perjantai 30. maaliskuuta 2018

THE MASSACRE IN GAZA

There are people who don't bear to see
a single hair to be cut from the head of a Zionist,
but who, today, ignore the massacre in Gaza
because to them Palestinians
are not human beings, born from the 'wrong'
wombs and thus,
no right to life or freedom for them,
because Zionism must rule supreme and
all blood shed by it must not stain it, and
the victims must be guilty of their own deaths,
not those who shot them with exploding bullets
or those
who gave the order to kill
nor those
who said nothing when the murderers declared
that they would kill, days before the crime,
or said forth and applauded the plan of murder,
like the US envoy did,
because Zionism justifies everything,
a bloodbath is nothing
but all illegal Israeli settlers
and Israel's occupation soldiers
must be always enjoy total safety in occupied land,
born from the 'right' wombs
and crushing the 'right' people
under their boots with the 'right' flag flying.

30.03.2018
NIGHT WALK

Lunar light throws our shadows
on snow and ice;
cold air, if only this
would be another road
and another time
with others walking with
us, shadows moving on ice.
A car leaves the retirement home
like a soul departs the flesh;
fading light in darkness,
vanishing. The orb
of silver, crushed rock and dust
in billion year silence
gives us back what was ours,
light and shadows.

30.03.2018
SPRING RAIN IN PALESTINE

I open the live stream, expecting
to hear shouts and screaming and sounds
that go along with a night raid by the occupation;
it is, after all, just after midnight - 
the time and the place, too; but
what I hear is the sound of rain,
rain falling in darkness on a flat roof,
spring rain, no other sound than
spring rain,
and then, the sound of thunder, in the distance.
Not the thunder of a human oppressing
his fellow human being, no flares
but the sound of a thunder-storm, a 
real thunder-storm, in
the distance, approaching,
as the rain grows heavier,
spring rain in Palestine.

30.03.2018

tiistai 27. maaliskuuta 2018

READING THE POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY(1840-1928)

Approval and a shared sense of shame -
how on earth did he write this?
Why he allowed it to be published?
Why didn't he publish it 32 years earlier,
when he wrote it? Why
didn't he burn it? From high
achievement to low success,
from the pitiable flattery
of a dead German so long enthroned
to that merciless view of man in cosmos,
clear-eyed before the abyss
that devours all life;
and then these horrible stories in verse
crying out rebirth in prose -
mercy may be lacking in the universe,
but surely these deserved it! So
it goes; an artist sees the world and fate
bare, devoid of meaning,
but his own creations he sees
through the doting eyes of a proud demiurge;
all equal, the great and the small, no meritocracy this.

27.03.2018

RELIGION IS HUBRIS

Religion is hubris; human beings
imagine supernatural beings,
a truth beyond earthly knowledge
- and then spend their mortal years
creating scripture and commenting scripture,
claiming to understand the godhead
and thus being equal to beings
they claim to be omnipotent...

27.03.2018

maanantai 26. maaliskuuta 2018

THE STRAIT OF THE EAGLE

White snow burning bright
at the strait, clear
purity under blue depth.
Overwhelmed by the light
I, who am so tired
after so many years of loss,
think of the dark waters
beneath the canopy of ice,
soundless like the
great wastes beyond
the azure heaven.

26.03.2018

sunnuntai 25. maaliskuuta 2018

I AM AN ANTI-ZIONIST AND PROUD

I'm an anti-Zionist and proud
that I stand with downtrodden, aiding their cause
and not be like those,
Zionists and so-called neutrals alike,
who stand on the blood and bone
of the victims and blame
the killed for their own death
and the exiled for their
own ethnic cleansing,
smile with the murderers
and give them guns
and afterwards declare
them innocent
and piss on the bodies
left on public display.
I'm an anti-Zionist and proud
that I'm not in that crowd,
but if you are, then a
bastard you surely are,
a miserable wretch
who only sees labels
put on humans and decides
who has a right to live and who has to die
based on labels, the womb they were born
from. I'm an anti-Zionist,
and proud that I am,
I stand with the victims
not gloating with the killers
- and you, you
you are anti-Human,
not part of the human species
but a foul and wile piece of crap
who his humanity sold.

