw your ashes away.

Then lived happily ever after

with her, at your ranch,

where he build you a memorial

- to commemorate his victory over you.

Pity you weren't there, in some

ghostly form,

seeing it all.

09.10.2017

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

I really wanted to write

a poem using the word

'pellucid', so

here it is.

05.10.2017

METHONI

Why write? asks Philip Roth in

the title of his new book,

and why indeed? You should have

stayed silent, Horselover.

Silence is golden,

to speak is silver.

(But I have always

been comfortable with silver.

I once wrote an essay

'How silver united China to world economy'.)

Cheers for no mention of

your name in this year's Nobel Prize

speculation, Horselover.

Thanks for having stopped writing.

(Yes, I have a grudge

with the man,

a lot of arrow points

carrying his name.)

It must be thirty years

since I read 'Goodbye Columbus',

still remember having it

in my hands on the schoolyard.

Sun was shining,

but the season - beyond

lack of snow - has

been erased from my memory.

I wish

you were

dead, Philippos.

Only the United States and Israel

have a right to criticize Israel.

I am quoting non-verbatim,

raising it from the

echoing halls of memory,

Horselover, so that's

unlikely to be exact.

But ever since I

read that, I have

never missed a

chance to criticize

you, Horselover.

Never will miss.

04.10.2017

Hugh Hefner finally

got fucked

real good

dead good

04.10.2017

D. M. THOMAS

The face, few decades
in the past, which

looks at us with barely

contained anger and rage, is

that of an East End gangster

living in Costa del Sol.

We have tracked him down,

he wants to know why.

It is an improvement.

Earlier we encounter him

as some kind of mildly masked

Mister Hyde, with portruding

jaw and forehead which

tell of a make-up done with

limited budget and talent.

So very 1970s TV.

Always between his
fingers the symbol
of death.

04.10.2017

TIME

1
The clock on the wall

ticks each second

after having missed years

chimes for half past four

two minutes late.

After a decade of silence

what are two minutes?

A fourth of the

distance from the Sun

to the Earth.

2

Time flies -

but in what

strange aether

it's translucent

wings carry it?

01.10.-03.10.2017

59

1

United States loves

its guns

more than its

children.

It has no trouble

choosing.

2

The sacrifices

are plentiful

to the god

of death.

Plentiful

and regular.

3

Blood must

flow unimpeded.

An amendment

of sorts.

Sacred.

4

Nothing will

change.

Nothing

is allowed

to change.

Just the

corpses.

03.10.2017