UNDER AN AZURE SKY, THE SPRING

In two days the Sun

has erased the winter

from the yard; the buried

autumn lies bare in the dead grass,

the brown leaves laid atop it.

I regret the lost three springs,

the memories never carved

beside those in which,

on days like this,

you sit in the sunlight

on the porch of the sauna,

and I regret the four autumns

that have shed fallen

leaves on your grave.

31.03.2021

SOMETHING UNNOTICED

 Here we are, at

what must be the end -

and yet,

somehow,

at times,

it still feels

like something

would be ready to begin:

A bud, unnoticed,

ready to bloom.

31.03.2021

THE ILLUSION OF HOPE

I

 Remember:

From the beginning,

there is no hope

in this life,

only

the illusion

of hope.

II

Illusion of hope

is what will

carve

the deepest

wounds

across our

brief existences.

26.03.2021

BEFORE THE WALLS OF TROY

Admit it, human being: In the fight

we call life, you are, at best,

Hector facing Achilles,

your fate pre-ordained;

you can only prolong the struggle,

not emerge triumphant.

Blocking the descending blade

one more time is what destiny can grant you -

and the next thrust, or the one after,

will strike through,

and your blood shall stain

the sand, as crowing Achilles

will be the last sight in your dimming eyes.

Your broken body shall be dragged

behind the chariot of time

to crush all hope from the minds

of your loved ones,

and then will be heard

heavy steps in the tower staircase

going up, and the final cries

of your beloved Astyanax.

26.03.2021

IN A TAVERN NEAR PARIS IN THE YEAR 1463

Where are the snows of yesteryear,

you ask, son of Montcorbier -

or was it Loges? I forget.

If I would be a learned man,

talented with the arts,

like you, priest-to-be,

I would point to the rain

hammering on the roof,

but, being heavily

rooted on the earth, not

one of the learned denizens

of your university,

gazing at the clouds, 

I will just throw a coin

on the table, and say that

they used the snows of yesteryear

to dilute the wine

served in this tavern;

you will soon be pissing

them on the alley mud -

and keep that knife

in its sheath;

a man can escape the gallows

'only' twice.

24.03.2021

PEOPLE LIKE US

We can't erase

our past mistakes,

unmake our errors.

That is not

in our power.

We can only

make new errors,

new mistakes

for others to

suffer from.

24.03.2021

WHEN I'M DEAD

 When I'm dead,

don't say

"He is in a better place now."

I shall not be anywhere

except in your memories.

When I'm dead,

don't say

"He is in peace now."

I would prefer excruciating pain

to non-being.

When I'm dead,

just say:
"He loved life,

he feared death,

and death erased him."

24.03.2021

ONE HEART STOPPING

What is a single death,

but the end

of the entire universe? 

24.03.2021

FOR DEATH IS INVINCIBLE

 Perhaps,

when you read these

words, these sentences,

this poem weaved out of them,

I will be dead and gone,

and only my words,

only my sentences,

only my poem

will speak to you.

It matters not.

My poem,

as mortal as myself,

set to die a death

as total as my own,

will speak to you,

you will speak to it,

and a bridge

will reach from this

moment of writing

to the moment

of reading.

A wormhole of words

through time.

It won't conquer death,

for death is invincible,

yet it will push back

death's triumph

for the moment

of reading,

will hid a fragment

of the sentences

in your mind,

refugee from my

act of writing.

It will die

when you cease

to be,

it will be dead and gone

when your mind

is with mine

in the cool dust.

For death

is invincible.

21.03.2021

DEATH TRIUMPHANT

Once dead, 

we shall not

be resurrected.

Yet, something

of us lives on

in those

who remember us,

and although life renewed

is denied,

we shall die again

with the death

of each one

who knew us.

Thus death

triumphs over us

until

there is none

to hold a slice of

our life in

themselves.

21.03.2021

FACING THE TRUTH ABOUT OURSELVES

Sometimes, without touching

them, we become Hell

for the people we truly

love the most;

we would die for them,

and yet, we

drive them

to their deaths.

20.03.2021

FOOLISH, FATAL WORDS AVENGED IN THE PASSING OF TIME

Feeling mortal today,

but having failed others

this is a fight I can face

with stubborness:

Bring it own.

31.03.2015

COSMIC ENTROPY: THE MILKY WAY

A spiral of stars

spinning, spinning

in the void,

becoming the void.

23.06.2013-16.03.2021

THERE ARE SECRETS BEYOND THE LAST BREATH

There are secrets

beyond the last breath,

unknown to those

whose beating heart

hides the siren voices beyond flesh;

beyond the chains of blood and bone,

beings older than life itself,

wounds carved across

the fabric of all matter

in the torment of the birthing universe,

call for the dying;

in the silence of the

stilled heart, brain starved

out of oxygen, their voices grow

into a thundering call, as they await,

hungering, these gaping maws

ripped into cosmos, luring

with what could wait beyond,

those intelligences who are fading

back to the non-sentient cosmos.

Paradise and Hell await,

they promise and remind

that all who shall not pass

through their galaxies-wide

mouths shall cease

to be in this universe of death.

