A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

Reading Ferlinghetti on my way

to the apothecary, I meet

a dog and his human

in the ravine before

the bridge over the falls,

the human trying to

move on, but the dog

enthralled by scents

stands enraptured

as I walk past reading

about San Francisco

and New York

and wondering

why Ferlinghetti thought

that Praxiteles

died at twenty-eight?

I walk over the bridge

over which

my own dog,

death in her body of

furry love,

refused to cross

on a winter night,

I walk over

water streaming

over rocks

that are always

the same -

it's not the water,

Heraclitus,

which makes

a river,

it's these cliffs

and rocks

and banks

that are the river.

The water,

like we humans

in the world,

is just

passing through,

movement

in the river,

like we

are movement

in time.

As an orphan

I will come

to my death.

30.08.2019

FOUR VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF DEATH

1

After a life has ended,

it matters not to

the deceased

how much (s)he

'accomplished'

during the days

when air filled

the lungs and

the heart beat

blood to the brain

to fill it with dreams.

2

The world

endures

as an empty stage

after the actors

have been

carried off

and buried

in the bosom

of the suffocating earth.

3

Nameless bones

in a mass grave

care about posthumous fame

as much as those

entombed in a mausoleum. 

If a name is spoken,

if a name is forgotten

and uttered no more,

it matters not:

Death is

Damnatio Memoriae

for the mind,

that which we

call as soul

slipping like a silver fish

into the waters

of the river Lethe.

4

The dead

have become

light shining

on latter days

and latter lives.

Bright light

of a summer day,

cold light

of a moonless

winter night,

like scalpels

you carve

our minds

open with

keen pain.

30.08.2019

THE COWARD IS ASKED A QUESTION IN THE EVENING (OF HIS LIFE)

To P.

Your mother asks

why I am not going

with you,

(if you go,

if)

and what can I say?

The cats,

the price ~3000 € total both ways

and the impending

move, the

knocking down

of these houses -

and I am

tired and terrified

of the future

and the past

with all

their

graves

Pontius Pilate

I already were as a

little kid, forever

washing my hands

and never getting

them clean

and part of

me wants to do

that with you

& all the dreams

we had &

(everybody and

everything else)

not walk away

but letting

you walk

away &

not,

not coming

after you,

but just

staying

here

in autumn

listening

to life

draining

away

& 

away...

26.08.2019

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME, ALWAYS, LIKE YOU SAY

At the edge of another catastrophe,

a chasm beneath my figurative

feet, yet others

on the crumbling edifice

waiting to fall -

not me, not me.

My cataclysms spare me

from being swept with

their consequences and victims.

I send others to their

doom, one mistake after another

turning into avalanche

to swept you away,

one by one,

and I myself left watching

on the edge of the chasm,

safe from the abyss

until it comes up,

reaches for me with

its talons of darkness

towering above.

26.08.2019

HOME

I just want to go back,

to listen to the cold rain

behind open windows,

feel the cool, crisp wind

of autumn, remember

all the days like those

when I weren't alone,

and let go of

all the pain and time

that has cast me away.

I just want to go back.

23.-24.08.2019

STRONG AS THE LANDSCAPE ITSELF

So many things and people around us

have achieved the impression of permanence

that we think they will last

(and that we will last with them)

on and on, that the future

will be just a repeat of the current.

We see the people and things around us 

- our lives' basic ingredients,

their centre pillars and barely noted certainties -

as strong as the landscape itself,

as certain to remain as the hills.

They will be there, like they always have.

All the time that they barely cling

to their ephemeral existence

in rushing time, in the

endless throw of the dice of fate.

Each day of boring sameness

a wonder saved from the tumult of a chaotic world.

23.08.2019

THE GREAT CHAIN OF DEATH

One death contains all the deaths

resulting from it:

Thus the death of Iphigenia

contained the deaths of

Agamemnon, Cassandra, Clytemnestra,

Aegisthus and Aletes.

