ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND NINETY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

We are living 1914 in 2023.

 You have to ask, you have to ask,

how come those now gone mad

are not held by medics and given calming

words, an appointment to a psychiatrist,

and perhaps a long  rest in a hospital

with an understanding staff, but instead

allowed to still stand before the press

and tell their mad outpourings,

call them policy, and their words

still listened to and spread like

reverenty they wouldn't have gone

utterly mad? And now armies

moving under their command -

you have to ask, you have to ask

how many of us have gone mad

for us to let the insane to do this?

26.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

GAZA ACCORDING TO JOE BIDEN

The genocide is given

a go-ahead, the genocide

is denied, all the dead

are living, the truth is

a lie, and the rotting

bodies made with AI,

- and anyway, they had

it coming, it was their

shared crime to

be victims.

25.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse  

GENOCIDE JOE

Joe Biden goes full genocide denial

and instead of challenging him,

US journalists just repeat his lie,

and so the lie becomes 'truth'

to millions, who will repeat

it, claiming it must be true

for a president won't lie.

25.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

WHAT IS NOT AND SHALL NOT BE

Take the meds with sugarless juice

as you wait for the coffee to drop,

break the night's silence with music,

sit down, drink your mugs of coffee

reading something, anything, for when

you lie down to sleep she shall come,

enticing and reminding what should

be, is not and shall not be.

11.06.-25.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND NINETY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

Dared not live, knew it pointless to die,

that existence is superior to oblivion,

something to nothing. that it doesn't

matter whether we live or whether

we founder, time's great careless

hand will us erase, and all will

be peace and all will be nothing.

25.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

WILFRED OWEN(1893-1918)

Can one feel truly sorry towards one

who twice volunteered for the fields of death,

and was shot? How far should our sympathy

reach, when a man accepts death as a choice,

and it comes and gives him its leaden

sting on the tranquil canal's shore

which, like Lethe, granted oblivion?

When Paris dies the death he choose,

why should we mourn? He had his choice.

25.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF WHAT REMAINS OF PALESTINE

At some point

you really need

to stop blaming

the victims

and start blaming

the occupiers.

24.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND NINETY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

 Did I look out yesterday

to see if any of the snow

remained, if new had

fallen? I have a memory

of looking out of the kitchen

window, but did it happen

yesterday or the day before?

The days blur, it doesn't

matter, we have seen

snow fallen on so many

October days, a memory

ten or thirty years ago

would be as good, there

was snow, it melted,

it will fall again.

24.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

2885 DEAD AND MISSING CHILDREN

2885 dead and missing children

in Israeli occupied Palestine's besieged Gaza,

and the world leaders tell us that the killer

of children wouldn't hurt a fly, if he

wouldn't be 'defending himself'.

23.-24.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND NINETIENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Soon midnight, long

dark and the hours

just went by in images

of destruction and death,

of broken bodies, lives

ended, and for what?

So that occupiers

can have their revenge

for having had to taste

what they have made

the occupied to drink

every day for 56 years.

23.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

OCTOBER'S FIRST SNOWFALL

To be away from mass death

I translate and write this afternoon,

bleak and chill and wonderful,

the first day when winter makes

its advance on autumn's gates,

when fallen leaf and snowflake

fight, and no human blood

stains the muddy ground.

22.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

THE OLD POETS

 Sometimes you muse whether the old poets,

raised from their slumber to see the books piled

on your desk, the scribblings you've made on

paper and the screen, would say, "You are one

of us," with a curt nod, or whether they would

state, with mild disdain in their voice, "You are

one of them, now let us rest on those pages,"

and turn away. You wonder, and you go and read

again their words that speak while the tongues

are gone, and then you let it be; you translate

and you write, and snow falls behind the panes

and the day grows old and you grow old.

22.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

I watch snowflakes fall

across the grim dim October

afternoon, and remember

how yesterday the fields

now growing white were

golden in the sunlight

and the now black forestline

was softly green and inviting,

and it was twenty-one hours

ago, and weeks past.

22.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CONSTANTINE CAFAVY

An old poet, minor bureaucrat,

sacrificed fame seeking pleasure

of the forbidden kind, now too old

for that one thing he had lived for,

for which had sacrificed greatest

gift, for bodies that wouldn't

surrender without coins

exchanging hands. And now

it was in the past, his life

another old story to recount

in verse, for others to publish,

about failing to rise to meet

the challenge of one's gifts.

11.06-21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TO YOU ALL

Alive, we already rest

pieces in all the graves

whose inhabitants

were more our flesh

than the hand that

writes this.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

TARA

One year, so long a time ago,

and so short a time ago,

one year, one year,

eternity in a heartbreak.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

ALARM PHONE AND RSQSHIP VERSUS THE EUROPEAN UNION

450 people in a fishing boat

in danger on the Mediterranean,

and Europe again refuses to save,

believing the 600 it drowned

off Pylos forgotten already

in their watery grave into

which Europe threw them.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

MASSACRE IN NUSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP

In Nuseirat refugee camp's market

another massacre, at least 16 dead,

others in the ruins, and our leaders

declare how they stand with Israel,

whose 43 earlier victims were buried

nameless in a mass grave today.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

COFFEE AND PEA SOUP

Beside the heater, the cat

groans in sleep, and beside

the coffee machine and

the kettle I wait for my own

warmth to drop and boil.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

PUT DOWN YOUR WORDS

 Put down your words

from the pocket of your

mind to paper, for words

unused become words

lost, dropped on the road,

never to be found.

What you are will live 

in those written words,

and the stranger coming

resident in your flesh

must know who you were,

before they, too, pass.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FROM MORNING STAR TO EVENING STAR

Timeless, the October night

one long stretch of dark,

and the autumn hours of

light one quick sprint from

morning star to evening star.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

US, LONG BEFORE THEY CAME

Long before we came,

the star shining bright

now to our eyes

was dead; long after

we are gone, the star

shall shine bright

over those unborn.

On some other sky

our faintly glowing Sun

pointed out and told

to have a habitable planet,

an abode for life - and in

that sparkle on a cold

alien sky, this moment, us.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

Two days ago in the Nour Shams refugee camp

on the occupied West Bank, Israel killed

thirteen people, ten of them in an air-strike,

and four of them children. It was barely

noticed outside occupied Palestine.

Now imagine it would have taken place

in an Israeli town, the victims Israelis.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOKKU IV

The first taste of coffee

in the darkness of the night

tastes as good as the last one

in golden sunlight of eve.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOKKU III

The sun doesn't blaze

any less fiery now that

it glows on other skies.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE FIRST TIME

If we never step

again in the same river,

never wading in waters

whose touch we felt before,

then all things

we do, all the feelings

we have, are the first

time, the first experience.

Rejoice in this rebirth.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOKKU II

Rays of Sun blazing

on a cold October day,

such warmth.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOKKU I

Warm colours of

sunlight on a cold

October afternoon.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LIGHTS THAT KEEP AWAY THE DARKNESS

...the depth of the stars stays always constant

and we are able to sleep, at least for now,

beneath the straining wall of darkness.

Ted Kooser(1939-): Telescopes(2004)

The lights that keep away the darkness

of a hundred years have burned constant

thirteen billion years. and remember:

The stars burn for you as much

as to Galileo when he gazed through his

scope and saw the moons of Jupiter,

the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus,

and the glimmer of the Milky Way

as hundred billion fires burning,

now flaming as bright to you as him.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ENTOMB THE HORRORS OF OUR AGE IN THE DEEP BOSOM OF THE EARTH

We need to silence the "common man"

it seems, until we can recognize

"the common woman" from a puppet

that dances according to the movement

of racist billionaires' fingers - and until

we have the billionaires put aside,

like spent nuclear fuel, somewhere

safe and deep, with terrible warnings

to last ice ages in human memory.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ADRIATIC MEMORIES

Now silent waves break

high on once swimmed shores

and from the clear and blue

you see them on the sands,

the people you think you

would give all and gave

nothing, beyond a candle.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON AN OCTOBER AFTERNOON

Better to think about frivolous things,

let the senses guide, not the keen

mind that build a narrative of life;

take a mug of coffee outside

into the golden, cold land of light,

watch steam rise from the mug,

your breath vaporize, make

a hokku of that, warm in your

coat; think not of the year

ago heartbreak, the loss of living

things, how the known world

grows ever smaller, as for an

ancient mariner, yet never leaving

the shore where wrecked, your

circumnavigation these decades;

the mapped seas, now shallow

and their monsters slain, close,

and existence languidly folds on

itself - into these gold, cold days

and starry nights, into bleak

hours wrapt in gray haze, silence

that follows the last migrating bird's

call. Now just think of fleeting things,

embed in them in this, your momentary

being, let the sharp and broken whole

be; all that exists beyond heartbeats

when a mug of coffee is drank, your

hands feel the chill - let that be,

among long autumn's fallen leaves

think about frivolous things.

21.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

1668 dead children,

hundreds in the rubble,

and... we still hear

the old song about

the occupier just

defending itself.

20.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

The occupation is the cause.

The people with the guns

they are the symptoms.

Remove the cause,

end the occupation,

you remove the symptoms.

It's a choice, made

every day, not to

choose peace.

19.-20.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Cold, cold day, and

the night colder still,

like living inside a

human heart.

18.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TO THE POLITICIANS: ISRAEL, LEBANON AND PALESTINE

If 7000 deaths are not enough

to call for a ceasefire, then how

many human sacrifices are needed

for the thirst of the blind rulers

of the Earth to be satisfied,

for their desiccated hearts

to start to beat again, to

the rhythm of lives slain?

17.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

White clouds floating on

the blue sky, rippling waters

of autumn suspend the trees

in their fall foliage between

their own liquid movement.

16.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TO A PHOTOGRAPH

White clouds float on

the blue sky; below,

the autumn waters ripple.

16.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AUTUMN MEADOWS

Withered, the summer

meadows, and now wind howling

where birds sang, departed.

Below skies of gray the fall

rustles under our feet.

16.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

The old house creaks

in the wailing autumn

wind, adds its own

lament to the wind's

chill mourning

for the summer

that was.

16.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

Genocide isn't

self-defense.

Genocide is

genocide.

15.-16.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

There is the ebb and flow

of the barbarians,

the foam on the waves

crashing on the sharp rocks

of eternally eroding history,

while the sea remains, deep

and on its silent floor,

the bones rest and give life.

14.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CONDEMN ALL THE KILLINGS IN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

Those who condemn only the killing

of the occupier's people attack those

who condemn the killing of the occupied

also; to the former the moral high ground

is an illegal colony, a segregated

gated community, a military tower

with a robot machine-gun on the top.

For they abhor peace and embrace

oppression, copulating with it

to beget mass murder and war crimes.

13.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

PEACE AND AN END TO OCCUPATION

Not been outside the entire day,

raging inside the digital space

against a genocide, watching

numbers of the dead to rise,

and angry that the call for peace

and an end to brutal occupation

is something that is beyond

the pale for 'Western' leaders,

who, like sharks, have tasted blood

and now want more and more.

13.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

Yesterday I sat in a library

reading Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus

through once more, while

cloud and wind and sun

danced their game of change

outside, and in Palestine

blood flowed like water

after the storm the night before.

13.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTIETH DAY OF THE YEAR

The less people know, the more

they support the butchery

by the Apartheid state, repeating

the few bits of propaganda

they have memorizerd, dismissing

facts and calling for mass death.

This is how genocides happen.

12.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

The Brian Keatings come smugly

to admonish the Carlo Rovellis,

claiming that nowhere have been

shed as much tears for Palestinian

blood as in Israel, when Israel

has killed 300 people today.

11.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

Israel was created through terrorism.

Folke Bernadotte, Deir Yassin, Tantura.

Israel exists through state terrorism.

10.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Those who don't call for the immediate end

of the Israeli occupation of Palestine 1967

have no right to criticize armed resistance

to 56 years of brutal military occupation,

for if you refuse the solution to bloodshed

you have no right to cry over spilled blood.

09.10.2023

#Poem #Poemns #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Like on every single day in the last 56 years,

Israel can end the deaths and the whole conflict

immediately by accepting peace

on the pre-1967 Green Lines.

And like for every single day in the last 56 years,

it refuses to do so.

07.10.2023

#Poem #Poemns #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Germany in support of 56 years of brutal

military occupation and 74 years of Apartheid,

and current bloodshedding.

Germans think they can wash Jewish blood

from their hands with Palestinian blood.

07.10.2023

#Poem #Poemns #Poetry #Verse

SECOND POT OF COFFEE TODAY

Second pot of coffee today,

first this morning, and how

I need it, eleven degrees

Celsius has never felt

so cold as now; the ice

inside the flesh doesn't

melt in the radiance

of the autumn's sun.

06.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AT AUTUMN MORNING'S BRIGHT AND GOLDEN LIGHT

The morning, in bright and golden light, 

brings an illusion of warmth, the crackling

of yellowed leaves in the solar fire. Yet

what good is this abundance of cold light

when it doesn't find your ivory form, your

shivering flesh, nestled beside mine? 

I'm an aged tree that carried few leaves

and cast them all at the first chill wind

that came blowing from the north.

06.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THOSE NOW LOUDEST WILL STICK THE KNIVES DEEPEST

Same 'Western' politicians who now

endlessly cry about the plight of Ukraine

strangle long oppressed nations

together with their invaders and occupiers

between pilgrimages to Kiev,

and the foolish Ukrainians think

these soulless ghouls, moral

black holes, will stand with them

until the end of time, that

they are special when no other

threatened nation is, because

these weathervanes told them so.

Yet they will get the same

knife in the back and front when

these voids of humanity decide

its "Time for hard decisions."

06.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE COLD AUTUMN MOONLIGHT

Spaziergang in der Abenddämmerung(A Walk at Dusk, c. 1830-37)

by Caspar David Friedrich(1774-1840)

Now this is a painting into which

one could walk content to

become paint under the Moon

and the wandering star, forever

contemplating the landscape

in some appropriately antiquated

clothing, or become bones under

the dolmen, bones which we 

don't see, from here outside, Yet,

they are there, the dead present

under the stone, and the lone

robed man feeling the bones

inside his own withering flesh

shiver in the cold autumn

moonlight. But his is the long

old age of painted things,

the slow, slow flaking

into oblivion.

06.10.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse