URSULA VON DER LEYEN

Those cold, icy

German eyes

no trace of empathy,

no sympathy hold,

condemning refugees in

their thousands to drown

on the barbwire shores of

cruel Fortress Europa,

their desperate multitudes

unworthy to that gaze

to be saved, to live.

22.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT HERE ANYMORE

 To my mother and father

The Sun still shines

when the good people

are not here anymore,

the rain falls and

the wind howls

when the good people

are not here anymore.

The clouds part,

the Sun descends

through dusk

into the night,

and the summer stars

glimmer faintly

in the bowl of heaven

above the fallen fields.

Yet the good people

are not here anymore,

and the world

lies dashed,

the sun and the rain

and the wind and

the clouds and the stars

and the fields

all mere broken pieces

of what was once whole,

a sum of our existence, when

the good people were here.

21.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GOOD PARENTS

To my mother  

Only when you

lose them

do you realize

they were

everything.

21.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EROSION

Time erodes

human beings

like it erodes

mountains.

20.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HUMAN BEINGS

We are

what we

lose.

20.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LOVERS OF POETRY

 So few people are reading poems

these days, and especially those

who say they love them.

But then, do lovers of chess

really spend so much time

watching the recordings of matches,

or do they play themselves?

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NEVER OPEN THE DOOR

The sun shone, the air was still,

the trees stood lost in verdure,

and long I watched through

the panes until I opened the door,

stepped outside and stood

under the cerulean sky;

then the wind rose, frigid,

and clouds came, gray,

and filled the sky,

the trees swayed

and droplets fell,

and I turned

and went inside,

and through the panes

watched the long rain fall.

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A SUMMER SCENE

An old black-and-white

cat kills the orange-black

butterfly fluttering behind

the little cabinet in the

kitchen awash with the

light of a sunny

mid-June afternoon.

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE WRECK OF THE GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

A man-boy takes religion

like a robe,

puts it on,

hides the man-flesh,

hides the desire

and the lust,

religion is good for that;

lets religion flow &

flood his poems,

verse another

robe to hide

desire and the lust,

but you have

to flagellate the rowdy

ones to inside

the robe, whip

desire and lust

with the spiked

language

of your own crafting,

keep them girdled;

whip them

and sprinkle them

with religion,

use the whip & verse,

& religion -

keep sprinkling it,

& thus man-boy becomes

damp with religion,

wet from the imaginary

soul to the neurons;

it pours, it gushes, religion -

a deluge of religion,

& no ark to float, he

drowns into it;

but the castaway

desire and lust

make it to the rafts

of the poetry,

escape the wreck

of the sinking Oxford Jesuit

as it goes down.

29.07.2019-20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TO MY PARENTS AND MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS

This morning an azure blue

deepness over lush bright green

expanse, birdsong filling

tranquil air, and I,

I waver between this &

the more substantial moments

remembered it opens,

gateways to the now lost

only thought can traverse,

reaching through arid years

to verdant time they lived,

and I, I was myself yet.

20.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

UNPLATONIC

 This is all there is:

The paintings at the Chauvet Cave,

the banner of Ur,

the mask of Tutankhamen,

the fragments of Sappho,

the Lotus Sutra,

the Riace Bronzes,

the poems of Du Fu,

the galliards of Dowland,

Nicolas Poussin's landscapes,

the improvisations of Bird Parker,

the golden discs on Voyagers.

There is no ultimate reality

hidden behind the one

which we see and live in,

which these would reflect.

No, these are human

achievements, as they are:

Sculpted during brief lives

and cast into the eternity.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

A POEM ONLY BECOMES COMPLETE IN AN ANOTHER MIND THAN THE POET'S

Until the act of reading

by other eyes and minds,

a poem is a mere draft. 

A reader truly makes

the poem, gives it

the finishing touch,

poem being a conversation

between two minds,

one reaching out,

others accepting

on their terms,

shaping it their own.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

WHICH IS RARELY ACKNOWLEDGED

How many deaths

do revenge over

one murder

justify?

The lesson of Hamlet

should be that violence

begets violence

and that revenge

devours lives,

mostly innocent

and some guilty,

while leaving

a void

for a Fortinbras,

at the closing scene,

to fill.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

TO THOSE WHO REFUSE TO VOTE

A person who refuses to vote

in elections is no better

than the person who

votes for fascists.

