THE MEASURE OF LIFE

Life is not measured

by the passage of time,

the accummulation

of growth ring years,

life is measured by the gain

and loss of accompanying lives

of which our own

has been built.

01.06.2026

LIFE IS NOT MEASURED BY THE PASSAGE OF TIME

It slips away,

life,

not in time

but in lives.

31.05.2026

THE END OF MAY

The end of May

all birdsong

in warm, 

soft gloom.

31.05.2026

ONLY SUPPORT FOR GENOCIDES CAN MAKE AMENDS FOR A GENOCIDE, ACCORDING EUROPE

Because Europeans killed Jews

for being Jews until 81 years ago,

culminating in the Holocaust,

the Europeans declare

that the European Union must support

Israel genocidal Apartheid regime

and Lebanese and Palestinians

must lose their lands,

must lose their lives.

because Europeans killed Jews,

because Europe feels guilty

it allowed a genocide,

because it carried out genocide,

didn't stop a genocide

it must now support genocides,

as only genocides

can make amends for a genocide,

supporting lesser Israeli atrocities

for 78 years

simply isn't enough for Europe,

say the Europeans with their actions.

30.05.2026

EUROPEAN UNION'S MESSAGE TO LEBANON AND PALESTINE

European Union doesn't bother

to do anything to stop Israel's daily attacks

in Palestine and Lebanon,

according to the Union occasionally

saying its concerned or deeply concerned

is enough for people whose lives

don't truly matter, unlike those

of Israeli Jews in their segregated, illegal colonies

or the Ukrainians with their right pigment,

their right religion,

their right geographic position,

the right invader.

To Ukrainians nothing is too much

in the form of support

according to the European Union,

but for the Lebanese and the Palestinians

the Union's message is

Stop resisting.

Give up your arms.

Give up your lands.

Give up your lives.

30.05.2026

SOMBATH SOMPHONE(1952-?)

People being trapped in a cave in Laos

are bigger news in Finland and in the Western world

than any wars except the one in Ukraine

(all other wars have as victims people

with the wrong pigment or wrong religion

or their killer is Israel) -

or the human rights situation in Laos.

Those missing in cave get more attention

than rural activist Sombath Somphone, missing

for 13 years, 5 months and 15 days, has gotten

since he was last seen, at a police checkpoint

in capital Vientiane, and no brave rescuers

have penetrated the cave of official silence

in which Sombath Somphone disappeared.

30.04.2026

TO MY LATE MOTHER ON HER BIRTHDAY

The summer night as dark

as it will get,

your birthday closing,

it would have been seventy-five

today, but forever fifty-eight,

and soon,

seventeen years separating

when that other day arrives,

ever widening time,

ever widening

from that last day

until closing

in time's final dissolving.

29.05.2026

A BIRD NESTING

A dim summer morning

of dark green

light

reminding

of some lost day hovering

on the edge of recollection

like a bird nesting

in the dark green

foliage

unmoving

when gaze sweeps over it.

27.05.2026

ON BEING INTERRUPTED

Interruption is welcomed,

more than that, invited -

things left unfinished,

messages unsent

fill be there waiting

afterwards, to be picked

up, completed, send,

but an interruption

that could have been

yet never came

was a child of a single

moment, never to arrive.

A stranger sibling

will take its place,

with air of kinship,

yet not the same.

27.05.2026

ON THE DEATH OF T. E. HULME

Can't lament much

that T. E. Hulme

stood when others

threw themselves

on the ground

when the shell came,

him being a man

of the extreme right.

If only that Austrian

corporal would

have done the same

service to the world

as the English lieutenant did.

But in some wretched

corner of the multiverse

they divided Europe between them.

26.05.2026

UP IN THE BLUE AIR

The distant sound of an airplane

above, gaining altitude,

reminds me at first

not of childhood dreams

of flying, nor of actual flights

that came, but of the airplanes

above Gaza and Lebanon,

lives being stolen,

the indifference that allows it;

the glimmering metal high

in the blue reminds me

even of the Australian Foreign Minister

last week praising Israel

as an "ally and a friend"

against a background of bombed cities

and towns spreading as a wastelands

of destruction. Perhaps

that plane flies to a Levantine 

destination near the cities and towns

being bombed, with its cargo

of people sharing the air

with pilots with cargoes of missiles

and bombs, death from above

to drop on cowering civilians -

because Apartheid Israel

has been raised above all

morality, above all

the once so important

laws of humankind, separate

from them like the white 

half-sphere of the Moon,

hanging in the blue hollow,

is from the Earth.

26.05.2026

AS DISTANT AS T'ANG CHINA

Du Fu's little daughters

playing with their mother's make-up

in wartime squalor

and you think

it could easily

be Burma, Kinshasa's Congo, Lebanon,

Palestine, South Sudan or Sudan

now

and think of the people surviving

through small joys

like returning Du Fu's gift

to his wife

and the so many,

so many people

who don't care,

to whom Burma, Kinshasa's Congo,

Lebanon, Palestine,

South Sudan and Sudan

are as distant as T'ang China

breaking apart in a storm of war.

25.05.2026

THE STATE OF THE WORLD 2026

The world

bleeding on a stretcher

and paramedics

laying around it

shot dead.

25.05.2026

READING POETS DEAD FOR THIRTEEN CENTURIES

Words of the dead

alive so it matters

not that of them

themselves

not a bone

remains.

They were

not their flesh,

what their skulls

briefly hid,

but their words -

and the words

speak with a swift

tongue, not dust

not flesh

but verse.

25.05.2026

WHAT WILL SURVIVE

The archaeologist in 3026

will read cuneiform tablets,

not emails,

will not listen

to audio books

but to the voice

of the Akkadian,

the Sumerian,

the Elamite.

25.05.2026

NONPAREIL

The brain is her best part,

she tells, but truly

the rest are equal

and all are consummate.

25.05.2026

OCEANIC

The world rolls

ever onwards

in billowing waves

until in the sunset

dead calm

25.05.2026

CONCOCTION

Bright sunny day

sunlight made

a house of mirrors

for memories

distorted beyond recognition

all one truly remembers

is the light and colour

the familiar shapes

and voices failing

to solidify whirling

in your mind chimeric

25.05.2026

CEMETERY WORLD

The past never buries

its own dead

and the ever-fleeing now

digs ever deeper graves

graves

that are filled

only by the final future

freezing in place

at THE END.

25.05.2026

THE FUTURE IS ALWAYS JUST OUT OF REACH

The past is not even the past,

it was remarked,

and the future

is not even the future,

but a mirage

that makes us drag

the past through

ever-present now.

25.05.2026

THEY ARE AMONG US

I'm too busy, I have no time

to care

             about a genocide,

some say

with self-pitying bitterness,

and others

I can't care what happens there,

my own life is troubled

enough as it is,

this is them

being 'polite',

pretending,

as elsewhere bulk

of these

reminiscence

how they read Anne Frank's Diary

at school

and later read and watched

Sophie's Choice

&

Schindler's List

how they were,

still are,

deeply touched by those,

wonder

how it was to life through

it, how it would affect,

and yet they

write FAFO

as a reply

to images and videos

of the bodies of murdered

children, 

bodies hanging

from bombed houses

entombing entire families

get, accompanied with a laughing

emoji, October 7th!

as a comment.

19.-25.05.2026

THE NEW ILLITERATES

Affected by what we read

we filter sustenance,

whales swimming

in a sea of words

but the youth...

they beach themselves

on the siren sands.

22-25.05.2026

EMILY

The only way you could

write yourself

out of Amherst

was to posterity,

a marriage to readers

unborn on a bed of ink.

25.05.2026

LOST THINGS CLOSE

Lost things hidden

close hard to find,

and none closer

or harder to rediscover

than those lost

in the internal shadow

of our eclipsing selves.

25.05.2026

THE AFTERLIFE OF EMPEROR VALERIAN

Skinned and stuffed,

the emperor as a trophy,

a beast from the battlefield,

we are told,

Roman on a Persian pedestal

Valerian stood.

A myth, almost certainly,

a footnote advices,

the likely fact

exiled at its Tomis

fornlornly writes its letter.

25.05.2026

YET

Words after words

and behind words

nothing but words

- no core of flesh

under their skin.

18.05.2026

THE SOLE MASK

Behind the mask

there is nothing

for the mask

was all there was.

Nothing hidden

and yet

nothing.

