ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG

Under the withered grass

of the long-gone summer,

better people lie,

and we walk on

the withered grass

in this spring of death,

when again

better people die.

02.05.2020-17.01.2021

JANUARY PASTEL

Deep cold mid-day,

the sky the palest blue

above the snows, merging

in the cloudless horizon.

17.01.2021

FREED FROM THE BOUNDS OF TIME

Art is more real

than the life that creates it,

the dead hand of the sculptor

and the composer,

carving in music and stone

what mere moments

erased from the world;

the model for the painting's

tempting, flush figure -

dust and bones;

what made the poet dream

and write, less

than the headstone with her name;

art has the shimmering

blood of truth, purified

beyond the misery of existence

that marks each mortal,

doomed like no work

that escapes from the

human mind, ever is.

17.01.2021

THE MASTER AND THE PUPIL

Why is it

that every work by Schiele

is imprinted with the

owner's seal by Death,

and that every painting of Klimt

is imprinted with Life, if

only melancholy

in its approaching ending,

yet surviving?

In the master we have Life,

Life before the touch of Death

has poisoned the blood,

in the great follower

we have its end,

death overcoming the watching eyes

burning with decay.

Would twice the years have liberated

art from the erasure

of its mortal creator?

17.01.2021

PRETENTIOUS TO THE END

At the deep blue winter

moment when the day

in cold chill ends &

night in deep gloom begins,

I listen to Bach,

pretentious to the end,

grab Montaigne 

and try to be

the person I once was;

but, alas, that

naive youth too

I betrayed & lost.

16.01.2021

REGRET

When I see life as it truly has been,

all illusions and excuses discarded,

the path I should have taken

across these long, lost years -

it's in the clear, brisk light

of a cold winter afternoon darkening,

too late for anything but grief

in the glooming.

16.01.2021

ALL MY FAULT

What is left of my life?

Dreams, hopes -

all just books

in cardboard boxes,

a degree whose papers

I have lost - and

all the suffering

I caused to others;

the pain in the voices

of the still living,

the snow on the

graves of the dead.

16.01.2021

TOO LATE

The living

were never

enough for me,

compared

to the dead.

So,

the living,

too, died.

&

How I

miss them,

now.

16.01.2021

AT THE LAST HOUR BEFORE NIGHTFALL

The tops of tall pines

bathing in red light

of the January afternoon,

the Sun descended

beyond the darkening

treeline; here, at this

brief, clear moment

near the end,

I still feel a bright,

chill joy expanding

before night's coming.

16.01.2021

WHEN TIME FOLDS

Under this January

afternoon's clear sky,

the snowscape in deeper blue,

treetops still burning

in descending

pale Sun, I feel like living

in years long passed,

where your feet

still left

prints in the now

untouched snow.

16.01.2021

PROXIMA CENTAURI B

 Long, chill years

took me through the abyss

from the dying Earth

to this alien world,

where in eternal twilight

sparse life clings

to near barren strip of land,

between the darkside ice

and the scorched deserts

of the nightside;

this is the planet of last promise

where all begins anew.

Listening to the sounds

of Earth in its death agonies,

coming through the void

and years, I remember

how I spread my wings,

 golden sunlight

bathing them

in Earth's orbit,

clutching in my bosom

the entirety of humankind,

frozen DNA and data alike,

all the millions of years

that made Humanity,

encoded.

I remember,

I who shall birth

humanity anew

from my crèches

to this desolate world,

to bleak existence,

the wreckers of the planet

of plenty resurrected.

I, John von Neumann's AI.

16.01.2021

DUBLIN II

The mentally ill lose their individuality,

become robots going through programming;

that is why they become so angry

when you compare their situation

to that of others suffering the same -

they know that they are no longer individuals,

unique persons, just robots

going through their programming

whose goal is death,

just one more robot in the great

identical mass marching to oblivion.

12.01.2021

THE MEANING OF LIFE

It's in the end all pointless, of course,

this thing we call 'life'

& don't understand;

this stream across time and space

which briefly carries us,

while we ask

these questions 

if time exists,

if life has a meaning,

and is there

existence beyond death?

It's all in the end pointless, of course,

after it has ended, this life -

like the stars and galaxies

carried in the streams

of the great cosmic webbing -

has all its meaning

in existence itself,

whether a wondering mind

in a human brain,

or a spinning spiral wheel of dust

& gas, brilliant in starburst.

08.01.2021

AT TEN IN THE MORNING ON AN EARLY JANUARY DAY

 At ten in the morning,

three colours

make up the landscape.

The clouds and the snow

are blue;

the evergreens black

under their burden

of white.

At ten in the morning,

three colours

make up the landscape.

07.01.2021

2020

 "That", the Devil said,

"was a good year;

a very good year."

"But this, this could

be even better..."

07.01.2021

THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

Paris the shepherd

should have just

eaten that

fucking apple.

But, alas..

So many had to die

for an apple &

his 15 minutes of fame.

Thus are the games

the gods' play:

Buckets of blood

thrown in time's flow.

04.01.2021

THE TOMB OF ACHILLES

What good is a great warrior

without a wretched end,

in some blood-soaked field

that forever will be ruined?

In the Aegean a mound,

on which they butchered a princess,

hides an arrow-tip in a heel,

and a shade half-remembering

how to hold a sword,

and with a vague

yearning for gore.

04.01.2021

JANUARY

January,

roads devoid

of human beings,

landscape

swept clean

in white.

04.01.2014-03.01.2021

AFTER THE FEEDING

Taste of iron

in your mouth,

smear of red

on your lips.

A throat

ripped open:

A crude

second mouth.

You,

a vampire.

05.02.2018-04.01.2021

PRISONERS IN TIME

 Time has put another marker

to separate us, closed

another year, placed

it in its unbroken wall

separating us; am I

the prisoner, as I drift

in the ceaseless flow of time,

or are you the ones,

imprisoned in death's

frozen moments,

which endlessly

reflect you?

01.01.2021

'AMERICANS'

9/11 made me interested about Israel

and Judaism, says

a former Catholic altar boy

turned atheist,

who now uses 'mensch' once

in every one of his podcasts.

Just like his fellow US authors,

who suddenly in 1967

learned three terms,

only three, which

they just had to put

again & again in their works:

Kibbutz, shalom and mazel tov.

Just those three. No more.

Showing the limits of 'American'

interest, even

towards those states

to whom they grant a share

in their 'God-given right'

to unlimited violence

and endless oppression.

29.12.2020

HYPOCRITICAL, SELF-DECLARED LOVERS OF FREEDOM

Don't speak of justice,

don't use the word "freedom",

if you don't stand with

those who are victims of injustice

done by your friends.

09.06.2013

TOOTHACHE

Swollen Moon

on the sky a toothache

made manifest.

23.06.2013-29.12.2020

MINIMALIST POEMS

1

day

die

dark

2

stars

wandering

stars

3

rain

wash

snow

4

december

solstice

sunless

5

gloom

winter

moon

6

window:

november

night

23.12.2020

WHAT MY FATHER SAID

Hope is the cruelest

form of torture of all;

'Tell a man to be executed

that he will go free;

open the cell door,

and then, when

he steps out, shoot

him in the back.'

29.03.2015-21.12.2020

DUBLIN I

Try to help someone,

and if you don't get them killed,

they attach themselves to you

and try to make their life

more important to you

than your own, while

trying to get themselves killed.

And in the distance,

the people you tried to help

the last time, are falling

into pieces because of you.

21.12.2020

THE DESERT HERMIT

The desert called me,

promising with a voice

of a growing sandstorm,

to quash my hunger

with wonders and exuberant sufferings.

I came among the ever-changing,

unchanging dunes,

the crumbling hillsides,

far from the falling world of men,

to where life is a piece of grass

withering between stones,

the footsteps of a lizard

being hidden by sand.

The Moon a white orb

over the undulating hills of sand

on cold nights,

the Sun a blazing presence

that evaporates water,

thought and sin alike.

The two eyes of God.

The promise of long, lone struggles,

with vast visions coming like

lost caravans from the depths

of creation, looming

over sanity. 

09.06.2013

A TASTE OF THE END

The day has passed,

the gray light has seeped

to the ground,

the canopy of clouds

has devoured the unborn stars,

and given us the darkness

that awaits at the end,

when for aeons we shall shiver

beside the black holes,

waiting them to evaporate,

erasing all these dreary

trillions of humans

and their years.

20.12.2020

BOOKS

The main problem

with books are

the authors.

07.08.2016

AUSTERITY

Streetlights

shut down.

Austerity

darkness.

02.10.2017-14.10.2020

ON YOUR BIRTHDAY II

Made it,at the last hour of the day,

one match after another flickering and dying, 

until at last the candle wick catches fire, burning

& something of these years lifts in the dancing

flame, something of you lives on at midnight;

19.12.2020

ON YOUR BIRTHDAY

 I can't even find the matches,

or the damn lighters, to

light the candles.

Darkness then on the grave

that shouldn't exist,

on this of all days.

Like your worries

I discounted, the phone

I didn't see, there on the table.

Apt.

Cursed are those

who beget fools.

17.12.2017

AT THE END OF TIME

Cold was the landscape

of the brief afternoon,

winter white with falling snow;

now, in the long night

beyond the windows,

a void from the end of time,

when the last light

in the universe

has gone out.

16.12.2020

ARIADNE

Give a man a golden thread

to escape the monster and the labyrinth,

and on Naxos' shore you shall find

yourself, gazing on a black sail

in the horizon disappearing -

as in the distance grows a sound

of the approaching entourage

of the drunken god. You,

who saved, shall find no saviour

beyond the stained arms

of the Thracian one, whose

commands make mothers

tear flesh from

their sons' bones.

16.12.2020

A FUNERAL IN THE DIM DECEMBER LIGHT

Now the falling snow

makes a postcard of the landscape,

big, fluffy snowflakes

dropping from the sky,

the autumn buried in its cold grave,

at last; but to whom

could I send this postcard,

with a mourning Christmas song

echoing through the scene?

Before the light has its revelation

the world lives through

its darkest day.

16.12.2020

TRAVELS IN THE HEART OF ASIA

In the end, if Marco Polo

never went past Constantinople,

it matters not; if ibn Battuta

never set foot in India,

it matters not. We

have the books,

we have the maps,

the routes drawn;

we travel them,

sentence by sentence,

footnote by footnote.

If Marco Polo never

went to fabled Cathay,

if Ibn Batutta never

stood tall in the

sultan's court at Delhi,

it matters not; we will.

16.12.2020

HOMECOMING

 Back home, with cats
and memories, with

the dead living

in every square meter

of this house and lot

that is my life;

alone in flesh and human

thought, like one

of those paper-dolls

we cut from magazines

as kids, taken

out from my binding,

crumpled, waiting

for the flame

to leap into ashes.

16.12.2020

AT THE END, AT THE BEGINNING

 Something ends.

The gray morning

covered in powdered snow.

Fear begets

a thousand shivering children;

the future, amidst them?

Hope is the Sun

of remembered skies,

hidden behind the clouds

of the mind,

trying to put to sleep

a thousand shivering children.

Something ends,

in us.

Something has began -

a stranger passing by,

a dark figure,

vanishing down the street?

Or one of the

thousand shivering children,

crying in our limp arms?

Hope is the Moon,

a silver disk

of a biting night,

cutting with the force

of a frozen truth,

shattering 

in reflections.

Something begins

in twice mirrored light.

15.12.2020

PEN IS NOT MIGHTIER THAN A SWORD

Pen is not mightier

than a sword; otherwise

al-Mutanabbi would

have lived and the brigand

fallen under his pen,

not the poet struck by the

highwayman's blade

bled his voice to the sand.

10.12.2020

THE DIFFERENCE

The difference between an average

and a mediocre poet

is that you like the former.

Especially

if you are the poet

yourself.

09.12.2020

FOR THE WANT OF A HERO

In this bleak afternoon, 

twenty minutes from the night or so,

it seems I've managed

a yet another betrayal;

as I shiver sipping coffee,

turning up the heat,

I have to wonder

couldn't the Fate

have chosen a better villain?

If only there would

be a caped hero, with

a mighty jaw and eyes blue

like a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer's,

all these lost, shattered souls

would have been saved

in one triumphant issue

after another.

09.12.2020

HOW THE DAYS DIE

1

No embers of the sun

fading in the horizon

as the overcast sky

in deep gray

mates with the brown,

chill earth,

and begets night.

2

Yesterday died in

robes of gold and amber,

giving herself

to the penetrating dark,

gave birth

to glimmering stars

in their high abodes.

09.12.2020

BEWARE, ELVEN MAIDS, WITH WHOM YOU LAY

That Aragorn,

you have to admit,

was something of a prick:

One day, in his prime

and glory, as king Elessar,

he would announce: 'I will make myself die.

Just felt today it's time to go,

before I become old.'

No thought had Aragorn

for spending more time with his wife,

three thousand years or old so,

to adjust his lady Arwen to widowhood,

and leave last pleasant memories;

no final visit to the glades of Lothlórien, or

Annúminas of north, for her to cherish;

no, Elessar, something of a prick,

was too keen to die.

And his dear wife,

three thousand years old or so,

having given up immortality

and kin for Aragorn -

who was, you have to admit,

something of a prick -

was left a widow and to wander,

until in the autumn woods

poor Arwen would die alone.

08.12.2020

IN THE DYING LIGHT

Half past one, and the blazing Sun

sets fire on the frosty treeline descending,

and in my mind are fighting

the cold amber of the landscape

and you, brought to this moment

by the folding time, from

past years and chill graves,

from frigid exile, memories;

and you win, until the red light

wanes in the nocturnal tide of stars;

an hour I have, grieving.

07.12.2020

JANUARY

Water dripping

from the eaves,

winter melting.

10.01.2015-07.12.2020

FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END, STANDING UNMOVING ON OBLIVION'S GATE

There is no eternity, no life

beyond death; barely a life

when the heart still pumps blood

and the brain gets its oxygen.

This is all there is, this

pointless turmoil in the cage´

of bone and flesh,

in the dance of mating galaxies,

until the dying day of mind

and matter, still burning

amidst the great voids,

both fading; the illusion

of thought, the mirage of eternity.

05.12.2020

A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF RAINER MARIA RILKE'S(1875-1926) 145 YEARS

1875-1926: A parasite.

1926-2020: A dead parasite.

05.12.2020

TO A READER OF RAINER MARIA RILKE(1875-1926)

In the gardens of countesses

he met angels, had visions

of god in palaces of princesses;

there was no place for you

in his art, no place in visions

of heaven, of divine love;

it was all for the nobles

who paid his bills, his entire

art. For our lion of verse

you, a faceless, nameless

one, wouldn't have existed -

except, perhaps, in distant

hell, beyond the sight of nobles

destined to the marble

halls of heavenly Jerusalem,

and the loving embrace

of their heavenly father,

no kin to you. To him,

you who now read his

elegies and sonnets and worse,

you would be less than nothing,

an insect like a liveried servant.

He wouldn't have spat

on you in midst of his reveries

- he wouldn't have noticed

you, at all. In his world,

you wouldn't be. So

why, dear person, do

you keenly read him who

would never sit in a dinner table

with someone like you,

who would never notice

you, when you would serve

to his divine aristocrats?

05.12.2020

DECEMBER DAY

 Gray skies, white
snowflakes

without an end,

from the bleak

morning's pale light

to the bleak, haggard

afternoon's all-engulfing

darkness, devouring

the white landscape,

the gray skies,

the infinite snowflakes.

04.12.2020

DECEMBER AFTERNOON

 Snow falling in the darkening
afternoon, falling

on the past fallen into

ruins, on lesser lives
run to the ground.

Snow falling on the darkening
world, this
world that looks
on ruins of the past
through our lesser lives.

04.12.2020

ON A GRAY DECEMBER MORNING, AFTER SEEING A NIGHTMARE

So, awake,

I pick up Du Fu,

read half a dozen poems;

just another old man

nearing the end,

longing for places and people

left in the past.

02.12.2020

THE WORLD OWES US NOTHING

In the end

the world owes us nothing,

and we owe everything

to the world -

because we are just,

for a brief moment,

part of the world,

and everything we

appear to do to others,

we, in the end,

do for ourselves

as the world.

02.12.2020