TO A POET DEAD IN THE GREAT WAR

He was most concerned

of beauty,

we are told;

world was falling

into war

and his path

to an unglorious death

in uniform,

but he

was most concerned with beauty.

Many ordinary blossom

drenched in blood

became,

briefly,

a red rose.

A thing of beauty,

like silence

after the shelling

when world

was born

anew.

05.09.2018

THE MASTER EXITS TO LIFE

The elderly poet announced, seemingly

relieved and not sounding like giving up,

that the new one would be his last

collection. Odd, how one can give up

what has defined him in the eyes

of others, what has been the public

face of his life for almost seventy years

and act like it was all a burden, and that

leaving it behind, abandoning it made

him none the less, not preparing to die

but go on, to the other parts of his life

the same - like he was calling time

on a hobby he had had enough.

Somehow, we are disappointed,

disappointed and more - betrayed.

Didn't he value his work as much

as we, who have given so much

of us and our time to it down the short

years of our own life, until now

somehow made better by his words

turning to images and part of us.

We expected, took for granted

a death on the battlefield of art;

a final poem on death-bed,

a careful arrangement of final collection

on the eve of death, to be released

posthumously, the final message

received with warmth, longing

and hope of poetry surviving death.

Now he survives his own poetry,

walking away from it, leaving

it in our hands and minds

somehow diminished.

Do what you will,

he seems to say,

it doesn't concern me

anymore.

05.09.2018

DOPPLER EFFECT

A life passes

quickly

in the sound

of the siren

of the ambulance

coming, going.

You never

got as far,

to an ambulance,

like the one

now in balance

between life

and void.

It was all

in my hands

and I fumbled,

no loud sirens

coming, going.

Just your life ending.

05.09.2018

NO MERCY

There is no room

for forgiveness

as long as the dead

don't rise.

Only from their

lips can

come absolution,

only they

can grant

redemption; the

dead who loved

us & paid for it.

31.08.2018

MUSASHI:

Following Eiji Yoshikawa(1892-1962)

Better, the ronin said,

that the old sword-master would have

had no sons; I respected

him, and now

- such a bad end for his family line.

The blade of his sword

glittered red

from the blood of the

late sword-master's sons

laying crumbled at his feet.

30.08.2018

BEYOND THE CONTINUUM

You who read this,

perhaps you think

that you are alive.

Perhaps you think

that I am dead,

reading this.

But you're right

and you are wrong:

We are all dead.

Consciousnesses

adrift in a sealed,

done and finished universe.

30.08.2018

Sunlight

in the high foliage;

the reach

of summer

in late August.

27.08.2018

ON THE CROSS OF LANGUAGE

Through poetry

we redeem

our lives,

through poetry

we resurrect

ourselves.

Someone

just have to

crucify us

first,

someone

just have to

gives us

that kiss of recognition

first.

27.08.2018

HONESTY

I gave you

everything

I didn't

have.

27.08.2018

EMERGING FROM THE EGG

It's almost seven a.m.

and I am walking outside

with three garbage bags

taking them to

the trash container.

Getting my mail

back in. Haven't

checked it in twelve

days. Haven't

been out in five

days. Like

breaking through an

egg-shell

from the inside,

but nothing

to imprint myself

but the morning mist.

27.08.2018

THE HUMAN CONDITION

We are sacks of watery flesh

fearing the coming drought

when dry bones

crumble to dust.

29.08.2018

THE CHURCH JUDAS MADE

Every Jesus

needs his Judas

more than his

Saint Peter and

Saint Paul.

On Judas' kiss

the Church of Jesus

was built.

26.08.2018

06:42 am

Mist on Sunday

morning, night

fades

to gloom. August

fading,

gray clouds

above dark green

treeline, autumn

rains

will come, cold

water

mud and fallen

leaves, fallen

lives.

26.08.2018

THE WINE DARK SEA

The sea, an abundant

graveyard of

bones

once clothed in flesh

and driven

by thoughts

less than the sand

in which they rest

to cross the depths

with sail

and oar

to shores rising

from the

imagination as

the horizon. How

many trips

over the dark

waters

until the

storm, the

mistake -

the wrong island,

the shoal

the rocks and the splintering wood.

Few of

them could swim.

The rocky

shore

rose deep

for those who could.

So, scattered

bones amid

olive oil amphorae,

a stone anchor

resting beside

the bones;

it bounds

them to the hull

of life

that was.

25.08.2018

CAT IN TIME

The cat lives

for the moment,

nibbling a book

on the chair

that belonged

to my father.

He rarely

sat in it.