It was the seed -

and it was the bloody flower

of the deaths of Atreus and Thyestes.

One death is thus the result

of the myriad others leading to it.

A knife once unsheathed

cuts through both flesh and time

- and lives yet unborn.

22.08.2019

TIME, THE GREAT HEALER

Time doesn't heal, not people;

no, time leaves people

broken and scarred.

The healing comes

with the permanent absence

of the people -

they have limped off-stage

and time fills the empty

places, the silences

with new people

soon bleeding.

Time heals

like nature does,

through replacement.

17.08.2019

LET THE PAST BE PAINLESS

You will have to let

everyone go

when their death comes.

You will have to let

them to become

the unreachable past.

You will have to let

the pain of their

passing go.

You will have to -

just like others

will have to with you.

You will be let

to go to

your death.

You will be let

to become memories

and photographs.

You will be let

to be a pain

allowed to end.

You will have to,

they will have to

and they will.

Let it go,

accept it, remember

but let the past be painless.

17.08.2019

THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR THE JUSTIFICATION OF HISTORIAN'S CRAFT

The ouevre of Patrick Modiano

is the answer to the

question: 

"Why we need history

and historians?"

It's a bloody mess,

a mad maze

when human memory

is left to define

the past.

15.08.2019

READING THE BIOGRAPHIES OF POETS

From the biographies we learn

that even poets are born

to families

(and that apparently in which

families matters quite a lot),

that they are

educated in schools, universities

and such

(names of some which

seem to be of great importance),

that they marry, beget and give birth

to flesh as much as to words

(some of those

who they procreate with or try or 

have sensual relationships necessarily

of the barren kind

seem to be of greater importance

than most),

they have jobs

(again, the names of those

schools, universities and such

are given a lot of weight)

and publish those

Poems More Poems Selected Poems Collected Poems

until we get to a date

which is followed by

Posthumous Poems Unpublished Poems

marking the end to the poet's

mortal existence

(even poets die!)

with the assumption

that those words

left behind

will be made

of sterner stuff

than the dust

which wrote them.

15.08.2019

LONGINUS IN AUTUMN

Briefly a lance of sunlight

spears the landscape:

Colours bleed bright

forth from

overcast Autumn.

15.08.2019

AUGUST

Is this the last

day of Summer

or the first

day of Autumn?

We have walked,

filled with regret,

through the forest

with yellow and red

growing in abundance

among the dark green

boughs of evergreen trees.

The river running

through the woods

barely exists

in its channel, the rain

in the morning,

the rain in the evening

but drops in the drought;

the water in the

stream stands

waiting for something

to change, like we do.

It has nowhere to go.

15.08.2019

EACH MORNING, THIS PAIN

Each morning this physical

pain in the abdomen

a manifestation of

the mental anguish

as it all comes back

with consciousness;

I remember thinking

how it was for you

the waking into impending

mortality, you

beloved one who left

first; it must have

had something of this,

only stronger, more

hopeless. To

you, also beloved who

left later,

suddenly, if hours

of chance lost

is that and not

time extending endlessly

until it touches

the brane of my own dying,

I woke you from your

dying sleep to your death,

to a moment like the

one I live in on each morning,

only you had lost words

before that fading of breath

yet your eyes speak

still to me of that

moment's knowledge.

Your absence in the fabric

of existence has

shredded what remains

and sharp, spiked shards

of what was tear my guts.

14.08.2019

MUSKA(1998-2009)

I arrive back home close

to midnight; brilliant white

Moon throwing shadows on glittering

snow full of diamonds,

and you, a black shadow,

still with healthy legs,

running in circles

on the fields of snow,

endlessly in my memories

full of joy.

14.08.2019

ALEXANDER THE GREAT AT BABYLON 323 BCE

Perhaps those dozen years of

campaigning were just

a prolonged escape

from death at the hands

of his own vices; back

at Babylon no poison needed

when he again engages

in battle against the

one foe he can't win,

the one against wine.