Not even

a second mask.

18.-25.05.2026

 

TAKING THEIR OWN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEM

Cuba matters vastly more

than some Ukraine

or Russia -

corrupt East European

rightwing states

are dime a dozen.

Let them fight

and fall or not

if Cuba survives

as the hope

it has been

these decades.

And those

who disagree

can go and die

wrapped in whatever

flag of Eastern Europe

fits their fashion style.

18.05.2026

LIGHT AND SHADOW

Late evening,

the light fading

rays still shining

on the ridge

beyond the valley 

shadows here.

17.05.2026

CONTINUITY

The sand garden

remains the same

even when raked

again and again

so why not human

beings to stay true

through constant change

17.-18.05.2026

AS IT SHOULD BE

The deepest hours of the night,

the outer dark there still

is, and the inner

not lacking even in light.

18.05.2026

SACRIFICIAL KING

Fools are fools even

when they are briefly made

to play the role

of a sacrificial king

and buy the illusion

the throne is theirs

while the king waits

for the danger to pass

and the fool

to be a fool again

and led to the chamber

where he dies.

18.05.2026

SILENTLY

There's this drive

to write,

like it would matter.

But it doesn't,

not if there is no one

to write for.

Then it's just

talking to

yourself, silently.

17.05.2026

THE WESTERN CAPITALISTS

They spoke of freedom

while they plotted

the enslavement of humanity,

every word they spoke

of democracy and liberty

a lie spelled by a forked

tongue extending

from the cavity

where conscience

should have been

and where wailed

hurricane winds.

14.05.2026

THE CREATION OF 'POPULIST' FAR-RIGHT'S POPULARITY

"We want fascists! We want fascists!

We want fascists! We want fascists!"

scream the journalists
and declare:

"The voters want fascists!
The voters want fascists!"

10.05.2026

THE PARENTAGE OF THE WESTERN FASCIST

The Western fascist

has two parents,

a billionaire begetter
and journalist the nurturer
who brings to foul bloom
the rotten seed.

10.05.2026

THE LEAVES OF YESTERYEAR

Dark the land

bright an hour ago

from spring gloom.

Faded pale green

spring day autumn

light in clouds.

Sun covered

spring covered

by clouds

you see clearly

the fallen leaves

of an another

summer 

you missed.

12.05.2026

FAILURE

You would change the past

and you would change the future

and you know only one

                                        is possible,

but here you are,

in the now, 

                    caught

in the web of the unalterable

past, 

         sacrificing the future

for what is hard bedrock

now for all 

that could come.

12.05.2026

THE ROLE GIVEN

All the hours not enough

for what the world demands,

the world deserves,

amplifying truths

from more learned mouths,

more sharp-seeing minds.

12.05.2026

READING DU FU

The world turns dark outside

as you read Du Fu, waiting

for your blood test, bright
colours dimming, and Du Fu
sitting in the dark, red glimmering

in his stove fading

as he writes in the air
for you.

12.05.2026

IF YOU WOULD HAVE SUPPORTED CHECHNYA

If you would have supported Chechnya

against Russia in the two wars

you might not have had to cry about Ukraine

these four of twelve years,

depending on the date 

of your conversion to Kyiv's cause,

you who didn't support Chechnya,

you who supported the fall of the USSR,

you who supported Vladimir Putin,

you who now dream of burning Moscow

with the fervent hate of the newly-converted,

you should have supported Chechnya -

but of course you didn't, you couldn't,

because the victims, the Chechens, were 'wrong'

and now, to you racists,

the victims, the Ukrainians, are 'right'

Just like you support genocide in occupied Palestine

and ignore genocide in Sudan and West Papua

because racism 'guides'

what is left of your 'conscience' -

a withered, foul specimen

that condemns you and all you stand for.

13.05.2026

CARE ABOUT GENOCIDE

If you don't care

about genocide,

we won't care

about your Ukraine,

your beloved Ukraine

that you preach to us about

while embracing genocidaires

and ignoring their atrocities.

How's that for you,

shouters of Slava Ukraini!

Care about genocide

or go unheard.

Care about genocide

in East Turkestan,

in Palestine,

in Sudan,

in West Papua,

everywhere.

Care about genocide.

And you will be heard

and you will be supported.

Solidarity creates solidarity.

Care about genocide.

12.-13.05.2026

WHAT REMAINS OF TWENTY HOURS

I slept nearly twenty hours

after getting back home

from the medical centre,

one cavity filled,

one tube filled with blood,

and it hardly seems

twenty hours had passed

wasted between laying down

and getting up,

the same dim light

beyond the windows,

same birdsong

penetrating the old walls,

but there lingered

vague memories

of a dream with dead pets

returned, one after another,

from landscape of loss,

and dead human beings

ever-present, never gone,

in that dream, now reduced

to few images fleeing

as I write and an ache

that remains stronger

than these words

that capture so little.

13.05.2026

THE DEVOURING PAST

The past eats up

all the future

with its mouth,

today,

until there

is nothing left

but the past,

and us

in its tight embrace

of gone years

and heavy soil.

10.05.2026

WAITING FOR SISSI

At half past nine, waiting the urn

outside the veterinarian's office

at the high ridge lakes

on both sides beyond descending

city, one dim silver approaching

gray, the other with a tinge of red,

the blood of the fallen May Sun.

09.05.2026

THEN YOU HAVE TIME FOR WRITING

Writing is what you

do when you have

failed at everything else.

07.05.2026

SHARDIK

You remember days of childhood illness,

dimness outside not shaping

into any particular season,

laying under blankets on a sofa

with a bucket for vomiting

on the floor beside you, drinking

hot blackcurrant juice, reading

Shardik relieved not to be in school,

and the presence of your mother

constant at the edge of the memory

yet not forming into a vision of her,

her words faded beyond hearing,

while you remember the weight

of the book in your hands.

09.05.2026

TIME NOT EXISTING

The past is a graveyard

inside everyone of us,

and we are already

laying in others cemeteries,

under moss-covered headstones

or in nameless graves

wooden crosses long

ago rotted away.

09.05.2026

POETRY IS HOPE

Poetry is hope,

a liverleaf

in the spring

with every line.

07.05.2026

THE BLOCKADE

I need to brew more coffee,

go and sit out in the Sun,

read a bit drinking it

before succumbing to

the need to inform the world

it's bleeding

and dying, denied

saving healthcare

because the border

is blockaded, border

on whose other side

a better future is waiting.

07.05.2026

TRYING TO FIND A PHOTOGRAPH OF POET WILLIAM STAFFORD IN HIS YOUNGER DAYS

The search engines breaking down

in this copper age of the web

think that photographs of William Stafford,

William Styron and Kim Philby

all show the same man -

And who has ever seen them

in the same room?,

a postmodernist amoured

with fabulation machines

and the breaking down

of shared reality

by Fascist billionaires

might quip,

but then,

they would, wouldn't they,

loving the maw of the beast

as it breaks our intellectual bones?

07.05.2026

THE MODERN WESTERN PHILOSEMITES WHO DREAMED OF THEIR ACTS OF RESISTANCE AGAINST THE NAZIS IN DEFENSE OF THE JEWS

They wondered aloud

for decades

what they would have done

if alive

during the Holocaust,

imagining acts

of stoic bravery.

In the last three years

they have answered:

They would have been afraid

of those who stood

against the Holocaust

and opposed them vocally,

demanding they be silenced

and sent to the camps

themselves.

07.05.2026

IF THE WORLD ENDS

If the world ends -

but it has ended

already,

so many times.

07.05.2026

THRASYBULUS' WISDOM

Thrasybulus knew what to do

with all the prominent men tall

standing on their fortunes.

Take a sicle and go

through the field

of humanity cutting.

07.05.2026

ALL THERE IS

Past is past, 

and here is now

all there is.

I sat outside in the morning

Sun drinking foul coffee,

reading James Blish,

a woodpecker

was at work

in the distance

as I went through

infodumps of a future

never to be.

I had a memory

reading Blish

decades and decades ago

when the universe

was a rapture

waiting to unfold.

Past is past,

and here is now

all there is.

I got up, crossed from sunlight

into the cool shadows

inside,

started to translate

a poem by William Stafford

about the universe being one,

and my mind took the line

and went wandering

into this poem.

The universe is one,

in the single moment

there ever is.

Past is past,

and here is now

all there is.

07.05.2026