The bell

around the cat's

neck chimes

as he moves.

Be warned.

The cat

which lives

in the moment

approaches.

25.08.2018

THE QUEST

We stumble through our lives,

and if we are lucky,

we end up killed

by our own mistakes.

If unlucky, we

kill others with

our many falls

and one close to us

will cause our demise,

dragging us down

when they stumble

and fall in their own blind quest.

25.08.2018

FUSION CRUST

We are what

we become

through life,

shedding ourselves

like a meteor

in the atmosphere

breaks,

leaving

a small meteorite

rusting away.

25.08.2018

PAUL KLEE(1879-1940): THE SHIPS DEPART(1927)

The ships depart, on an oily sea

sails under a blue sun

to the east and the west

to harbours we will never gaze

they sail, forever

on the event horizon

of the eye and memory

24.08.2018

THEY HAVE ALL GONE HOME

The song has ended,

the singer has gone

and around his gravestone,

silent, the audience

sleeps in the earth.

20.08.2018

'AUTUMN MORNING - FOOTHILLS OF THE SIERRAS' BY JACK WILKINSON SMITH(1873-1949)

A distant autumn on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada,

a dead hand captured the last of leafs, dying

in bright colours. A season passing,

a life passing. Look close

and see the brushwork. The hand that

held the brush but bones in the earth.

The colours - have they faded? Is

there still something of that autumn, the

leaves, the trees, the foothills and the distant mountains,

of the air and the mind that moved the hand that held the brush

in those colours? Is there something

that calls to us, that answers our questions,

that gives us a bridge to that long gone autumn,

to those days the brush made what the eye saw and

the brain interpreted, or

is just fading paint, a picture

of not of then but of now, what we

make of it, and no more? Like

these words I gave to you?

19.08.2018

ONE DAY

One day

all you will be

are the forests, the rivers, the mountains,

the water rushing from glaciers to lakes and the seas,

the fertile earth below and the

sky above,

the air and the life it gives.

The green grass, the

worms in the soil, the first

flowers of spring

and the last green leaves

among red and gold on autumn.

One day

all you will be

is the marrow in the bones

and the iron in the blood

of all that lives

and grows and dies.

19.08.2018

FORGET, ADORNO

Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frißt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben.

Theodor Adorno(1903-1969): Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft(1951)

Forget, Adorno -

after atrocities, after

the self- defleshing of humanity

we need poetry

to remember

what was before,

what was done

and what came afterwards;

the victims, alive;

the victims, dying;

the mass graves, the ovens,

the ash of humans raining from the sky;

the culprits, the killers, the collaborators,

those who gave commands, those who carried them out

and those who saw and did not act;

caught and punished, escaped, left unpunished,

happily living ever afterwards

with their conscience just another victim

in forgotten mass grave never opened -

we need poetry, we need

each art and craft of humanity

to remember, to tell and shout and cry and roar

- to stand against those who today

do the same, plan the same, praise the crimes

old or new or just stand silent,

hiding in their cloak of neutrality

in their gray zone, bipartisan

between those begging for their lives

and those who burn villages and babies alive.

We need poetry, we need humanity;

Adorno, after Auschwitz,

after everything we have done, suffered,

witnessed and opposed and allowed to happen,

we need poetry, each and every drop and inch of humanity

in our bodies, bones, blood and each decent thought in our brains,

each strand of empathy and solidarity running through our lives.

Adorno - we need poetry,

we need to be human

and we need poetry

to be human.

19.08.2018

Among falling leaves

of red autumn, following

Hanshan to his Cold Mountain,

slipping on wet moss covering

ancient rocks; evergreen

trees dark-green in fog,

tall on slopes climbing

to enshrouded sky. Only

the wind speaks.

18.08.2018

MID-AUGUST

Amidst the green

the breeze carries

the crisp, cold whisper

of the coming autumn;

more bitter winds

to rip the then faded leaves

to cold and wet ground.

The days are growing short,

the thirsty soil shall

have its fill

and the leafs

their brilliant colours

crowned with frost.

But now, dusty earth

carries bright green foliage

with the breeze whispering

of the long dark months.

18.08.2018

I dreamed

of an autumn morning, frost

on fallen red leaves,

bright cold sunlight

over lost landscape

gravel under my feet

crunching

you beside me

bathed in light

crisp breeze

azure sky

those numberless days

fallen through my

fingers, gone

where past time

goes, in memories

like wounds.

12.07.2018

LOST IN THIS WORLD

Sometimes

You are a wounded little bird

Crying

In your fallen nest

Your wing broken

But greater is

The pain of knowledge

That the world wasn't good

And kind and just.