25.03.2018
THE 'WESTERN' MEDIA IS SO FINE

The 'Western' media is so fine,
if you support Greater Israel.
Always ample space, never
have to apologize for supporting
Apartheid, never have to explain
while homes and schools and
villages are torn down, while
children are shot and left to die,
while illegal colonies spread
and why the occupier always
'only defends himself' and
how 'he only wants peace'
when he killings and theft multiplies.
All your critics are anti-semites,
they have to answer why
they just can't be silent
and let it all go on,
they get the calls to apologize
for daring to say that murder is wrong,
that theft is not right
and that torturing kids can't be justified.
The 'Western' media is so fine,
- if you support Greater Israel.

25.03.2018
A SOUTH AFRICAN BASTARD UNREMEMBERED

Some men can't bear to see
males in long gowns killed,
so they support killing
women and girls in dresses
and the babies
on their breasts.

A million deaths
they proudly praise
because they couldn't
bear to see adult men
in black and purple bleed
like normal men in wars do.

'But the cross!'
So many people
under crosses rotting,
but saw only the crosses on chains
on the chests of the men
in the long gowns of black and purple.

25.03.2018

perjantai 23. maaliskuuta 2018

LEONID ANDREYEV AND MAXIM GORKY

What united Andreyev and Gorky was
the calling of the missionary;
one for pessimism, the other for optimism.
Both sought to convert
and art was the soap box on which they stood.
When the dark time came
the pessimist who had called all
to accept the pitiless existence of man in an uncaring
universe raged against it,
longing for hope and refusing to see
that the tunnel was a cul-de-sac
and its entrance had collapsed.
The optimist became a pessimist
and accepted the mass grave of all
of his hopes, the forced smile
painted on the crying clowns.
The pessimist died
longing for optimism through
more spilled blood. The
optimist died knowing
it had all been in vain; the canal
built of blood and bone
was the shrine to the god
he worshiped now, a devout Roman
his divine emperor after
the old was slain. Truth
mattered not as long as
the right words were said,
for in those words
were life and death
and the canal and the gulags,
pitiful death and pitiless life.

23.03.2018

THE LAST WORD

When we argued, you complained
that I always wanted to have the last word.
I denied it, and so it went on
until I stopped answering
and the last years just listened
and said nothing.
It is like talking to walls,
you said then,
but you no longer complained
that I wanted to cause you a heart attack
by arguing against you
that as my only goal.
Now I have the last word,
and how I wish I wouldn't
have it; how I wish
I would have listened
you that night
when the heart attack came.

23.03.2018

torstai 22. maaliskuuta 2018

HEART ATTACK

Each moment a heart-beat
away from death,
each moment a heart-beat
away from life,

yet this beating mass of
flesh
doesn't worry us
until the pain hits.

So close to death
we live a life
of an immortal
until the pain hits.

22.03.2018
IN THE EVENING DUSK

An early evening, darkening shades
of blue, a quick descent
to the night,
but an evening
is a wonder after the long months of winter sorrow,
dusk a blessing of light,
a promise of spring. No
more darkness of night on the afternoon,
less darkness of the mind
in the fading light and shadows
weaving the black web of space
on Earth. A twilight,
a marvel to have an evening
to let the day to end
and to seep away,
the night to rise in a wave of sleep.

22.03.2018
ONE OF THE SERVANTS OF JOB

I was one of the servants of Job,
a man once blessed with all the good things
under the Sun. A man
favoured by God, enveloped in his grace.
Working on his orchards and fields,
sleeping under his roof
I felt a small amount of his good fortune
to be mine, that good God had blessed
a wretch like me
and given me as good a place
to be as one of my lowly rank can have.
I, who are laying here, taken from the fields
of Job by the Sabaeans
and run trough by a sword
which now glimmers in the blazing sun
red with my blood. How
I thirst for a gulp of water
like I thirst for justice for my fate,
but I have none, and all the blessing
I thought I had from the Lord
is but spilled blood of mine on the rocks
beside me. I was one of the servants
of Job, a man much envied
for God's favour embraced him. I was
and now I will be no more waiting
morsels of mercy from the divine
as the world is receding in sound and sight
like the God's grace receded from Job
like the low tide takes the sea
from the shores of men.

22.03.2018
When I am yours and you are mine,
when minds are joined
and flesh are one,
one thought, one touch,
one creature we;
neither you nor me
but something new,
the best of us
in unity purified.

22.03.2018
SALOME DANCES

When lithe Salome dances
all men lose their minds
and one man
loses his head
to a plate of gold,
baptized in death.