The fascists

need both their own voters

and those who refuse to vote

to win.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

AT TEN IN THE MORNING

Dim light on

a mid-June morning,

after rain and distant

thunder during the night,

and wind shakes

the deciduous trees

like already poised

to carry their leaves

to rest on damp grass.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

IN MY OUTPOST OF PROGRESS

Like Carrier and Kayerts

down to drinking black coffee

(I have sugar, but not good

for my blood-pressure),

and eating mere rice,

but I have the salt

lacking from them,

and black pepper and

chili sauce to flavour it;

& like Carrier and Kayerts,

the clumsy, unintended

sacrifice of others' lives

on my shredded conscience.

19.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

SACRED 'EUROPEAN VALUES'

 Because we oppose

Russian invasion, occupation

and annexation in Ukraine,

we can, and must,

support invasions, occupations

and annexations

everywhere else.

These are our sacred

'European values'.

18.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

MOTHER AND FATHER

09:39 in the morning

sunshine and blue clouds

landscape in shades of green

and I just can't but feel

that you are still alive

weaved into everything

15.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

AFTER TROUBLED SLEEP

Awoke to the evening,

after falling asleep

to the sound of

an afternoon thunder,

rose up into

gloom and silence,

thunder and rain

passed,

stepped outside

on to the now frail porch

he made so long ago,

so short years ago,

birds silent

in their damp nests,

fresh fragnance

of a nourished nature.

15.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

BLACK COFFEE IN THE MORNING

Ran out of milk

yesterday,

so drinking coffee

black

at 06:24

in the morning,

listening to the

silence outside.

14.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

RESURRECTION IN AMHERST

 To be a

'member of the Resurrection',

Emily Dickinson tells us,

you have to be laid to rest,

covered with satin,

into a tomb made of alabaster.

Thus the Lord,

we have to assume,

knows his own

from the masses

of the undeserving

dead.

14.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ABELL 2146

For two hundred million years

the two galaxy clusters

have been colliding,

one falling through another,

in a cosmic dance of

merging.

In TV they are speaking

of a historic moment,

joining the NATO,

'finally' becoming a

card-carrying member

of the 'West'.

You might think

that's a long time,

two hundred million years,

but it's less than one

trip around the Milky Way

for our itinerant Sun.

13.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AS LONG AS PORN IS THE MAIN TEACHER OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

If we must have porn,

then let us at least

have progressive, realistic

porn, not rape culture

teaching that if you just

force yourself upon women

in the end they will like it,

nor giving boys(and men)

the not funny misconception

that women get an orgasm

if you smear their face

with your sperm.

Let us have down-to-earth,

preaching, teaching porn,

if porn we must have

(and we surely look

like we are stuck with it),

porn that shows

imperfect bodies,

short intercourse,

men with mediocre penises

using condoms, and

how you stimulate a clitoris

before that one

minute intercourse.

13.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AT 05:10 IN THE MORNING

First rays

of the

ascending Sun

on the crowns

of pines and firs

on the ridge

rising above

the young birches

in shadow.

13.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

MID-JUNE MORNING, BEFORE SUNRISE

 The morning dawns

in blue skies, dark green

abundance, and I

wander along the corridors

of memory and remember

sitting in the garden

swing of my grandparents'

back-yard on a distant moment

this reflects; an umbilical cord

to my true self, in that

moment not yet lost,

through the long, withering

years of my autumn.

13.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LISTEN TO THE SILENCE, HUMAN

The pure simplicity

of green in the morning

gloom, it's abundance

in dark hues, gazing

one could think

this morning before

sunrise, pregnant with

rain, is one of burgeoning

life, yet there is no birdsong,

for the insects have dwindled,

and the nests are few,

and the woods and meadows

and gravel roads

have the solemnity

of a graveyard.

11.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NOT BETWEEN TWO VOIDS, BUT INSIDE THEM

If time

is an illusion,

we

are unborn

and dead.

11.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WE

You are

what you

lie.

11.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NEW LIFE FROM NEEDLESS DEATH

Exchanging lives to lives

created live without

begetting, conceiving; others

filled the sudden void

in their lives with

newborn cries.

10.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CAPITALISM

1

If rich people

have enough

that is

enough.

2

If rich people

want more

that is

good.

3

If rich people

don't want

to save

the world

that is just

how it is.

08.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HE LOOKS BACK AT 45

Even now, at 45,

after a lifetime of reading,

I'm amazed by the things

I still don't know -

and recently,

by the things

I've forgotten.

08.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WATCHING THE GRASS GROW

There is no gasoline

for the lawnmowers,

which have been, anyway,

broken for years now.

So I will let the grass grow

all through the summer.

It will make the insects happy -

not so little an Eden for them -

and some good people

will shake their heads

in forlorn disappointment.

08.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BETTER YET, STAND AWAY FOREVER

 Do not reach for the beauty

which doesn't yet recognize itself;

only for the blossom in self-awareness

open, to be a shared joy -

or you shall walk among buds

of roses, crushing them as you go.

09.10.2014-08.06.2022

PINKUS KLAPPER

June 7th 1882 Szyniawa - 17 March 1942 Auschwitz

His gaze

is full of life

eighty years

dead

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

23:56 O'CLOCK

Dark

the birches

and pines

against

gray-blue clouds

of a June night

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

14 DEGREES CELSIUS

Pale pink clouds

at 23:05

somewhere there

beyond the dark green treeline

the Sun

as the planet rotates

away

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

KHERSON 'REFERENDUM'

 What Russia is doing wrong

in annexing occupied

bits of Ukraine,

one after another,

is orchestrating fake referendums;

everyone knows

that the right way to go about

taking over others' land,

casting away their flag

and putting up yours,

is to go to Washington DC,

spend some serious money,

and have the president

of the United States of America

to gift it to you.

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IT'S GROWING INSIDE US

 The dead

are truly dead,

and the living -

they have a seed of

death in their cells.

With each heartbeat,

each breath they take,

their death grows in them,

takes shape, spreads

its web, this fetus

growing to be born,

to be the moment

which ends the mind

which lives always

for the future.

You are the womb

for your own

death.

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ONE DAY THE UNIVERSE WILL ERASE US

1  

We make the mistake

that we think we

are the cosmos,

not born from a Big Bang,

destined for a Big Rip,

but a Steady State universe,

eternal, without an end.

Human hubris.

2

We accept that others,

even our loved ones,

are mortal,

destined to be bones,

ash and dust,

silence in place of voices;

but ourselves

we grant immortality;

our days have no end -

millions of years

of brief lives,

thirty years of misery,

have bred this delusion

in the human psyche,

to make us face

the inevitable

with a comforting lie.

Thus we perish,

amazed.

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

OUTSIDE

Golden light

on green foliage,

late evening,

and finally I am

to become one

with the green and the gold,

making my way

through glimmering dust

with a mug of coffee

and a book on Byzantium

in my hands.

07.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

POURING MILK

In the black night

milk makes light brown coffee,

but who would pour

white light into this darkness?

21.08.2015

life has become a prison

but the only door out of the cell

though unlocked

leads to the scaffold

15.09.2019

IN THE FADED LANDSCAPE, GOLDEN STARS

In the gloom

of the August

afternoon

falling

golden leaves,

battered by the wind,

droplets of yellow

fallen from the tip

of a paintbrush.

03.08.2021-04.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EVENING IN EARLY JUNE

Green and gold

the summer evening,

and deep the shadows

over the young grass

and my troubled thoughts.

03.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

JOHANNES, WESTERN ROMAN EMPEROR 423-425

A hand

will you give

for an empire,

crumbling;

a life

will you give

for a coin

with your image;

a hand and a life

for a diadem

on your brow,

Johannes.

03.06.2022

Johannes, a high ranking civil servant of possibly Goth descent, was declared Western Roman emperor in November 423 after the death of emperor Honorius. He was defeated by Eastern Roman forces and captured in Ravenna in the spring of 425, and  his right hand was then amputated by his captors. After being paraded in public, the deposed emperor was then executed in May or June 425. He is sometimes known in English as Ioannes or John. I'm following here Livius in using Johannes as his name.

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse