When you go, you go

and there's no coming back

except in dreams at night

in the minds of your beloved ones:

Reaching, reaching to them,

fading, fading as you drift

farther in to the past.

30.08.2013

POWER OF POETRY

A poem has no power

which the person who wrote it

and the person who read it

didn't already possess.

It can only awaken

what was already there,

waiting to be given form,

waiting to be given direction,

waiting to reach through time

from mind to mind.

Thus the act of reading

is as powerful

as the act of writing.

30.08.2013

IN MEMORY OF SEAMUS HEANEY(1939-2013)

Death came in

to rule where

poetry had been forged,

words flowed black

no more, all

was silence,

all was nothing,

nothing.

I would write

"Sleep well", but

death is no sleep,

death is absence,

a hole in the fabric

of lives changed,

a black hole

devouring existence.

You have gone,

you are no more.

No words can reach you,

no tears can reach you,

all we have are words,

your recorded voice

as you have now fulfilled

your human destiny.

30.08.2013

Missionary,

I killed my god

like a beloved pet

I ended it's life

and like I a beloved pet

it looked at me,

missionary,

as I destroyed the shrine,

burned the timbers

and dropped the

holy stone

in the dark waters

like a beloved pet

it looked at me

like asking what

it had done wrong

to deserve this?

Missionary,

will your god forgive me

what I did to my god,

the god of my ancestors,

the god of my people

in the name of your god?

26.08.2013

in the end no one cares

because there's no one to care

and thus nothing

has a meaning

did it even happen,

humanity, life, the universe

of blazing galaxies?

so thoroughly it will be gone

all the lives

the millions of years of

human suffering and delight

billions of years of evolution

all gone

into the void

like stars, planets, galaxies

and black holes

only radiation in a void

forever inching towards

0 Kelvin

26.08.2013

Jesus came to kill me

he had eyes that cried

for all the blood

in his hands

for the scalps

he carried on his belt

for the cap made of skull

he had on his head

for the cape of skin

made of flesh of men

Jesus came to kill me

he had had enough

Jesus came to kill me

to nail me on a cross

25.08.2013

what we see, hear and smell

what we touch

is always already in the past

the past

when our minds

recognize and react

always a bit too late

to capture the fleeting moment,

the Planck time

of the present

25.08.2013

Friedrich Hölderlin(1770-1843)

Walks on the Alps,

beer in a mountain village

where even the cattle

looked happy to him,

verses about heroic death

suffered during fight for freedom,

dreams of Greece distant

in time and place;

preparation for the

long years of quiet madness

in the tower

after his genius had died

long before his body did.

25.08.2013

death took away all the words that should have been spoken

it was a wall between us and i didn't even try to break it

i could have shattered it i could have shattered it

i allowed it to took away those last months

all the things that could have made a difference

that could still make a difference

until death is no longer between us

but unites us

23.08.2013

In time of shadows

I lived in light,

letting it burn inside;

in time of light

I dwelt in the shadows,

unseen, untouched

by its burning rays,

cold like a winter's night.

18.06.2013

I fell
and just couldn't get up

- you know how it is,

with life -

and now

the stars are coming out,

it's getting chilly

and the grass

under me

is cold,

as cold

as the light of those

stars, calling.

17.08.2013

the autumn comes

with every falling leaf

raindrop

with every evening

darker than the one

before

with every thought

of loss with every

shedded tear

when one more year

closing takes me

farther away from you

16.08.2013

observation

big cities

big sorrows

for little people

confined

in their anthills

one beside another

yearning yearning

neonlights reflected

in oily water

the lyricism of the city

doesn't quench

the pain of the confined

03.08.2013

mountains shrouded in mist

pines firs black in the valleys

beyond the touch of

the sun rising

rays of light marking the climber

a bit of enlightenment

30.07.2013

Truth is

the sharpest sword

you can wield.

22.07.2013

Mewet

You are the grass under my feet,

the flowers growing beside the road,

the leaves on the branches,

the whispering wind,

the songs of birds,

the descending Sun

and the rising Moon.

You are in every breath I take,

you are the air in my lungs,

you are the tears on my cheek,

the smile on my lips,

you are in my voice

still asking you to come back

from behind the shroud of years.

Kesäkuu - heinäkuun 21. päivä 2013

there is no morality in history
as it happens

the bad are no more damned than the good

as long as they live, free

except perhaps in their own minds

and a mind is a bastion no outsider

can ever fully take control of,

looting its riches and revealing its secrets

we can only hope that

vestiges of conscience

gave them nightmares

as the judgment of latter days

does not reach them

anymore than the compassion

of those that came afterwards

reached their victims

21.07.2013

few bits of blood given for test tubes

twelve hours without drinking or eating

parched throat

it's all so casual

i don't care

must be the medication working

its miracles

or the sunlight

that flows over everything

giving a golden unearthly hue

something out of a painting

describing a dream

my mind too

bathed in light

rays of sun

finding their way in

to my thoughts

flipping switches

16.07.2013

a morning of light
a breath of life

inhaling exhaling

so many mornings

like this to come

when i don't see

when i don't breath

when i am the light

the wind

and the breath

the grass

and the trees

15.07.2013

a white butterfly

on a july morning

among green and gold

fluttering

15.07.2013

apartheid is not racism
is the new israeli slogan,

claims a cartoon

and i agree

so many people,

so many states

so many religions

think that bad things

can't be bad

if the "right" people

are doing them

14.07.2013

for trayvon martin

in the light of truth
a killer is a killer

no jury can release

him from the truth

law and courts

can be bend

but truth is what it is

and killer is a killer

14.07.2013

Us, the Universe

We are not independent observers,

inside the universe

but separate from it. 