Your wing I can mend,

Your nest I can raise,

But how, oh how

Can I heal

Your pain, the

Trust the world

Shattered?

04.07.2018

THE HOLY GRAIL

Seeking meaning

for life, you

give meaning

to life; a

a search, a

quest for something

unknown, lost

waiting

in the coming days,

years, unformed;

your holy grail,

a life spent on quest.

12.06.2018

BEYOND

Beyond, the light

a wave to a more distant shore

leaves shimmering green

on azure background

glimmer of those

days

of

you, of

us

03.06.2018

DUST MADE OF DUST

You, human

- you, dust made of dust,

your days are short

and your nights are fleeting.

From the birth

you stand on the side of your grave,

so look up

and see the starlight

on a blue sky

and the moonlight

on an autumn sky,

the sparkling diamonds of winter.

Look up, and know,

that they endure

and you, you dim

and fade away.

31.05.2018

ALAS, PHILIP ROTH

Speak no ill of those
beyond death

they say, so

alas, I must be

silent

of the horse-lover

with the famous name,

and let the green of earliest summer

and the burning heat

of the late May afternoon

speak, life

speaks

as life fades,

blade of grass dies

and a blade of grass grows;

the morning dew 

and the evening rain's droplets

on it

reflect the world

and are gone,

the water containing the surrounding

and the blade of grass

but until the very evening of the world

there will be

reflection of blades of grass

on morning dew

resting on blade of grass.

23.05.2018

ONE OF THE GOOD DAYS

One of the good days, recovering

from that bad sickness, recognition

of sins. Surfacing

to where the past glimmers

through today like stones

through clear lake water.

There, in the past, they

give hope and strength, a

shimmering illusion; so

a hundred pages read of Tiptree

and others, rambling

through a friendly world

in peace, Coltrane

from the laptop, sunshine

flowing on the wall, outside

someone cutting grass and

seeing, smelling the new green grass

while walking out to Des Moines

when everyone you meet is a friend

and out there in the kitchen new hot coffee

you can taste even before you drink

it from that singing mug as

Coltrane, dead Coltrane still alive

in his music like Tiptree still alive

in her words, like they are

glimmering through the years,

alive, still alive, still here, still are, still are

part of you, part of the world,

together, all of you together, still.

21.05.2018

SPRING

I am thinking of the new grass

that grows above;

the first flowers,

the shade you would seek

on days like this;

I am thinking of you,

I am thinking of

the new green grass

on your grave.

18.05.2018

THE VOID AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS

One by one, all

that makes life worth living

taken away; yet

that wretched need to live

survives unscathed,

the pointless time

precious without meaning.

Inhale, exhale,

carry out the bodily functions,

be. This

all that there is,

and the fear of death

only grows.

For life in bloom hides

what withered can but show.

05.05.2018

THE HUMAN CONDITION

Such pitiful creatures,

we, bending

to every demand of time.

Bad actors

on a shabby stage

we insist calling 'society';

we perform

only old dramas

rehashed new.

So easy, we go through

them absently,

on stage and audience

alike. Bad

actors deserve

rotten audience,

from whose ranks we

stand up and walk

to the creaking

stage and from which we return,

indifference carved to our facial bones.

Such pitiful creatures

such pitiful lives make

out of such stale drama,

such pitiful stage keep.

To time we bend

and time we bend

cyclical, so long

a tragedy made farce.

04.05.2018

Rough wind

through the alley

of brick

and bare trees

blows

Figurative?

Literal giving

rise

to figurative

life

It will be

sweet warm

breeze

of summer

soon

Cold wet

wind

of autumn

Crisp freezing

breath

of winter

That wind

puts on

the masks

we

only dream of

04.05.2018

THEY WALK IN THE RAIN

They walk in the rain, splashes of water

tell of their movement. In the

early gloom, twisted

reflections on brown water;

laughter,

someone jumps. Brown

droplets mix with falling rain

like their joy with mud

on their boots. Children,

running free, in the rain.

01.05.2018

SPRING DREAM

In my sleep, a dream

of my father and grandfather sitting with me

on a table, separated

from them by it and death,

and my grandfather having trouble with his dentures

as he talked, ate and talked.

There was pale spring light

and we were in my grandparents' old house,

they were both younger

than when they died, ten years

or so, and all was in order,

a perfect moment. Awakening,

coming through the deep waters,

I suddenly remembered, a joy 

throughout my being, and now,

now the sound of spring rain

from an open window

to a world mended.

01.05.2018