Constantine P. Cavafy(1863-1933) II

Blinded by your poetry,

they can't see you for what you were:

A sexual predator

preying on the young, poor

and addicted.

A man who had to pay for sex.

Some even admire you,

envy you even.

For preying on the weak.

31.05.2016

Constantine P. Cavafy(1863-1933)

Those poems of Cavafy which are presented

as personal recollections

and implied to be the author's,

read less real to us

than those placed far in the past;

in those he reaches some

universal essence of what it means to be a human -

in these, we have a man quickly growing old

half-remembering, half-dreaming

encounters and feelings more pure

and bodies more perfect than the impurities

and scars of any real life allows.

The memory of love, lust

and lost embrace distilled by time

to poetry, but poetry

which discards much of that universal essence

to gain a quick remembrance of those moments,

real or imagined, above all.

31.05.2016

Jane Austen(1775-1817)

That terrible beast Jane

and her family of priests who performed no duties

and evangelists of the empire in naval uniforms,

cricketeers and spinsters galore,

their faces venom in old drawings, paintings and photographs,

those drones who knew their place

and the place of everyone 'below' them

and the place of everyone 'above' them.

They would have made marvelous servants

instead of petty masters,

and Jane a perfect maid

and then,

instead of just being an old maid

writing novel after novel about charming suitors,

some lord of manor

could have begetted an illegitimate child or twelve for her

like the lords of manors did back then.

Oh well, the upper middle-class gentry

hanging by its finger-tips from the entrance to the upper-class

had its chronicler in her,

that awful miss Jane.

30.05.2016

Dan Fante(1944-2015)

Wreckage of a life

like yours

offers excellent building blocks

for a literary career -

if you don't mind

putting your own family among

the episodes of your

own drunken escapades,

starting from your pre-teen niece

raped by her own father,

your brother Nick

- the one who

you commemorated with a tattoo

(Killed by alcohol)

in your arm,

the one on whose grave

reads, among others,

'beloved father'.

You didn't mind.

I wonder
how she feels,
reading that poem
of yours?

30.05.2016

THE PAST IS MORE ALIVE

To my mother on her 65th birthday

Drinking the bitter hemlock of life,

tired, under the cloudy skies

pregnant with cold rain,

I imagine you are still a phone call away,

out there, breathing the same air as I,

walking on the same earth as I,

alive, at this ever-fleeting moment of now,

and that I just can't reach you -

like I can't reach you through

these years that you have been lost to us.

29.05.2016

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

uefa champions league final

past midnight
after extra time
tea water boiling on the stove

juanfran shoots the ball against a goal post

real madrid wins the shoot-out

time

to drink some hot tea

take deep breaths

a long walk among the shadows

of the summer night

repeating

it's just football

people are dying of hunger

of lack of clean water

each and every moment

it's just football

juanfran

29.05.2016

I remember seeing the clear depths of the Cretan Sea

below me, the steel cable from the buoy going down, down

into the blue;

a feeling of vertigo overtook me -

and a need to follow that cable to where it would end

on the seafloor. Fighting

that desire I raised my head, looking back

to the shore and saw it distant, the crowd

of people a barely seen union of flesh,

and shocked, I not the terribly good swimmer,

was left there for a long time beside the bouy

kicking water to stay afloat, torn

between two needs, the shore

and the inviting, blue abyss underneath my feet.

22.05.2016

ACRE 2016

A flag of Palestine drapes the old tower

facing the sea's waves at Acre again,

on this day to remember the Nakba,

when the Zionists thought that with blood

and destruction they would create a wave

to carry the natives to faraway slums

and camps to face oblivion in silence,

only to see that the waves of people

like the waves of the sea come back,

withdraw and leave on the beach what

they once carried away.

16.05.2016

Our Frozen Capitalism of 1943

Capitalism removed from the shackles of democracy

and from the 'threat' of socialism

always veers towards Auschwitz:

"Arbeit macht frei"

with the freedom being that of the death.

Smelling the ash in the air

someone tries, failing, to play Wagner on the piano

by the open window

as the rest of the party talk of the news from Berlin:

Advances on all fronts and the trains run on schedule.

