at the fountainhead of creation

the secret of the universe

is that there is no secret

just questions

without answers

28.09.2019

cut off from existence

we are unable to differentiate

the world from ourselves

but the world is quite capable

of differentiating us from it

when we die

28.09.2019

nothing

to an individual human being

there is no practical difference

between the end of the world

and their own death -

and after their death,

no other kind of difference either

as there is nothing

beyond death

no world
in which their life
would have been weaved in
to continue in some form

28.09.2019

AT THE END

At the end, when all is soon over

but for the long dusk

before the night falls,

I am drawn back

to those books that once,

decades and decades ago,

drew me on to foolish dreams

of a vague future of accomplishments

- a mirage of life worth living

that died a coward's death in retreat

to bastions of childhood, keeps

that couldn't have stood

what the world threw on their aged walls,

even if not betrayed from within

by the same blind fear;

embers in the twilight,

these printed memories,

set to to turn to ash.

It was not all in vain, no

- it was worse: The world

that cradled me, the loving

people that sheltered me,

gone in the flood waters

of my shattering mistakes,

drowned in endless silence

as I pathetically hid

in the memories of what I

degrared, betrayed

and destroyed.

27.09.2019

UNTIL LIGHT

So, it's over -

to each in a different way;

preparing to die,

preparing to move

- and just to stay,

frozen in the moment

spread over years,

until light fills

and erases it.

26.09.2019

IN THE TIME OF GLOBAL WARMING

The summer doesn't end.

It goes on, 

it takes over the days

assigned to autumn;

the leaves don't fade,

the leaves don't fall,

chill wind doesn't blow

rustling bare boughs.

Summer is here,

in the lush green leaves

abundant on branches,

summer is here

in the shortening late September

days; in warm sunlight

dancing on green leaves,

waves of light

where cold rain should

beat brown leaves,

drown them in pools

of muddy water.

The summer doesn't end.

It goes on,

it takes over the days

of autumn, reaching for winter.

22.09.2019

WE BURY THE DEAD

1

We bury the dead

in the dry soil of the past,

we bury them there

as seeds for our own memories,

to blossom in our minds

when our hand reaches

for them and finds nothing.

2

We bury the dead

but to carry them

with us; to mix them

with ourselves in our thoughts

twining them in the essence

of our being, so that

they might last and we might live.

3

We bury the dead

and become living tombstones for them

- in us they sleep, like seeds;

tears are the libation

we pour to call forth

their shades

to talk again to us in our dreams.

22.09.2019

WHEN YOU READ THE OBITUARY OF A FAMOUS PERSON

You read the obituary

of that person who led

such an amazing life,

and now is gone

and with regret say

how you envy that

person of what they saw,

their life worth living for.

You in your little sphere,

dreaming and longing,

stuck in the mundane,

in these repeating days;

how you wish

you would have lived

like that dead one did,

who, you say, truly lived.

How you wish you would

have broken the rusted chains,

soared from the

gray, monotonous jail;

Yet, it is you

who lives,

who breaths,

whose mind swirls with thoughts

- it is you who has

the light of this

day in your eyes,

the air in your lungs;

it is you

who sees this time

denied to that

person of fame;

it is you

who has the

existence, the future

- for now.

20.09.2019

MEA MAXIMA CULPA

1

I wake to night, to darkness

both outer and inner,

to the knowledge of loss;

all the things I held

on the palm of my hand,

thinking them eternal to be

- and they were 

butterflies in early autumn air,

fragile before the coming chill;

how bitter the flood of memories

that comes crashing on the virgin soil

of my mind wiped clean by sleep.

2

This you had, this you lost

- this you gave up

because you did not act.

Now you wake up to darkness

both inner and outer,

and lament your fate

- but they don't wake up

from dreamless sleep,

they don't have your luxury of regret.

Theirs is death,

yours is life - which

you cheated from their hands.

20.09.2019

CLEPTOCRACY IN FLAMES

To Saudi Arabia

Live by the oil,

die by the oil.

19.09.2019

MERGING

Raindrops hitting the surface

of a fast streaming river,

human lives in the world.

19.09.2019

YOU ARE HERE TO DIE

I grew up to die,

just like you

- and him and her;

that is all we do;

there is nothing

more to life

than this:

You are here to die.

Whatever you do,

whatever you gain,

remember this:

It just sets up the moment you die.

You think you have love,

you think you have famve,

you think you have wealth,

but it's there just to frame your death.

18.06.2019

IS THIS THE EIGHTIES OR WHAT?

It's half past eight in the evening

and children on the edge of puberty

are still playing in the kindergarten's park,

and walking slowly past

on my way from the store,

eating a fair trade hazelnut chocolate bar,

I wonder why they are really here,

swinging and laughing happily

in the chill, darkening autumn air,

instead of playing video games

and chatting to their friends on mobiles

in the comfort of their warm rooms?

Yet here they are, half a dozen or so,

only people in sight, girls ands boys,

like ghosts out of time,

clear voices ringing without malice.

Taking a gulp out of my sugar-free drink

I ponder it, aghast.

Shouldn't they be with their noses on

their devices' screens, disregarding calls to dinner,

killing each other on Fortnite,

gossiping on pop stars on WhatsApp?

Yet here they are, in the gloom,

when lights in the old houses flicker on.

What has gone wrong here?

How did we fail them?

When did they get addicted

to swinging through the clear night air,

talking face to face?

I'm sure it's all parents' fault, or society's, or both....

16.09.2019

THE TRUTH

There is a great conspiracy

to hide from you the truth,

to keep you blind,

unaware as long as they can;

Your parents are part of it,

your grandparents too,

and uncles and aunts and teachers

and all the rest, except

the crazy and bitter few.

You will find it out one day,

and then you can't escape it;

it will haunt your days and

torment your nights,

it will make the world different,

a bleak charade,

and leave a hole in your soul.

It's a simple thing,

a devastating truth,

not much and enough to rip

your universe to shreads.

It's just this:

Life really sucks

and the longer it goes,

the worse it becomes:

Your hopes will turn into disappointments,

your dreams will end up in the gutter,

all your illusions of yourself shredded,

all you grab from the world

will leave a sour taste

and turn out to be petty things,

less than nothing,

the day you reach the cul-de-sac

and the truth

pushes the serrated blade

through your guts.

16.09.2019

PHANTOMS IN A MIRAGE

You can't leave a mark in the universe

to last beyond your passing;

even the cosmos itself

will not leave one in the multiverse.

We are phantoms in a mirage,

without substance.

Look around you, all that you care

for: It is nothing. You are nothing.

Nothing matters, all of this will pass,

we will go and vanish and the stage

of human dust and blazing stars

will follow us. All, nothing.

16.09.2019

you think

1

you think poetry matters

but then you think that about everything

even breathing

2

you think that

& I can't convince you otherwise

but really, to be honest

nothing matters

it's all in vain, everything in life

without meaning

just mist

we pretend to be granite

3

I shall let you have

your illusion that Sappho enduring 2600 years

would mean something in a universe

where stars can live trillions of years

(while getting the last word,

that I will let myself claim)

4

breathing stops

time deletes poems

flesh falls away from Homo

left in geological strata

humanity dies a second time

as the aged Sun immolates the Earth

& AIs run simulations of us in the cold of the Oort cloud

& again

you believe that poetry matters

whether they get the fragments right or just make them up

& who knows whose simulation this already is?

15.09.2019

after

it has ended

what was our existence

no arcadia that yet

empty hours spreading

abandoned ways

to bleak time

we survivors withering

leaves on your tombs

so hard to bear the absence

those moments

when it was all worth it

and we were

together clinging

to what makes days into lives

14.09.2019

BITTER EMBERS

The lingering embers

of what was our life

barely light the dark night,

but if I touch them,

they still burn my fingers.

14.09.2019

DREAMING DUST

To James Thomson(1834-1882)

Dreaming, misguided dust

given shape of an ape -

that is you, human being,

slouching half-blind from

the warmth of the womb

to the colder rest of the tomb.

Aeons live in you, visions

of eternity spring in your mind,

you feel set for the infinite

- yet your days are brief,

your travel done quick;

so soon you find the chill of the grave.

Between the first shocked cry

and the last desperate, gasping breath,

dreams you hold briefly flare and die

in the knowledge of your fate.

Dreaming, misguided dust

you return to the birthing night.

14.09.2019

ON THE DEATH ROW

One day we will be dead,

and we can't believe it

- not even when we walk

among the tombs

hiding generations.

There lie in the soil thousands

of people whose minds

told them 'You are immortal!

You can't die! Others,

yes - but not you!'

on each day of their lives

and all of them gone,

all of them bones and dust.

Not even when we

come upon the names

of those we knew,

those we loved

and who loved us,

can we accept

that death is our fate.

We see their names,

read the dates

we can't forget,

we know they are there

deep in the ground,

what in matter remains

of all their years.

Yet we still

hear that voice in our mind

telling us

of our own immortality,

of a life without an end;

a siren's promise

that there will never be days

to which we won't awake.

