THE WISDOM OF THE GREEKS

This is the wisdom of the Greeks:

No one alive can be called happy.

The only man truly happy

is a one who has died.

Beyond life there is only

dreamless sleep, or

shadows lingering in gloom.

This is the wisdom of the Greeks.

16.-17.09.2018

THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL

Plato makes his little toy

Socrates to walk and talk,

from his mouth Plato speaks

the dead flesh his garb.

Socrates this and Socrates that

the generations claim, Xenophon

gathers dust as Plato's little toy

walks and talks his words.

Robe of skinned Socrates on

his ghostly from, Plato comes

and creeps through your eyes,

in your mind makes his camp.

13.09.2018

TO THE VOID

We are already almost nothing,

so why do we make such a fuss

of becoming nothing,

ceasing to exist,

thoughts fading

in the wind that blows through existence

making things anew?

Even those of us

who seek to accept

the void, even them

make it a quest of a life-time

to be at peace with it,

that moment when we are

and the moment

when there is something

of which we are not part.

The moment of obliteration,

the fear

that grips us -

and the enlightenment

so praised,

into the void,

annihilated

all those

who accept,

blasted out of existence

just like us

who tremble.

Because

we are nothing but

mind, thoughts following another

existing in linear time.

Because

the universe without us

doesn't exist,

because

our cosmos

is us, ourselves.

Messy bubble of thought

expanding,

collapsing,

ceasing to exist.

That's why we make a fuss.

Existence fears annihilation.

13.09.2018

PHOTOGRAPH OF A CHILD IN THE RUINS OF HER HOME

It shouldn't matter

if the child among ruins

is from Idlib or Saada;

you should feel

the same about her.

If you don't, if

you first need to know

who dropped the bombs,

on which side of the

lines the child's home lay,

then the only human being

in this situation

is the one in the photograph,

and some inhuman being

is gazing at her.

12.09.2018

AUTUMN

So, autumn -

finally

and too early

leaves

turning yellow

rain

beating the window

wind

like sea in old memories

hitting lost shores

breaking through time

and place

ripping those

leaves

casting them to still green grass

pools of water

reflecting the trees

dark

like these years

12.09.2018

THE COWARD

It's easier to be silent, let

the memories lay

under the gravestones

and the grass and sand

on unmarked lots.

The good hurts more

than the bad, excavating

them from the soil

of the mind, bright

and alluring, hurtful.

All this, gone -

all this, allowed to vanish,

to become memories

and few meters of

earth in the silence

of the cemetery.

You deserved

so much more,

time and love

and joy.

But what you

got was

me,

me and death

and fear

to look you

in the eyes

in my

memories.

09.09.2018

PENTHEUS & LABDACUS

Imagine, the

king torn apart

by the women, wild

and beastly,

ripping his flesh

apart, drenched

in his blood.

The noblest

women of the realm,

the highest

his mother, the

flesh and blood of

her son again

part of her,

in her belly

where he once

grew, pieces

of him rest

in their grave

of flesh.

The sacrifice

of blood and kinship

to declare a god.

Yet, mother

devouring a son

hardly satisfies

a god long.

The gods

thirst for human

suffering.

Thus enter

Labdacus.

Another crowned

kin for Bacchus

to mark as sacrifice

to his own divinity.

Let the

screams begin

anew, as

frenzied women

in worship

of a god

go beyond

the bounds of humanity.

Thus the gods favour

their worshippers

with defleshing

of sanity.

09.09.2018

TO RAMIN HOSSEIN PANAHI, HANGED TODAY

Death was approaching,

the death they had announced,

your death, your young life ending.

You announced a hunger-strike

and sewed your lips together;

the pain was lesser than the will to live.

They unsewed your lips,

they put a noose around your neck

and they hanged you.

They hanged you, Ramin;

they took all your days away from you

and they left you in darkness.

08.09.2018

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