22.03.2018
Bring down the cross,
the tomb is ready;
let his weary flesh
in cold eternity rest.

22.03.2018

keskiviikko 21. maaliskuuta 2018

REPENT, THY SINNER, REPENT!

So easily forgiving yourself
you say,
'Life must go on.'
Except for those
for which it doesn't.
Remember the graves
and remember those
the earth covers
and remember, remember
what you said
and what you did
and foremost what
you didn't do
and what went
unsaid.

Life doesn't have to go on.
One day, one hour,
one minute, one second
it doesn't. It stops,
it ends. THE END.
Exit through the door
now unlocked. Don't
be afraid, behind it
is only darkness,
darkness and not more.
You don't have to
be afraid, you
shall be no more.

Thus for them,
and you know,
you know and yet,
and yet you
forgive yourself
all the graves
and all the lives
whose end
they mark
and all the suffering
and all the pain
that preceded
that darkness
behind the door.
Thus for them.
Thus for them
and soon, so
soon for you;
and yet, yet
you forgive.

21.03.2018
FEAR

Fear that once leaving
shall never be returning
will the walls
into a tomb turn.

Close the door,
draw the curtains,
let the candles burn
and the darkness close.

On the bed lie,
watch the light flickering
like a heart beating
like a heart failing.

21.03.2018

tiistai 20. maaliskuuta 2018

1969

The crescent Moon in deep,
dark blue swims, I
remember what you told me
of 1969; you lived it,
famous words and Cold War
- back then you, lukewarm,
were with the gringos
except Vietnam, the first
crack that spread to the end;
now you live no more,
and the dead wastes
of the Moon in silver
shine. We live in
time that memory
makes history; dust
on the frozen seas of magma,
we think we are
more than what we are,
conquerors of the void
and the essence of time itself.
Then we are no more
and the dead sphere
beyond our ocean of air
like a dead god orbits.

20.03.2018

SWIFTS

Father claimed he got his fatal syphilis from blankets,
son believed what his Maecenas forged;
what you believe should be true, so he raged
except when its a lady thinking you will her wed.
A father can his virtue with bed-clothing lose -
and a son can two women keep.

20.03.2018
ALL THE PROMISE AND THE HOPE

The past holds all the promise and the hope
that we once had; the past
has what we cherished and hoped to grow,
the past in the graves
with loved ones lays;
the future but one
more tomb contains.

20.03.2018
RUE THIS WINTER DAY

Rue this day which in flying snow
so slowly fades and goes
to where used time retires.
White the hours, low
the sky of clouds
and earth the image of the heavens,
white on white; how
deep the cold that comes
and the soul chills.

20.03.2018

maanantai 19. maaliskuuta 2018

THE BIG DIPPER OF TIME

Children laugh and run in blue shadows
as snow glitters in light, and time
- that old spine time that sustains -
folds, and in this moment is another,
different children and different shadows,
a day awash in late winter sunlight,
voices and faces now familiar.
A big dipper that turns my stomach
and makes my mind dizzy;
I close my eyes, and opening
I glimpse the last moment of a world
righting itself, a ship
close to capsizing correcting,
coming to a rest. Now
one moment only, this ever-fleeting
being printed into memory in
my brain, ever escaping,
and feeling ill I find way
inside, where the shouting
of the children echoes
from decade to decade.

19.03.2018
BOTH SIDES OF THE WALL

I lift the curtains;
snow-flakes dance in the air,
the elms with raised boughs beg,
the firs, solemn, still climb the hill.
The heaven, veiled in white,
mute and distant,
watches. The curtains
fall, I retreat to my hole,
where dust dances in electric light,
where faces in old photographs
beg for remembrance, and
piles of books make mountains
for idle thoughts to ascent
in the sickly light of
consciousness.

19.03.2018
AN ENIGMA OF HAMMER BLOWS

Day after day he comes,
parks his white coupé
and steps out in a pale
green neon vest, hurries

inside and starts
hammering; what paintings
on the walls find their place,
what wonders of IKEA their shape?

Is he the neighbour to come?
A workman, a lover, a friend in aid
for he or she that once shall stay?
An enigma of hammer blows.

The hammer stops, silence
until out in his neon vest he
walks; no word said, he
leaves as he came.

19.03.2018

sunnuntai 18. maaliskuuta 2018

THIS IS AND NO MORE

There is cold purity
in this winter afternoon
that cleans the mind
of the cobwebs of the long
winter nights; bright,
aching light,
snow and ice in
their white and freezing
essence glittering. Cold
truths, cold hopes.