This comforting madness

of humanity -

this inner, unshaken belief

that we shall have

more than reason

and experience will allow;

is it what allows us

to get through our lives,

every dreary day

and sleepless night,

keeps our legs firm

to stand on the graves

hiding our kin and friend,

beget more people

to suffer the same?

Do we need to be mad

to live when

we have been

condemned to death;

inmates on Death Row

from our first breath,

spending each day

telling the kind

prison guards -

pityingly shaking their heads -

that we will be pardoned,

while watching others

being led to the noose?

12.09.2019

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

THE WAY FORSAKEN

Once, in the Adriatic,

the clear depths of the sea

were like a sky rising

and the buoy's chain

like a ladder to climb

up to heaven.

The sandy shore

with it's people

something almost beyond reach,

and the ladder rising

up to heaven

calling to be climbed.

What made

the young swimmer stop

from diving

down into the clear

deep blue, from

rising up to heaven?

I don't know; I have

his memories, fragmented,

and once this body was his,

but he is long gone

and I left with a question

I have no answer to.

12.09.2019

SEPTEMBER MORNING

Coming from the sauna

in the early morning

I am tired; an unslept night,

and now morning dim

and cold beyond

the brown curtains,

and I with the flu,

and lost in this exile

with you dead.

I sit before the computer,

in your old armchair,

listening, tired, eyes closed,

to music like a sharp-clawed

breeze stripping fading

leaves from boughs,

flesh from bones,

time from the decades

that should have been ours.

11.09.2019

EVOLUTION'S GESTURE

The distant past

(time no one alive today has experienced)

has no meaning

beyond the one it has to us;

those who lived it are gone.

We might owe them,

yet our debt is unpayable.

Remembering them,

recording their names and lives,

what died with their stopping heart,

brings nothing to them;

they have gone to the primal void.

Only the existence of a living mind

brings meaning

to the knowledge of past events

and people. 

A living mind weaves

the most fragile webs of thought

to briefly shimmer

in the fleeting moments

that will die with us.

We can't fight this loss,

we can't accept it -

this erasure

when all we are

is existence monitoring

what happens,

trying to understand

what took place

and why.

We are evolution's futile

gesture against time,

against the end of everything.

10.09.2019

LIFE SEEN AS A RIVER RUNNING THROUGH A LANDSCAPE

Life wanders, a meandering river,

through the landscape of what is the world

in those years through which

we exist, a mirage

of continuity then, an illusion

that it existed and will exist

when we are not

inhaling, exhaling. We

want it all have a meaning,

those deeply carved years

in the soft soil of that landscape,

time running muddy

in the zigzagging channel,

yet it's running from

nonexistence to nonexistence,

from brief meaning to oblivion.

Only these short decades,

and no escape, and

look how it all grows dim,

how small it all is,

this landscape that

is the fleeting world to us.

10.09.2019

THREE

1

Pale light at dawn

doesn't give answers

to the questions

of the night.

2

Bright light of the

day shining

on the fallen leaves,

the still green grass.

3

Frost that was

touched by the Moon's

white, reflected light

gave birth to the

cold dew drops

of the morning.

14.10.2013-10.09.2019

Blood spilled

to avenge an injustice

is a sacrifice

to humanity.

15.07.2015(?)

january

gray mist over the bare fields

soft wet sand under the soles

a squirrel on all fours moving

along the red timber wall

beside the old apple tree

07.01.2014-10.09.2019

TO KILL FOR THE THINGS GREATER THAN OURSELVES

People who never could kill

for their own benefit

are often easily convinced to kill

for abstract ideas, for states

and the hope of states,

for supernatural beings

and their honour,

for pieces of desert and high glaciers,

for flags and crosses

and revenge

for deeds done

before they were born.

For a man who would not kill

to save his own life

can be blinded

to kill and kill again

for things that neither

breath nor can be born

in flesh,

he can be made

to build from human carcasses

edifices to the glory

of invisible beings,

and from shed blood

paint new borders.

09.06.2013-10.09.2019

BUDDHA

Gautama Buddha never saw

the Indian ocean,

its great waves and deep,

calm depths of

azure blue.

Trapped inland,

for fifty years he

went from king to king

saying Lord this and Lord that,

bowing his head.

08.03.2013-10.09.2019

MERE FRAGMENTS OF THE WHOLE

We are not a whole,

but mere fragments

of the whole,

fragment among

fragments scattered

in time and space,

& sometimes chance

throws us together

with other fragments

to combine

briefly into something

greater than mere solitary

pieces of the whole,

lonely and lost

in this wide, vast world.

Then we feel and see

ourselves as we could

and should be,

organs in the

body of humanity

made of flesh and mind.

03.09.2019