THE AEGEAN DROWNED

The sea like a demented mother

carries in its Homeric embrace

the bodies, rocking

their pale flesh

in its faded wine.

Some late, lost

retinue returning

from fallen Wilusa?

Or were they twice

refugees from Yarmouk?

Time, turning

on itself,

forgets.

In death

they are one.

25.01.-28.01.2020

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

BETELGEUZE

We sentients on Earth eagerly hope

that Betelgeuze would blaze

brighter than the Moon

on our sky.

See a supernova!

Who were the last to see one

in our spiral cast in the night?

The peers of Brahe and Kepler!

We, motes of dust,

in our swift darting

from oblivion to annihilation,

yearn to witness a greater death than ours.

In our dream to see

the sky made anew by a visiting star,

we think little of the motes of dust

on whose skies it would shine death.

In the funeral pyre of a giant

we would doom them, sentients

and those still grasping for the flint and the flame.

For if we could, we would make Betelgeuze die.

28.01.2020

FEAR AND HOPE

All hope

comes with fear,

the amount

just differs;

but far

more rarely does

fear come

dragging hope with it.

20.01.2020

SAIGYÕ IN OLD AGE

After forty years

spent growing old

as a monk and a poet,

the shogun

still saw in him

just the dead

emperor's bodyguard.

31.05.2014-17.01.2020

THE CENTRISTS

Given a choice between Utopia and Dystopia,

they vote Dystopia and say

it's the realistic choice to make;

better not to reach for things hard to achieve

and instead embrace what we already got.

17.01.2020

DAY LIKE A DROWNED RAT

The pale, short January day

dies a long death;

hours washed off and yet

the light lingers, gray, as the

raindrops keep falling on

black trees in the soaked landscape -

which the less than gallant night

finds itself most hesitant

to embrace.

17.01.2020

IN THE TIME OF THE FLOOD

To P. R. C.

Your distant words are hope,

even in the knowledge of my betrayal,

precious like snowflakes

in this flooded landscape of dying.

This land sinking in mire

when all should be frozen,

and I given your words,

precious even at this late hour.

No roads leading away to those scenes

in time and place we call the future -

except the ones we make, and

I, I build lanes ending in cul-de-sacs.

16.01.2020

JANUARY

January desolate lies

beyond the glass,

barren in gray and white black

darkens. Time towards

the end crawls. January

endures, I shall not

in my aquarium of brick

and glass and despair.

11.01.2020

WHEN THEY

When they erect the crosses,

better be a Barabbas

than a Jesus.

To hear the crowd

call your name

to cut their throats tomorrow

better than to carry

the cross and the wounds,

the nails in your limbs,

than to linger

in the heat of the day

and the cold of dying.

11.01.2020

TIME

Time is a landscape

in which we

get lost

without a map

or a compass.

We wander

in circles,

we stand in solitude

until the dusk

brings forth the

starless night

and all is black.

11.01.2020

ON THIS FINAL SHORE

So much

has ended

without beginning.

11.01.2020

TRUE

Life is an aberrance,

a glitch in the cosmos.

Non-existence is

what is 'natural'.

Death. Humans

and universes,

less than fireflies.

Nothing. That

is what is... lasting.

True.

11.01.2020

JULIAN

With a spear the torrent

of fanged change

runs through those

who try to challenge

its set course to the night.

10.01.2020

US

of us

nothing will

remain

the great

and the small

the pathetic and the cowardly

the valorous and the saint

we all

go down

the drain

of history

time

flushing the toilet

10.01.2020

DECAYING IN CHAOS

The wise and learned say

that time doesn't exist,

and on these long, dark nights

between gray days slept away

I believe that we are indeed lost,

cut from the order forced by mind

and drifting beyond the end

and the beginning, decaying in chaos.

08.01.2020

OUTDOORS

Following my own footsteps

in the melting snow

at eight in the morning

and I'm already tired

of this fucking day,

let it melt away,

this time and land of pain,

let it melt away,

this life of pain

endured and caused

like the snow melts

at eight in the morning

in the bleak January.

07.01.2020

NOT FOR US

There will be better days

and nights of delightful joy 

- but they will not be for us,

no, to us the bitter memories

of when we followed mirages,

dreaming those coming times

would be ours to live

as we wandered astray.

07.01.2020