AN ENDING?

Rain, growing rain

in dim evening, dark

green landscape flowing

away,  grey clouds

unmoving, ominous

- will you be going, forever?

30.06.2024

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A FAIR EXCHANGE

The cat is back

on my chair's armrest

and Germany is 2-0 up

and I don't mind the latter

because of the former.

29.-30.06.2024

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AS IT SHOULD BE

Eros had his bow broken,

his arrows confiscated,

his wing feathers torn

out by one old cat cat,

one ill furball more

important than the base

instincts that drove

such flood of lyrics.

29.06.2024

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GERMANY - DENMARK

Germany - Denmark game, and the cat sits

almost two hours with me, on my chair's

armrest, purring quietly, as we watch two

goals overruled. Denmark scoring an offside

goal and immediately afterwards Germany

getting a penalty from a handball - by the same

poor Dane who had just before 'scored'.

And the cat has seen enough, Germany

is going to win, and he leaves, jumping

down, making his way to the inner foyer.

29.06.2024

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SWITZERLAND - ITALY ON THE HALF-TIME

Switzerland scores, a well-crafted

goal, after slightly dominating the game.

It goes 1-0 to the half-time, and I to

the kitchen to see the ailing old cat, to

make some coffee and a sandwich, while

the breeze that comes from the open

window, the sun and azure sky

speak of some other, happier day

that I have forgotten.

29.06.2024

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SWITZERLAND - ITALY

He used to sit on my lap

as I watched the games

in the qualification groups;

now, less than week, and I

sit alone, the old cat on

staying on his kitchen chair,

seemingly waiting

for his days to end.

29.06.2024

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BESIDE THE OPEN WINDOW, READING

From the open window, a breeze

that makes the heat bearable, as I

read Manyõshū, courtiers and princes,

princes and emperors, empresses

always going somewhere, travelling

if not to some distant province

then to the other world, like the old

cat, sitting on a chair in the kitchen,

might soon do. Leaving longing

those who remain, until they too

snap and break in the wind.

29.06.2024

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NO LIMBLESS STONE, NOR FRAGMENTARY VERSES

No limbless stone will

stand memorial to our

attempts in this brief life,

standing on a pedestal

on some future date,

nor will few fragmentary

verses from our hand reach

eyes set to born when

we are dust; no, only

our atoms will remain,

part of this universe,

yet the ripples we made

spreading, growing into

waves unseen, sculpting,

writing the coming time.

28.06.2024

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JUSTICE AND FREEDOM FOR ALL

1

Israel and the Jews are not

one and the same. No matter

what presidents in Europe

and the United States say,

no matter what the president

and prime minister, the illegal

colonialists, and the occupation

soldiers of Israel say.

Israel stands alone.

The hands of Israel

are solely in blood,

not of Jews.

2

We can't demand Jews to

oppose Israel anymore than

any other human beings.

But all human beings should.

What we can demand, vocally

and in anger, is that those who

"Stand with Israel" stop using Jews

as an excuse for their support

for the slaughter and carnage,

stop putting the Jews between

Israel's occupation forces

and justice, shielding

Israeli leaders from consequences,

 hiding the mass graves, the destroyed

cities, the ethnically cleansed villages,

the illegal colonies and Apartheid roads.

And we must demand, unfailingly,

an end to all those war crimes

and crimes against humanity

by the Israeli regime,

an end to the Genocide,

an end to the Occupation,

an end to Apartheid, and

justice and freedom for all.

28.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE IMAGE IN THE MIRROR HAS CHANGED

Zionists think they can both keep talking

about the Holocaust and commit a genocide,

keep claiming to represent all Jews and be

the victims, and at the same time openly brag

about the atrocities they are committing,

luxuriating in the daily horrors they commit

against their own Palestinian victims.

They don't look at the mirror, where their

image smirks in a German uniform.

28.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE POLITICIANS WHO SUPPORT A GENOCIDE CLAIMING THEY DO IT TO KEEP THEIR VOTERS FEEL SAFE

The assumption that people's ethnic

or religious identity defines their

stance towards an ongoing genocide,

is both wrong and deeply racist.

Yet politicians make that claim basis

of their stance towards a genocode.

