Unmoored, drifting
over another latitude, longitude
on this shrouded, shoreless
ocean of time, in which
we have been cast into
from the void of non-being
that awaits.
31.12.2021
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perjantai 31. joulukuuta 2021
torstai 30. joulukuuta 2021
IN THE MAELSTROM
Here we have been
so often -
at every moment
in our lives,
as it happens,
the past
and the future
meeting, separating
in the forever
fleeting,
shattering,
enduring
Now.
30.12.2021
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PYRRHIC VICTORIES
We have defeated
the Past on many
battlefields,
yet those were
hard-fought victories,
Pyrrhic ones;
we lost so much
to gain them.
And now,
we hear that a new enemy,
the Future,
is raising a mighty host.
30.12.2021
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FUTURE CONQUERS ALL
Facing
the invincible Future,
conqueror of all,
we are all losers
marching to our
inevitable defeat.
30.12.2021
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keskiviikko 29. joulukuuta 2021
THE SECOND PLAGUE YEAR, NEAR THE END
The year ends under
a white shroud,
soon dead
like the millions
sacrificed to the gods
of greed and selfishness
in these accursed years,
when we have shown
how little we care
to embrace the chance
to be truly human
when it arises.
29.12.2021
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WHEN THEY SAID 'NO'
A simmering anger grows
in the darkness external,
internal. An impotent
anger, one burning
without consuming;
no flaming pyre, just
a barely scalded
mind, one more failure
when the fabric of life
should be torn apart, set
ablaze and engulfed,
to be redeemed
in its purifying furnace.
09.05.-29.12.2021
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tiistai 28. joulukuuta 2021
A LIFE LIVED WELL THROUGH BOOKS
Some of the greatest adventures
only involve crossing the Rubicon,
cutting a Gordian Knot
by turning the page,
and it's enough.
28.12.2021
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INSTEAD OF A GOOD LIFE
Be happy if,
near the end,
you can say
that you have
lived a life
that has been
decent,
in all meanings
of the word.
28.12.2021
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WHEN ONE ONLY CROSSES THE RUBICON BY TURNING THE PAGE
Question
Why does my
'bucket list'
consist solely
of books
to be read?
Observation
Because
you prefer
reading
about life
to living it.
28.12.2021
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'WHITE'
If you say you are
'White',
would you drink
milk
the colour
of your skin?
28.12.2021
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THE MEASURE OF OUR FAILURES
Graves are used
to count
our mistakes,
as are the number
of years between the dates
on the headstones.
28.12.2021
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IN THE DARKENING GLOOM
Frozen leaves
being covered
by the falling
snow -
the sorrows of life.
28.12.2021
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maanantai 27. joulukuuta 2021
WHEN THE NAMES HAVE BEEN LOST
Nameless, faceless,
the kings of the second kingdom
of Ebla,
like the multitudes of common people
labouring under them
on that thrice burned site.
So the mighty too
are devoured by the erasing time,
leaving mute stones,
the silence of forty centuries
from the last utterance of the words
that bound a life into a person.
27.12.2021
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ALL THESE DAYS
And all these days,
in their multitude,
will be nothing
on that moment
when time merges
into death.
27.12.2021
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perjantai 24. joulukuuta 2021
THE HUMAN CONDITION
So easily
we give up,
with little thought,
what soon
will look
like the most
precious
in our
lives
- an absence
never to be
regained.
24.12.2021
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torstai 23. joulukuuta 2021
MEMORIES
Like the footprints
frozen on the snow
two weeks ago.
You could think
they are on the
surface of the Moon,
where one walk
lasts a hundred thousand
years.
23.12.2021
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tiistai 21. joulukuuta 2021
DEEP IN BYGONE YEARS
Shivering the short December day
races the fields of meagre snow,
forests of evergreen silence,
the abandoned houses
with frosted windows
into unremembered lives
buried deep in bygone years.
21.12.2021
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LIGHT FROM OTHER DAYS
On this winter morning
the crisp, cold light,
light from other days
past the pale sun,
pierces the veil
of the frozen now,
echoes mute visions
of moments carved in regret,
more lasting than
the snows of this
dying year.
21.12.2021
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THE ORBS OF REMORSE
The Sun red, bleeding,
and the crisp Moon fading, white,
and the crisp Moon fading, white,
in the brightening frosty sky of mourning;
speaking through the shivering medium
of the guilty conscience,
the lost dual gods of my existence,
buried under the paltry snow.
20.-21.12.2021
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THE EVENT HORIZON OF DEATH
So much have poets
written about Death,
their gaze fixed upon the end
that erases life,
instead of in its flourishing years,
that the things which pass
through its event horizon
often get little notice
from them
except the moment
they get fixed
on it.
21.12.2021
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lauantai 18. joulukuuta 2021
THE CRANES OF IBYCUS
Is it the guilty conscience,
or the brazen bravado
of one lacking it,
which makes loose lips
the true avengers
of past foul deeds?
18.12.2021
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FATHER
Another anniversary
when you should
have been here,
but are under the ground
in the cold earth,
under the ground
in the cold earth,
in days and years long past,
in moments carved in time
as alive as I'm now.
18.12.2021
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torstai 16. joulukuuta 2021
GLOBAL WARMING
In the gloom of the short December day,
the sound of raindrops falling
on the roof,
droplets running
on the window-panes
across the dimming day.
16.12.2021
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keskiviikko 15. joulukuuta 2021
REMEMBER
Remorse is only meaningful
if it results in action
that stops further causes
of remorse.
15.12.2021
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keskiviikko 8. joulukuuta 2021
-22 CELSIUS
The door-frames
of the cellar door
frosted; cold
comes inside
like malice
creeps into
the human mind.
8.12.2021
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sunnuntai 5. joulukuuta 2021
WESTERN CANON
all those old dead poets
famous and dusty in plaster
writing to their old dead patrons
long dead and forgotten
except the words
of the grovelling poets
western civilization
in its finest
29.11.-05.02.2021
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tiistai 30. marraskuuta 2021
ON THE STAGE OF LIFE
All the real stories are tragedies;
all others are fiction,
mirages of the human mind
in the desert of the real.
A philosopher said
something, of that nature -
it was fiction, naturally,
shimmering
in the parched vision of the lost.
29.-30.11.2021
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perjantai 12. marraskuuta 2021
RUNNING UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT
all these words
won't save us
from the
void
but
what else
do we have
to fight oblivion?
12.11.2021
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DANDELION WINE III
Bradbury's
magical summer of 1928,
yet already in the delicious
all-American apple
a worm stalks its prey,
the Lonely One
turning warm nights
into fear -
the killer soul of the nation
breaks through the boyhood idyll,
into dreams
pours napalm.
No new sneakers
will allow you ´
to outrun
the memory of the
dead baby in the crib.
12.11.-06.12.2021
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torstai 11. marraskuuta 2021
ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON THE INDUS
People start to die
on the day
when they have to
accept that it's time
to turn and
go back.
Until that day,
when they were
always pushing onwards,
they were immortal.
Now, death
has a hold on them,
a claw on the shoulder
tightening its grip.
As they turn back,
they know
they are starting the path
to that day
which to them
shall lack
a sunrise or a sunset.
Sometimes
they last until
Babylon,
sometimes,
like with the aged Seleucus
(still a young general
on this fateful day
when the great
adventure ends),
death catches
up with them
on the borders
of Macedon.
11.11.2021
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ONCE THIS MEANT SOMETHING
Given up,
life hasn't ended.
Not sinking,
floating across
unchanging days,
with closed eyes
to keep the dead
from escaping
into the light.
09.12.2019-11.11.2021
HORROR HAIKU IV
in the bright moonlight
no shadow of yours
on blue snows
11.11.2021
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RHETORIC
words
build the world
and
words
make people
blind
to the world
words
built
11.11.2021
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keskiviikko 10. marraskuuta 2021
BEYOND THE HOURS OF LIGHT
how the long
november night
erases the world
outside
is comforting,
liberating;
a sheltering
coffin
to be buried
alive in.
10.11.2021
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EARLY NOVEMBER AFTERNOON
darkness,
not of winter
yet,
past autumn,
gathers
the shivering
day
in its cold arms,
smothers
the light.
10.11.2021
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A DAY IN NOVEMBER
the sound of the rain
falling asleep
in darkness
awakening
in darkness
the sound of the rain
10.11.2021
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tiistai 9. marraskuuta 2021
BELOW FREEZING
near midnight
the rain stops
it starts to snow
across the dark
coupling space
and time
into night
09.11.2021
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BETTER OPEN YOUR MOUTH NOW
always remember
only the living
can forgive
the dead
are frozen
embracing
the last
hurtful words
your regrets
09.11.2021
THE MOON BETWEEN THE CLOUDS ON A FREEZING NOVEMBER NIGHT
The less said,
the better.
09.11.2021
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IN FLESH AND BONE
if you can't be
someone's dream
come true,
be assured
that then
you
are someone's
nightmare
made manifest...
09.11.2021
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CHOICES
shall we
embrace
the night -
or the
light
in it,
the stars
between
the clouds?
09.11.2021
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FILLING THE VOID
trying to fill
the emptiness
of existence
with words,
we tend to
forget
that we are
others
attempt to fill
the emptiness
with flesh.
09.11.2021
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NECTANEBO II(R. 360-343 BCE)
one day
the great king
in susa
let's you drag
back to the
land of the
black soil
your
cousin,
teos,
the one
you deposed,
in chains;
and then
comes the day
you find
that you're
sailing down
the nile
to nubia,
escaping
another great king
of susa
marching to memphis.
09.11.2021
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THE HUMAN CONDITION
1
let us
save ourselves
from hope.
2
see,
still praying
to the void.
3
let's save
ourselves
from hope.
4
see,
still denying
the void.
09.11.2021
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TWILIGHT ON THE NILE, CIRCA 450 CE
what did it matter
that one resurrected saviour
god was replaced
by an another one,
a hundred gods
in one
by three
in one?
same temples
still,
same worshippers
with the same
human desperation
before the
darkness
descending.
09.11.2021
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LETI
What you have here
is the broken skull
of a child,
aged four to six,
left in a narrow cleft
in subterranean darkness
for 250 000 years.
What hands
last touched it
before yours?
09.11.2021
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lauantai 6. marraskuuta 2021
THE LOVERS
It's true that they loved,
and more so, each other,
briefly; one of those
sickly loves which flickers,
then seems to grow -
and dies, like they
did, laying now in their
separate graves,
mouldering leaves
of yet another autumn gone
covering broken lives.
06.11.2021
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torstai 4. marraskuuta 2021
TIME AND THE HUMAN BEINGS, SECOND VERSION
Time shall belong to man
Dylan Thomas(1914-1953)
It's not time
which belongs to man,
it's man (and woman and child)
who belongs to time,
and time shall play
with the human being
for a brief moment,
and then it shall crush
the human in
its hard, rough hand
and throw away.
08.06.2019-04.11.2021
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