No, we are the universe,

for a moment taking the form

of a sentient being.

When we look around us,

from the grass on the ground

to the stars above

we are looking at ourselves.

When we try to understand

the universe
we are trying

to understand ourselves.

27.06.2013

These are not my own, independent thoughts. Many people have written such things before and although I share this view I express in the poem, I am following a well traveled path.

Keep the night at bay,

even if evening is here

keep the light at the horizon

in your eyes

to the last moment,

don't let the darkness fall,

don't go until

at the last

moment, merging

with the night.

25.06.2013

Even Buddha would have chosen life

if Ãnanda would have understood to ask;

life is more precious

than nirvana. Only when there is

no hope of life

should we set our hopes in peace

beyond it.

24.06.2013

Every breath I take,

every closing

and opening of my eyes

takes me farther away from you.

I don't want to be on this

journey in time,

in this stream of change

flowing away

from that last moment together,

just half an hour before

your world ended

and mine with it.

24.06.2013

A sail in the horizon,

white on blue,

a hope escaping

beyond sight.

23.06.2013

On the beach

I followed deep footprints

left in the wet sand

along the shore

and found you

as the high tide came

and wind started

to ruffle the tall grass
growing

on the hillsides.

23.06.2013

Past has become

a land of sorrow,

where memories with thorns

make mind bleed.

Come, say the

memories, touch us

and remember,

touch us and feel the pain.

Images of former happiness

come drifting,

half-sunken hulks

with barnacles of

loss growing on them.

There is no going back,

no rescue, no forgetfulness.

No river Lethe to bring

the bliss of forgetting,

letting the past

sail away on its water.

11.06.-22.06.2013

From the future
we can expect only the harvest

of yesterday's seeds.

22.06.2013

Labyrinth of Life

From the darkness emerges

the bull-head of Minotauros

and you, sword-wielder,

are not the shared son of god

and an Athenian king,

you are not destined to sail

with black sails back to home.

No, whoever was on your side

was not a princess with a ball

of thread, but fear-ruled ran away

leaving you to raise your sword

and shield in a futile gesture

no one shall learn of

when they find your

gnawed bones,

hearing the man-bull

roaring in the darkness.

22.06.2013

One of these days the universe
will assimilate us into itself again;

call it nirvana and be happy

before the unavoidable.

22.06.2013

Another day;

how many wandering thoughts

through past, today

and into tomorrow,

drawing blood,

until the calm, soft

summer night

comes to bring

the thoughtless realm of sleep,

it's dark waters,

and peace?

19.06.2013

Seeking redemption
you tend to pass it by
without giving it
a second look.

18.06.2013

Night has fallen,

the birds are still chattering,

chirping, no

end to their territorial tales

in summer's embrace.

18.06.2013

The Evil of Cancer

I read about "the evil of cancer" just now, again,

from a newspaper,

and thought about

my mother, her sister, my paternal grandparents

who all died of cancer.

58, 56, 53, 57.

My paternal grandparents were

in their graves before I was born,

my grandfather a forgotten Don Juan figure

who spread misery and broke marriages,

mostly his own ones;

my grandmother's grave a place of pilgrimage,

dutifully done so that
her ever fewer surviving acquaintances

on their visits to the graveyard

in our old home county

"would see that somebody has been here"

as my father said,

again and again through the decades.

My mother, her sister: Pain and guilt in my mind,

my aunt tied to her eldest son,

my late cousin, 27,

in my thoughts,

rage and grief and more rage in my mind

as I think about them,

and my my mother, my mother

a cause of endless sorrow,

guilt like an open wound

that never can nor should close,

my life one long betrayal of her

during these last 18 years,

all her dreams and hopes unfulfilled,

and I cowardly enough not to be on her side

when it would have mattered.

But the cancers that took them all

were not evil, they just were.

A disease has no mind, no morality,

it doesn't set out to destroy

and end lives like a humans do.

We see it as a kind of human

when we claim that it is evil,

we see it as an adversary

that tries to harm our loved ones

and we are wrong.

We extend humanity out to the world,

give a little piece of Homo Sapies to all things

we see around us,

moral colouring to events

that have none.

A cancer like a tsunami

has no meaning in itself, no goal,

they are just natural results

of events, biological and geological.

It's their results that are tragic,

cutting through lives.

No evil is involved when a submarine

earthquake creates a tsunami,

just geology and chance,

and when cancer attacks a human body

it is the same. It just happens,

beyond the boundaries of the moral universe

we humans have created

and believe in.

The results of cancer are evil to us,

but in itself cancer is just biology,

it just is, separate

from our moral universe,

like the dark matter and dark energy

that guide the physical universe

more than what can be seen.

Like the observable cosmos

which can not influence the dark energy

that is accelerating it's expansion

and taking it towards a premature end -

which to us is also an evil in it's consequences -

a cancer that ravages

our loved ones from the inside

is an evil to us,

but to the universe around us,

to the biological mass living on the surface of Earth

and burrowing under it's surface,

flying high in it's atmosphere,

it just is.

Only us, humans,

can be evil.

17.06.2013

Creatrix

I'm thinking of you again today,

imagining you see the same rain,

hear the same hammering on the roof

as I do, look outside and see

the landscape in all the shades of green

like I do, that you breath like I do,

make coffee, read some cheap

romance novel or one of the historical

novels that I bought you, never

finishing the series about Egypt

which I regret everytime I remember

them; you wanted hardcovers and

I bought one paperback after the

hardbacks and never more, and

it was a betrayal, one of those

little betrayals that grew into the

great betrayal, and ever since you

died I have understood well what

I always found odd, Robert E.

Howard's suicide. I read yesterday

about re-prints of Valérian and Laureline comics,

remembered  how you liked them,
how I liked them and now can't think of

them separately from you. You gave me

the love of reading, love of speculative

and all I gave you was disappointments

and not enough of my time. I thought

there would be, but then there was none

and even then I did not understand

to spend every minute I could

beside your bed. It was a debt I owed,

like the fulfillment of your dreams

about what I would become that I owed

and I betrayed you, betrayed you so

many times, you who carried me

nine months in you womb and

thirty-two years, four months, one day

and seven hours afterwards.

14.06.2013

A winter morning,

darkness beyond the windows,

thoughts heavy with

the lingering images

from the dream

- black fields

under a black sky,

with glinting snowflakes falling,

big and sharp,

made of steel,

drawing blood

as they hit the skin.

13.06.2013

‘Evening Snow at Edo River'(1932) by Hasui Kawase(1883-1957)

Two women in kimonos,

holding umbrellas,

are crossing a wooden bridge

as snow falls.

The sky is dark blue.
We don't see any clouds.

Under the bridge

the water is also dark blue.

In distant Manchuria,

Japanese armies were

putting Puyi on

the throne Manchukuo,

the Empire was marching

to it's defeat through

yet another victory.

13.06.2013

Adriatic Sea, 25 years ago

The sea is

so blue in my memory,

reaching out from the bay,

opening,

merging with the sky

in the horizon.

So blue that

I have to wonder

was it really so

or is my mind

re-colouring my memories

liberally?

13.06.2013

A Memory

People making their way on a

wooden bridge over a river,

a boat passing below

with a solitary figure

standing on it's stern.

Words written beside them

in a blank ink,

flowing.

Was it Bashõ's poem

on the opposite page?

It must have been -

what else would I

have been reading then?

The picture a wood print of Edo,

a hundred years

after his time, perhaps,

the calligraphy

nothing to do with him,

closed from me

who only saw

Bashõ's poem in it.

13.06.201

Truth is not a labyrinth,

it is lies that lead you around

and around without a way out.

13.06.2013

Biography

A bit of honesty now and then

makes a good story

even better.

13.06.2013

A Picture I Once Saw

Autumn,

orange, yellow 

and red leaves

falling in the mountains,

fog hiding

the valley below

to where

this stream runs,

fast and  clear

over the small rocks

it's water

patiently sculpts.

13.06.2013

A King's Tale, circa 1600 BCE

Lord of the Two Lands,

He who is established by Re,

Semenre,

reigning in Thebes.

Of his rule remains

a mention in the Turin Canon

and an axe with his name

written on it.

12.06.2013

In memory of Iain Banks(1954-2013)

No paradise waiting, no resurrection, no rebirth

from old rattling bones life arising

or from new womb old sould finding refuge.

No, just the end, darkness and

Void like none between the stars.

There's no mercy that we don't create ourselves,

there's no life but this in blood and flesh and bone

spending fleeting decades in wonder

looking around and up on this speck of dust

wandering in the Cosmic night,

asking questions, telling stories,

keeping the Void at bay until we can no more.

10.06.2013

If you wait life
to open it's gate
before you

letting you on it's path,

the years will go on

as you stand before

an unlocked gate.

09.06.2013

Hours and days
slip away

- if only
the past they become

would slip away

too, like

a sammon

in the river of time,

traveling ever farther

from the angling mind.

09.06.2013

Leader of the Free World

How many times you Yankees shouted that

during the Cold War, giddily

worshipping your presidents

and what they supposedly embodied,

and now, my dear Americans,

with PRISM, with Boundless Informant,

your super-Stasi NSA,

it's clear that those who

had been following your leaders,

who were forced to do so

by our weakling governments,

were led to a cage

with glass walls

and the million employees of your sixteen secret services

are standing behind those walls,

repeating to you, their "fellow Americans"

that they are doing this

only to "foreigners", us.

Perhaps it hides the glass walls of your own cages.

09.06.2013