These politicians declare they support mass

murder because it supposedly somehow keeps

their own allegedly terrified constituents safe,

that piles of dead children each day

are needed to make members of that

ethnic or religious group feel safe

while seas and oceans are separating

them from the destroyed cities, the starving

people slaughtered daily, from the mass graves

with executed children among cadavers

of adult civilians. Endless genocidal racism

against the actual victims

but also racism towards that ethnic or religious

group that politicians claim to protect

by supporting an ongoing genocide.

27.06.2024

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JOHN FLOREA'S(1916-2000) "MARILYN MONROE READING WHITMAN'S LEAVES OF GRASS"(1952)

A photographic painting of what her life

should have been, just Whitman and art

instead of Kennedy and the fatal limelights.

If you look at the photograph by Ben Ross

of Marilyn reading husband Arthur Miller's

An Enemy of the People, now that's a sexy

photo. You can show it to everyone who

claims love of literature and attractiveness,

sex appeal don't mix, or that people

can't be sexy while fully clothed.

But nothing sexy here, just a person

captured as close to her true herself

as publicity allowed.

27.06.2024

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SOME SORROW BURIED

Sweltering evening,

such a beautiful landscape

from the open window

but a sombre mood,

some sorrow buried

stills the delight.

27.06.2024

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ALMOST AS BRIGHT AS IT WILL GET

So much light

at five am, time

to embrace

sleep &

darkness.

27.06.2024

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REAL MAGIC

The waving of a magician's wand,

then her hand pulling a rabbit out of

a black top hat. But it's not a rabbit!

This time it's a hare. How did

it fit there? A rabbit pulled from

a hat - there's a trick, we're sure,

to explain it all, as much we enjoy

and applaud; but a hare - now that's

certain to be real magic!

27.06.2024

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A BIRD SINGING IN THE WHITE NIGHT

A bird in the summer night

keeps repeating their message,

perhaps it's "My territory!

Keep out!" like 'a populist'

politician, or perhaps it's

"Warning! A fox! Warning!"

like mosques calling in Jenin

when the armoured Israeli

occupation vehicles roll in.

Or perhaps, just for joy.

27.06.2024

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NOT A BADGE OF HONOUR

Posting poems to Instagram

is a good way for me to find

all the grammar mistakes

I failed to notice before.

Yesterday, Yeats. I thought

I had it finally done, having read

it through again and again, and

in the first stanza, an error.

And people had already liked it.

(If I delete, correct and repost, most

usually won't relike.) So what I tend

to do is to quickly bury the poem,

by posting more translations, make it

less likely to appear on timelines, perhaps,

push it farther down on my profile.

But this night, I'm too tired,

so I delay the poem's burial.

I'll let it there, a poem with a scar

unlike those of Prussian duelists

seeking badges of honour on flesh.

27.06.2024

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PERFECTING THE NIGHT

The Moon hangs

bright yellow in the blue,

all the sky a frame

for its sphere of

ancient desolation.

27.06.2024

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EXPECT MISTAKES

A fool will always make the same

mistake, with little variation. He

doesn't learn, it's not in his brain,

nor in his bones, the capacity

to learn from his mistakes. But

you always know what to

expect from him.

27.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A BLOODLESS VICTORY

After a string of successful coups

- Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger... - one

finally fails, in Bolivia. Is this a small

victory, small consolation? It's big

for Bolivia, big for South America.

Coming backs from this would have

been, in these circumstances, hard.

And not one killed, unlike in Peru.

That's much to celebrate in itself:

A bloodless victory. A big victory.

27.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AS HE REJOICED

He requested her and she came, undressed,

picking the pen from his table, holding it before

her face with its cryptic smile, before turning and

letting the pen drop - then slowly bending

to pick it up, followed by his thirsting gaze

drinking in every curve and shape of her figure,

as he rejoiced in her power over him.

26.06.2024

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A RISING WAVE

He feels a rising wave of desire

rolling across his thoughts,

rushing forward towards her shore

- to break into her towering cliffs.

26.06.2024

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AROUSING POETRY

Would an image have made me

gush five hundred poems in three

weeks, like 'simple' words about

a dropped pen have? I doubt it, for

words have special magic, these

casting a spell upon my mind

still rising in a sea of rolling ink

when I run the words through

my mind again, arousing poetry.

26.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

"WHY DON'T YOU POST ABOUT SUDAN"

Not one person in social media who responds

to the images of the genocide of Palestinians

by the Israeli occupation with a reply of

"Why don't you post about Sudan?"

has posted about Sudan, except

to make that reply, when I check.

26.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THOUGHTS AFTER HAVING READ A TRANSLATION OF ALFRED DE MUSSET'S(1810-1857) GAMIANI OU DEUX NUITS D'EXCÉS(1833)

The ending spoils all the debauched fun

that has come before; for Alfred

de Musset's Gamiani ou Deux nuits d'excès

ends in death, just like homosexual desire

later had to end in death or disappointment -

look at James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room -

not fulfillment in sex or love or both, which

made E. M. Forster hide his Maurice

and put away his pen. And de Musset

leaves me in a sour mood, stained

with the ending. Lust must be punished,

virtue must have its day, and I end

up thinking how in Tomasi's Il gattopardo,

after twenty-six years of marriage

to a woman still hysterically in love

with him, seven children sired,

Fabrizio still has never seen

his wife's navel.

26.06.2024

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A HAPPY ENDING

We make our tiny vices flower

watering them with our imagination,

under the shade of our conscience

they grow huge with foul buds,

only to wither before blossoming,

without producing seeds.

26.06.2024

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IF ONLY THERE WOULD BE ONLY GOOD AND BAD PEOPLE

The dilemma of our humanity is

that people are made up of parts

that don't fit. In the same person

there are virtues and flaws, in every

person deemed good there is some

seed of inner darkness, which, if

grown and unleashed, would stain

them evil in other's eyes - beyond

which lie other seeds the world

may yet water. Flaws and virtues

grind against each other, eroding

and shaping personality, under

the surface changing the people

we knew, who we were.

26.06.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

"HOW COULD THE HOLOCAUST BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?"

That so many people support,

that so many people ignore

an ongoing genocide

should end forever

those "How could the Holocaust

be allowed to happen?" questions.

Yet many of the people who support,

many of the people who ignore

an ongoing genocide

have been asking for years and decades,

and are still asking, in midst of a genocide

they support or ignore,

"How could the Holocaust be

allowed to happen?" when they

themselves are the answer.

26.06.2024

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CONSOLATION

Our thoughts can ashame us

only if we still have a conscience

awake. There is that consolation

for errand thoughts that make

us pause and reflect.

26.06.2024

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WOULDN'T IT BE BETTER?

Drawing a clear line between reality

and imagination is all good and fine,

the latter won't cross into the former,

yet wouldn't it be better - for that

thing some of us call the 'soul' - that

the reality would be reflected in

our imagination's surface covering

its vast depths, and that any rogue

wavelet rising there would be stilled

before it breaks that reflection?

26.06.2024

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WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU?

If you vote for those who support genocide

because you claim that those who oppose genocide

make you feel afraid, what does that make you?

If you claim you support a genocide

because you say it's done to make you safe,

or to 'defend' people you identify with,

what does that make you?

A genocidaire.

26.06.2024

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THE DAILY COUNT

Shall we do this still? 14 poems in English today

(including one rewrite) for 581 this month;

7 in Finnish and 77 this month, and one poem

translated today for a total of 65 translated

in June. All written with a pen she dropped.

25.06.2024

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EMBERS OF THE SUN

Distant treeline's fire extinguished, same

bright summer night now from this hillside

through valley to the ridge, dark green fields

running from trees falling black, under

a pale blue sky ending at horizon's pink

and light violet, embers of the sun.

25.06.2024

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RECKLESS HANDLING

He dreamed of her in a forest clearing

at the height of the summer, as lush as the foliage

failing to cover her abundance, bare as

the trees would be in winter cold. A vision

of a goddess fit to strike a mortal man blind.

And suddenly he got very hot, and the dry

undergrowth of his imagination burst in inflames.

22.-25.06.2024

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COULDN'T HANDLE HIS HORSE

 What agonizingly lustful end to his wakefulness

to imagine what they might have done during

those wasted ten years; what did she say about

it again? He would have like to have tested those

words, her claimed endurance, and his imagination

went wild, as mens' do, rode off the cliff like

king Alexander III rushing to his mistress.

18.-25.06.2024

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Poem Poens Poetry Verse

READING EZRA POUND

I was reading Ezra Pound walking

to the bus stop from home, through

a road growing over with forest healing

itself from that old human mark

driven through it. The forest leaned

over me as I walked, read Pound's

youthful Provencal poetry with some

reservation, seeking signs of his

coming Fascism. Perhaps it was

simply the rejection of the modern

world, this adulation of a past

mostly imagined, that was the sign.

Or the forcing of his own vision

over the realities of the past,

of the modern world. The idea

that he could reject and enforce, in

words. It was not a long walk,

I came from the trees and climbed

the small hill to the highway,

walked down to the crossroads

where the bus stop awaited, stood

in the hot sun amid green fields.

If only we could use magic scissors

and cut these poets' prime, before

they went foul, and lift it separate,

separate from those radio broadcasts,

the dusk years in Venice visited

by petty Fascist adorers.

25.06.2024

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MY DYING COUNTY

It's not only that I have grown old

and weary, this place where I live

has grown old and weary with me,

becoming tired with all the sounds

and movements of life, quieting

towards serene stillness.

25.06.2024

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DO IT WITH STYLE

Everyone is a fool, but some

are good in hiding it, and some

others do their foolish mistakes

with impeccable style.

25.06.2024

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THE EDGE OF SUMMER NIGHT

In far distance, trees still stand bright

green, caressed by sunlight, and here,

the shadows have long embraced us,

taking us to the edge of summer night.

25.06.2024

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ITS NOT THAT I HAVE LOST THE DESIRE

Its not that I have lost the desire,

its that I can't find adequate words.

Perhaps I have written too much

in these days about it, but how

could one write too much about

the most delicious thing in life?

25.06.2024

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HUMANITY HAS THE GREAT GIFT OF RENEWAL

I have great sympathy towards humanity.

Like myself, our species has collectively

really made a mess out of its life. Yet

humanity has the great gift of renewal,

its new saplings, acting, can save much of

what is being lost, as we wither and fall.

25.06.2024

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WE SHOULD BE ON OUR KNEES

The Hard-Right and the Far-Right

keep hating immigrants and refugees,

demanding end to immigration, calling

for violence against those in the country,

and everywhere outside the cities in

this great country of theirs there is

great emptiness, silent village streets,

rural roads with house after house

empty, like neutron bombs would

have exploded everywhere beyond

the cities. We should be on our knees

asking immigrants to come here,

into these vast empty landscapes

where human voices have gone silent.

25.06.2024

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WAITING FOR THE BUS AT 16:30

Walking from the store I select the farther bus

stop, the one with the shelter, thinking that in

hot sunshine that might be wise with the perishables

I have in my bags, but the small shelter lies on its back

on the ground. It might have fallen on its own,

somehow, somewhere else, but I have little doubt

that, it happening here, it was someone just taking

out their frustrations or thinking, as much one

can in an alcoholic haze, it to be the 'smart'

thing to do. So I stand there, in the sun.

25.06.2024

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SLOVENIA VS ENGLAND

National anthems. Slovenia versus England.

Of course I'm rooting for the Slovenes.

Sympathetic little country, I remember

their brief war for independence,

and England is England. If not being

able to carry out them any longer

itself, still supporting genocides.

25.06.2024

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ON THE SWIMMING BEACH

I don't have to go ten meters

from the shore and my feet

no longer reach the bottom,

and yet children used to swim

here all day without supervision,

and on the other side of the lake

the factory where their parents

spend their lives labouring,

its halls almost empty.

25.06.2024

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I WENT SWIMMING

I went swimming. Hot day, sunshine, light

breeze, water as warm as ever in that lake.

And just three other people on the beach.

The waves don't erode the shores, yet

time has eroded people from them.

25.06.2024

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THINGS GOING SLOW

I only wrote 11 poems in English today, a day

which I largely wasted, for 567 this month;

3 in Finnish and 70 this month, and 3 poems

translated today for a total of 64 translated

in June. A quiet day almost thrown away.

24.06.2024

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