In Memoria Tenere

Cold, crisp day

milk-gray sky

sitting outside

much of snow gone

reading a book of poetry by

Joanne Kyger

I never got far before

dog sitting beside me

running around

joyful

Japan, India and Ithaca

weaved with Paolo Uccello

and Iliad

all one on this planet

even this beginning of a tooth-ache

the rusted bike beside the shed

that I used almost thirty years ago

Reagan and Gorbachev

and Nemtsov an unknown young man,

not "the man who could have been king"

(The Daily Torygraph)

on the morgue with four bullets in his back

"one for each child he leaves behind)

(Garry Kasparov)

taken by the Moloch's mouth of history

erased from that forever flowing "now"

tried to count the age of the

tree on whose stump I sit on

gave up but hundred years or so

and now that life all open

the slow growth of the 1920s

the fast growth of the post-war years

now felled

and paper in someone's hands

poetry I hope

that takes an emotional knife

and sticks it deep and twists

for all we have lost

we dying cells of the living Earth

28.02.2015

You have but a few seeds,

the season is late

and time is rare.

Plant them well.

Allow them a chance to flower.

Nothing else can be asked. 

27.02.2015

 What Matters

You don't matter, human being,

but what you do and don't do matters

because the effect

will spread down the ages.

You will shape history,

by every act towards others,

sending ripples in time forth

and this, human being,

this makes you responsible

for deeds beyond your lifetime,

for whole humanity

in the distant future.

Forgotten, dust and ash and soil,

you have steered humanity's fate.

No one will remember you,

but all will be touched by you.

27.02.2015

A Story From the Late Medieval Netherlands

To get a job for his boy

William de la Marck

got a bishop killed

and had his own head chopped off.

His boy missed the job,

all that blood for naught

until a nephew

got the mitre to display.

The Wild Boar of the Ardennes

forgot all you needed

was to ask

and pay what was demanded.

25.02.2015

Every birth is a big bang,

every death

the heath death

of a private universe.

25.02.2015

Nothing more magical

than being able to think,

to breath -

to be alive.

25.02.2015

You know that you are free

when others around you are free,

when those you identify with are free

and when those you disagree with are free.

22.02.2015

Three old Tibetan monks walking with canes

yellow and red and wrinkled and bent in the sun

smiling and one could think it's enlightenment

that secret shared in smile

but it could be the winter sun

harsh and blazing and cold

the end of the road the end of the small laboured steps

through all the dust in the world

all the chains being opened

as the blue of the sky and the lakes and the glaciers

come and embrace the fading mind

22.02.2015

Syria, today

 

Refugees frozen to death,

children burned and buried by barrel bombs,

youths headless and crucified

left to their deaths,

the screams of the living echoing

but a convoy of Turkish tanks

now making it's way

to save the tomb of an Ottoman sultan,

so that at least one dead

may rest in peace in an old grave. 

22.02.2015

The sins of the parents

are not for the children to bear

nor to repeat.

To repeat is to choose

a fate known,

that much free will is given.

Enough to turn back,

take the path

to personal errors.

22.02.2015

The physicists say to us

there is no such thing as time,

it doesn't exist

but what could hurt us

more than time

and it's passing?

No use to say to a prisoner

that the walls of the prison

don't exist

as long as to the prisoner

they are there,

unbreakable.

19.02.2015

Every human being

has a responsibility

of the whole humanity.

16.02.2015

A Fairy Tale

Bring me the head of Houllebecq

and heart and lungs too

let's make a soup of them

and feed some angry mouths

that now are fed with his words

15.02.2015

Above the forest gone

felled

entombed in snow

bright Venus

in the last light of the day

in the night's descending darkness

08.02.2015

whatever path

you take in life

they all end in

cul-de-sac

08.02.2015

The days that remain

ash and dust,

ash and dust

for wind

to blow away,

for wind to blow away

when finally sleep

closes my eyes.

05.02.2015

Seven billion

Snow fell from dawn to dusk,

and in the darkness of the winter night

the snowflakes still fell,

unseen, all unique.

Like snowflakes falling in utter darkness,

do not think that all the seven billion humans

on this tortured planet

are not unique, each beautiful in

their own way,

in their moment of existence

from the clouds

to the white shroud

covering the earth.

26.01.2015

The secrets of our hearts

now only heard by the mute

stones on the graveyards.

Patient, they hear all our

sorrows, but they can't

wipe out our tears...

26.01.2015

1

This life,

dust and ashes

of bygone dreams.

2

This life,

losing not gaining,

all the paths to the past.

3

This life,

this pain of life,

this life of pain.

4

This life,

the whole of existence

withering, shriveling.

5

This life,

this life of mine

- it was all yours...

26.01.2015

To Syriza's victory in Greece

Today a sun rose from Hellas,

a bright red sun

blinding

Sun

- people's sun of hope.

And coins were dropping

out of the hands

of the greedy,

blinding, hot red coins

from the hands of the troika.

No more austerity,

no more sacrificing people

to pay out loans taken by the corrupted.

From the Aegean shores

to Iberia, a bright red sun rises

to engulf Europe.

26.01.2015

In the spirit of Charlie Hebdo

To Denis Diderot(1713-1784),

who understood that Enlightenment

needs it's assassins

To follow Diderot,

we need to have Netanyahu

strangled with Michel

Houllebecq's intestines

just ripped from his belly,

and he, still alive,

watching the death of Netanyahu

watching the death of Houllebecq.

24.01.2015

Māter

This gulf of years

but a moment

to me still,

always leaving you

just before,

not knowing

it would be

for the last time

in this life.

If but for a moment

to breach the veil of time,

lift away the weight

of these long years

and to gaze upon you again,

hearing your voice,

touching your hand...

...to be at peace,

one more time...

20.01.2015

MMXV

1

the sound of rockets

welcoming the new year

i used to celebrate myself

now i just watch

listen the explosions

shatter the night

days and years and decades

i'll give them all away

the past is where i belong

the past is where i live

in here in these moments

i just exist

2

red and green

arcs and rain

under the full moon

a new year

a happy new year

desperate

world begs

knowing

it will be war

and austerity

and disease

and poverty

and suffering

again

01.01.2015

It's raining water now

in the darkness of the December evening

and from beyond the fallen forest

the sound of a grader

still clearing the highway

from snow

30.12.2014

Poetic Epistle to Humanity

World doesn't need mercy

world doesn't need 'charity'

world doesn't need 'kind works'

from those living in wealth

from the privileged

from birth or ennobled by money

We must show no mercy

We must show no charity

We must show no kindness

towards the wealthy

towards the privileged

from birth or amassing of fortunes

We must make a world

where there are no privilege to be had

where there are no fortunes to be gained 

We must make a world

where there is no need for 'charity'

where kindness is no cause to be praised but normal

We must torn down this order that ruins our world

We must torn burn the wealth of thieves

We must trample privileges of the few under our feet

30.12.2014

Reading the obituaries of authors

who translated

Seems like every week

there dies an author,

who beyond labours of

his or her own work

translated that man Shakespeare.

Just wonder how many

of their own works

are left untranslated

when other authors

keen to get on their obituary

the honorific "translated Shakespeare"

put them aside to give the world

one more Romeo and Juliet,

yet another Julius Caesar,

Macbeth....

Culture is kept up,

as a working machine of memory,

with repetition,

but it doesn't progress through

piles of Shakespeare in

hundreds of languages

translated again and again.

Let Shakespeare be,

o translators,

for a generation,

and give us works of your peers

still breathing!

30.12.2014

American Sniper

Even the saddest stories have some

flickering of hope or joy

and the story of Chris Kyle

is no different;

after so many bad things

it finally

had a happy ending;

The killer killed.

27.12.2014

The days of mid-December

are black-and-white,

from the white snow and black forests

of the brief daylight

to the deep ocean of ink

that engulfs the land

when the pale light withers.

In these two colours

the mind makes it's home

of cold and dark,

shivers contemplating bleak memories

as the dour hours of the long night

and the gray aching light of day

come and go,

come and go.

19.12.2014

this morning
on fallen snow

paw prints

18.12.2014

The night is ending

into a black winter morning.

It's raining, water

washing off the snow

that fell during the evening.

Back inside I read the poems

of the dead,

in which they still gaze from

long crumbled towers

on the Yangtze

after sails

carrying friends

into fates long forgotten.

Dust, the poets

of the T'ang and the Song,

water the snow

of yesterday, Villon,

all bound together

by the void of non-being

in which our

words sparkle.

11.12.2014

Foggy, barely freezing day,

frost on the fields

back from the store

drinking coffee beside

the window

watching the trees

vanish into the fog,

deepening darkness.

05.12.2014

Memento vivere

Rejoice now,

for the days

are short

and fleeting.

Every moment in our lives,

every happy day

spent with our loved ones

is borrowed from the eternity,

from those endless days to come

when their laughter

and the joy we feel hearing it

are both silent, unfelt.