13.08.2019

TWO LEAVES 

You have fallen, a brilliant

golden leaf; I,

dark green to my

bough grasping

watch as the breeze

carries you away

in the milky August

light.

11.08.2019

THE GOLDEN TOUCH OF MIDAS

Everything Midas touched

turned to gold

says the ancient myth;

yet what it means

is that everything living

Midas touched died.

Gold and life

are the opposites

of each other -

you have to

choose one

and let the other go.

11.08.2019

OF THE DEATH OF THE POET AL-MUTANABBI(915-965)

Words can turn into slashing swords,

and your sharp word

can turn out to be the lesser blade,

so if near Baghdad they challenge you

think twice before drawing sword

and charging, think twice

before working your words

like a sword-master his art.

Living up to words

with swords can leave

your blood drying on desert sand.

11.08.2019

MOMENT OF CHANGE

Slight breeze drives

fallen leaves,

bright yellow autumn,

across the gravel road

while above the

boughs heavy,

dark green

with summer.

Where am I

in this moment

of change?

Lost in my grief

and sorrow.

11.08.2019

FIRST LIGHT

First light

of the day

before dawn,

moment

between night

and day,

a shard of eternity

separate from time

it exists.

If only

the time

would never

run again,

the pale fire

burn in

the horizon.

11.08.2019

DANDELION WINE II

A cat has peed

on the book

I picked up

between the boxes

on the bedroom floor,

fallen there,

and the old cat,

afraid of attack

by her feline enemies

not daring

to go to a litter-box

peed on it.

It is the one

I have yearned to read

since 1989

in this very paperback

with the cover

that has it all:

Life, death, mystery

and autumn and summer.

Yet, I have not read it,

beyond two dozen pages.

Deaths tore words from me,

those long, lazy walks in forests of font.

Now, after more deaths,

when all has been lost

except fear,

I can read it.

The book my twelve-year-old

self longed for

after seeing that cover

on the pages of a magazine.

I read the words

I'm alive, he thought

written by a man

dead for seven years.

I read the words

the dead man wrote

and I remember the days

when I read

others words from him

on pages of other books

loaned from library

during trips with those

who are also dead

and whose absence

tears me apart

day by day.

I have only words,

a book that doesn't smell

of cat pee or years

or autumn or summer,

just a book

with life, death, autumn leaves, 

summer butterflies

and a bitten apple on its cover.

I have time,

I have death

without hope,

I have words.

04.08.2019

a fragment

to a friend

devoid of words expect in poetry the last week or so

perhaps it's the shortening days

and the feel and sound of autumn in the wind

and the rustling of the still green trees

in the darker evenings and dimmer mornings

which take words away

leaving vastness

like the landscape

and their absence

for a cool wind to blow through

not an autumn proper but

a strong feeling of autumn in

the already yellowed and fallen leaves

a thread of autumn weaved in

what remains of the summer

02.08.2019

EVERYTHING BUT THE PAIN

A day spent in bed,

curtains drawn

in the company

of the dead

until the night fell.

Sleep and torment

awake, all

that were lost

and with them,

everything.

Everything
but the pain
of sharp memories
and sharper
sense of absence.

01.08.2019

THESE POINTLESS DAYS

The night falls

like sudden rain,

the treetops burning

in the last light

disappearing in black

behind the window,

curtain drawn

on the pointless day.

These days

falling away

one by one

like your lives,

lost in time

and the loss

echoing

through these

pointless days.

Dawn and dusk

and the long

dusty hours

scattered between,

slipping away

from hands

that can't grip

these

pointless days.

01.08.2019

A VISION OF LAPLAND

The treeless fells rising

to the low gray clouds,

gray their own backs bent

by ages of wind and snow and ice.

Beyond them the gray vastness

of the polar sea,

the waves carving the shores

with the same

tireless sculptor's hands.

This was your land,

this desolation

where the mind transcends

the bounds of flesh

and like the sounds

we make

becomes one with it all.

01.08.2019