There are secrets beyond the last breath,

yes, and lies;

as the people in white

step aside from my death bed

and shake their heads

to unheard questions,

and I let myself go, fleeing

in an aeon-long flight

to the calling voices,

I know, in my existence

beyond flesh and bone,

that no Paradise can wait

in what lies beyond

the patient maws.

I have lived, and know,

as all humans will,

that all hope betrays,

that fear carries truth,

and what has slashed rifts

through this universe

of disappointment

surely must be worse.

Yet I go, desperate, for

near-eternity of flight

in the cold wastes between stars,

is existence, as well, even

if at the end we will be

devoured in Hell.

13.-15.03.2021

GRAVEYARD AT WINTER

A candle flickers in the darkness

of the graveyard,

a light like life

amid the long lines of death in stone

with names and dates

reminding the living

that all that begins will end.

A candle flickers in the darkness

of the graveyard,

a light like all these lives

that danced

in the cold gloom of years,

and faced the the darkness which,

unlike this night, shall not end.

13.03.2021

ON THE GRAVEYARD

 One more ghastly mistake,

a desecration,

and the blood on the snow

beside the broken glass & cross

being own

is a scant consolation.

This is how they suffered & died,

well-meaning mistakes

breaking lives

like the cross and the glass

on the headstone

shattered.

13.03.2021

THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST

In the end, the gods abandon

even themselves;

so who are you, mere mortal,

to complain

the fate that they have cast

over your life,

turning their grim gaze away,

even as the dice

still kept rolling across the years?

Now, it's still -

seek solace in the clarity of the end,

in the iron

certainty of your defeat.

12.03.2021

ONE DARKNESS

1

 In March the evenings

are already long;

at six it's not yet dark -

except inside

human abode & mind.

2

Outside trees become

black paper-cuts on

the gray-white background

of snow and cloud,

birch, pine and fir

mingle darkly in the gloom,

with wind moving their branches

weave the black

cloth of night

3

In March the evenings

are already long;

yet at half past six

the black trees merge

into one darkness.

12.03.2021

ARGO

We, like the ship Argo,

throughout our existence

replace ourselves

atom by atom,

cell by cell,

pretending

that we still remain

the same individual,

here,

on the shore

of life,

imagining

that

it was us

who used to sail

the wine-dark sea.

12.02.-11.03.2021

THE LIVING ABANDON THE DEAD

 For their own sake,

or so they tell themselves,

the living abandon the dead.

Yes, they will remember them,

even after time has brought years

between their last meeting,

yet they will shie away from the facts

of death, the moments of pain

and desperation, when then the still living

loved one faced their end in fear.

The living abandon the dead,

and turn away from contemplating

those long moments of confusion

and utter helplessness,

when the mind fights to comprehend

and, with the body, tries to survive.

If the dead would indeed have but survived,

the now living could, with them, face

those moments as a shared experience;

but when the loved ones stopped breathing,

when their hearts stopped beating,

when their brains were starved of oxygen

& all their decades of memories,

their very being,

ceased to exist,

then a chasm opened

between those who, until then,

had been connected through

the entire life of the now solitary living.

It's a chasm that could be faced, if not crossed,

a chasm in which the living could gaze & see

the true price of being alive, to be paid at the end,

could see their own folly, shame and guilt,

and their own inevitable passing

from existence to oblivion.

Yet, the living turn away

from the dead in betrayal,

in anguished mix of guilt & grief,

as others in the flow of time will turn away -

as they themselves know -

from the yet unopened

chasms that shall come to divide

their own last moments

from the continuing lives of those,

with whom they still share

this plane of precarious existence.

For their own cowardly sake

the living abandon the dead,

refuse to acknowledge the sheer horror

of the all-engulfing death,

as only madness

could protect the brave

from all-shattering sorrow.

Yet there would be

freedom of honesty

in embracing the madness

as a price of love &

having been loved.

For this unforgivable,

essentially human, betrayal

which they pass onwards,

no one else shall fully face

the magnitude of their own coming end

after it has devoured them.

The living shall abandon us all

before the all-ending death.

06.03.2021

WHEN CHANCES ARE NOT TAKEN

What we once were,

we shall never be again;

those people have gone beyond

time's event horizon,

and are lost to us.

What we could have been,

we shall never be.

We, in our fear to live,

forsook the paths

which allow modest promise

to briefly bloom - and

slowly wither in a long,

forgiving autumn.

To us is left solely the regret

of the unbirth of the people

we could have become,

the passing of the those

we once were, those

who could have been

their cocoon.

05.03.2021

GUILEFUL

 Dictionaries are, according to the

pornography blocker on my browser,

full of porn. Licentious, wanton words

that must be hidden, so that their

salacious promise of delights

of the mind won't corrupt us.

Even in the most innocent-appearing

words the app can detect

the lure of mental joys of the unchaste

kind, hiding them behind

a yellow emoji eunuch

allowing no passage.

05.03.2021

TWO DAYS OF JOY

To PRC

The voice has again fallen

silent, which briefly brought joy

leaping into my mind, brushing

aside the the terrible year;

I should never have hoped

or asked for more than this

- this was happiness restored.

If only I would have not

reached for more, and would

have allowed the last years be

like these hours of pure delight.

01.03.2021