04.12.2014

The birth of a poem

A poem isn't born

on the moment

when it is composed by the poet;

a poem is born

when an another

reads the words

it's made of,

awakens it

building a bridge

between two minds.

04.12.2014

A Climate Changed

It's December,

the land bare from snow,

an autumn that just goes on

and I remember

the long "spring",

a second autumn;

half a year of autumn

without green or white,

a world changed

by the human industrial touch.

02.12.2014

Hope is a medicine

some of us

can take only in

small doses.

02.12.2014

In the evening in my kitchen with the main lamp turned off

I'm drinking coffee, with milk

and eating piece of coffee cake

which crumbles when held

between my fingers, sending

small pieces falling on the table,

little light brown morsels against

deep brown lacquered wood.

The coffee mixes with the cake

and the blood from my gums

in my mouth and I know

I would never eat it

if I could see it as it is,

in my mouth, this mix.

01.12.2014

Dead are clay

easily molded in the hands

of posterity, which

makes of them whatever

suits it.

01.12.2014

What is left of childhood dreams?

Bound to Earth and it's soil,

I shall never walk the sands of Mars

I imagined under my feet

in my childhood days,

but there is a bright star on the horizon

over the dead desert

where water once flowed

in now empty streams

and that bright star, Earth,

is me and you too,

on the sky above Mars

and the steps future shall take

on it's dunes and glaciers.

01.12.2014

Afternoon on 1st of December, 2014

Thus dies the day,

transforming to the starless night,

in the darkness

vanish all forms

and all is black.

No light,

just the absence

and thoughts infected with the night

make the mind troubled

during the slow voyage

into the gray morning

when no sunrise

shall be seen.

01.12.2014

I'm tired

my stomach is reacting to stress again

have to worry for so many people

yet never enough

a scare yesterday

followed by one today

aching belly

and a tired mind

connection

to carry me through this night

on the black tide of coffee

I can't sleep wake

to some new scare

better to be awake

read and sit in the bathroom

as legs go numb

25.11.2014

If you can't cry for those

dying now,

don't cry for those

who are but skeletons

in mass graves.

Tears can't revive the dust.

24.11.2014

gaia

in the end

we all shall

embrace the earth

our great mother

and it shall

kiss our crumbling bones

our ash

18.11.2014

in aeternum resonat

all who we have loved

we must give back

to the world

all who we have lost

we must give back

to the cosmos

ourselves in the end

we must give back

to the nature

18.11.2014

mist

above the fields of snow

melting away

winter melting away

for autumn to

stay

18.11.2014

from our hands

the gifts

of life and death

to all

inhabitants

of the world

and to you

of all people

I gave death

18.11.2014

everything coils around it still

mist and remains of snow

among the remaining trees

the clearing hacked

in our lives

the loss forever there

my mother

the un-beating heart

of our lives

your absence

the stumps

of our lives

still here

16.11.2014

A Poetic End

I pitied Edgar Allan,

thinking of his last days

kidnapped and drunk

forced to vote again and again.

But then I read

he supported slavery

and thought

it was a just end for him.

Supporting the enslavement of others

never believing it to happen to him,

I just wonder if he had any regrets

during those days of bondage.

11.11.2014

Ars Poetica

Poetry can be a painting

made with words,

poetry can be a dagger,

it can be a salve

and it can be a soap box

but it should never be

just one of the above.

07.11.2014

kuorevesi

so bleak

these forest roads

on this november

afternoon darkening

the hamlets

half-abandoned

fields on land

that never gave much

the dark waters

solitary

lights

life

07.11.2014

When a rich man dies,

it's a poor woman's joy.

Don't complain that

it's in bad taste.

When a poor man dies

a rich woman doesn't notice.

30.10.2014

c. m. bowra 1898-1971 in his later years

fat don

with a falling face

still after

all those public school boys

raped by their headmasters

rectums with lesions

to give with

the old slumping dick

some oxford tutoring

30.10.2014

"there is someone worse than us,

so don't blame Israel",

they say, the zionists,

like I would be on a mission

to find the worst single state in the world

instead of opposing evil universally

28.10.2014

a coward blames the victim

to avoid being the next one

ensuring there will be a next one

28.10.2014

life

is the fear

we experience

before death

18.10.2014

love

what doesn't it

ruin

changing to sorrow

through

loss

18.10.2014

Years

like leaves

ripped off from

the branches of a birch

by the autumn wind

growing colder

12.10.2014