18.03.2018

lauantai 17. maaliskuuta 2018

SURFACING

The late evening in blue,
cold and clear, rests. The
dome of the sky darkens,
the day slips into night. Stars,
like gems at a pool,
surface. Snow
loses its hues of blue,
white and black the
land sleeps, the
hand of winter around
the quivering heart.

17.03.2018
MORE THAN TIME WILL RUIN THE STARS

More than time will ruin the stars, Louise.

Stephen Baxter(1957-): Ring(1994,) page 74.

More than time will ruin the stars,
rip open the canvas from before the void,
the gaping maw of the abyss reveal
where all ends, where dead matter
and dead time repose.

The cosmos as our grave
where no inscribed stone shall our name
and fate declare, where nothing
remembers that we were and fought
against our fate and lost. 

Even our death will die in
the cool vistas of the cosmos
where doomed matter
is but a prelude to aeons
of changeless void.

Denied even remembrance, a memorial
to our bravado and rage before
the night closed in, our fate
- that no ripple shall show where
we sank - will ruin the stars for us.

17.03.2018

keskiviikko 14. maaliskuuta 2018

The first hint of dawn
the horizon dark blue
but when I turn
lungs full of icy air
singing about life
sky burning red
over the factories

21.02.2018
AFTER RICHARD ALDINGTON(1892-1962)

He speaks of the grace
that a mortal woman can give
to him,
and prays both to her
and to a god
to give it to him,
but if she gives it
he promises to thank
the god; no word
of thanking her
except with the kisses
whose giving
the grace would be.

14.03.2018
COSMIC GLOW-WORMS

Such a terrible thing, to
have nothing but time
to think and think, to
see a life in the
context of time,
biological, historical and geological, to
see it in the vast setting of cosmos, terrible
time where lights of human life blink into existence, to
vanish as they appear, tiny lights in a vast stage
running to infinity, screaming 'I matter' and no one to
hear but you, with nothing but time,
hearing 'I matter' as lights blink on and off and to
hear yourself scream 'I matter', here
in this moment between nothingness and nothingness, to
know and know that it doesn't matter...

13.-15.03.2018

tiistai 13. maaliskuuta 2018

THE TWO OF YOU

A little brother
content in the arms of his
proud big sister,

'He looks like me',
she says, and yes, yes
you two do look alike,

siblings and the descendants
in blood and looks
of the dearly missed;

your grandmother
and your grandfather
in the little brother

and the big sister,
one in the arms of the another,
content, with eyes of wonder.

13.03.2018

sunnuntai 11. maaliskuuta 2018

AFTER SAPPHO AND H. D.

The gift of song,
the gift of love -
they fight and
they unite in the
human mind the
few fleeting years
before the gift of
sleep, the gift of
death brings
dark slumber
and ends all
strife, ends all
but the fading sound
of a song
of lost love
and life lost.

11.03.2018

torstai 8. maaliskuuta 2018

THE VICAR'S DAUGHTER

To a vicar' daughter
the homeless frozen dead
are but a God's pre-ordained will
made manifest;
surely no Earthly power
could have stopped the ire of God,
certainly not a vicar's daughter
housed in Downing Street.

08.03.2018

tiistai 6. maaliskuuta 2018

THE ASCENT TO CONSCIOUSNESS

You, my casual friend,
are an illusion
impressed on the human mind
by society
and your own act
of self-creation -
which makes you a human being;
the illusion that the person
in all those photographs
is the same one,
that all the paraphernalia you carry
in your mind and outside it
forms a coherent whole,
a story with a single protagonist.
You, you think
you are the same
all the moments of the life
of the flesh
spinning through time.
Believe, my casual
friend, as we part,
in yourself. Not because
you are, but
because we are but animals
caught in time-loops without,
and an illusion of past
and an illusion of tomorrow
uplifts the animal to consciousness.

06.03.2018
Obscure, you
are the dust
lying on the
memories I
made up,
the tiny motes
of absence
over void.

06.03.2018
TO WILLIAM BLAKE(1757-1827)

Jesus would not stop
for an Englishman, he
would shake his head,
wave his hand
and quickening his steps
walk away
to all those people
he would have time
and a few words
and a touch
of his hand,
bleeding from the wrist.

The  Englishman
would run after him,
sends words
like arrows to fall short,
then halt
and walk slowly back
waiting for the one
that would come
after Christ.

06.03.2018