06.05.2015

The Arctic Sea

I have given up, beside

this gray shore of falling rocks

where the giant waves of faded blue

hit with the anger of the abyss;

I have given up under this steel sky

and having given up I

have no strength to go either

to the clouded paths of my coming

or to the hard, wet rocks below.

I have given up, yet I stay

as the darkness gathers

and brings forth the moonless night.

03.05.2016

Of the Nature of Time

The past is like this day is -

eternal, unchanging,

each moment of it

the ever-lasting 'now'.

Nothing is lost,

nothing will be lost,

all is,

the past, the future, together.

03.05.2016

Apology

I mix up the killed, I with my almost photographic memory

lost now in the labyrinth of the dead

whose faces are carried forth by the martyrs of tomorrow.

The same hand killed them, those men with similar faces,

but their deaths demand remembrance.

The youthful face smiling through the years,

martyr Bassem Abu Rahma of Bi'lin, brother to martyr Jawaher,
leading the weekly protest.

16.04.2016

Climate change spring

Climate change spring:

Snows gone the barren autumn landscape

without a straw of new grass or a bud of a leaf

on the branches swaying in the cold wind.

A month, a month and a half

stuck between winter and spring

in this second, man-made autumn,

with all the colours of a muddy battlefield.

12.04.2016

Today is a dream

of the past

from which

it can never wake.

01.04.2016

Death of the Author

The great and -- despite his Nobel Prize -- underappreciated (in the US/UK, certainly) Kertész Imre has passed away. He'd been seriously ill for quite a while, so this isn't unexpected, but it's still a major loss. 

M.A.Orthofer

When an author is incapable of writing

more - whatever the reason -

his or her physical death is no major loss.

They are just flesh and flesh doesn't last.

He or she have done their part,

the works will live or perish

independent of whether

the author breaths or not.

I repeat:

We must not bother with the author

after the figurative pen has been put aside

for the final time.

No quick glances whether the chest

still rises and falls,

no mirror before the mouth

to check for the weakest sign of life.

Let them go in silence,

let them pass in obscurity

and when we see or hear the news

let us just nod and move on.

No need to know about final words,

the exact manner of perishing.

The executors will give us in time

what truly matters: Words unread.

01.04.2016

The Dew of Morning

On the grass the bare feet of the young

taste the dew of morning,

under the grass, in the fertile soil,

rest the bones and ash of the old

relieved from flesh.

In the dreams of the young

shadows appear among the sunshine -

the lives lived to give them life.

In the soil rest, one with the land,

those whose dreams the young were.

The young grow old and go away,

and they will rest where they forebears rest,

and life will send forth its new generations

like spring its new green grass

and again the bare feet of the young

will taste the dew of morning.

14.03.2016

What 'the end of Communism' has shown us

is that the true Communists were and are right

and the Social Democrats were and are wrong:

There can be no middle way between

socialism and capitalism,

no middle way between decent society

and the all-devouring greed.

There is no path to decent society

through bourgeois democracy of capitalism,

there is only a cul-de-sac from which

we must make our way back to the barricades.

What was build through suffering must through suffering fall:

Capitalism brought down by blood and stones and bullets and bombs.

Bourgeois society torn apart by a Red Flood that leaves devastation behind,

ruins to be swept aside to build all anew.

11.03.2016

From your brow

the sweat and suffering of a life-time

all the unfulfilled hopes

the crushed dreams

the wishes that would now never be

the disappointments caused by loved ones

the pain the fear you felt

swept away by the cold hand of death

swept away

because I didn't turn it away

11.03.2016

To Fadwa Abu Tir(1964/1965-2016)

I lived 51 years on my land,

under occupation them all.

Then I once raised my hand

in anger to struck the invader,

after 51 years of waiting

for them to go.

They shot me then

and I died there,

my blood bleeding on the

ancient stones of Jerusalem.

They have seen much blood,

they will see more

until my land is free.

08.03.2016

When the first spring after my passing comes,

the grass will still sprout sprightly green,

the flowers will grow to open their petals,

the birds will make their nests and sing,

the Sun will softly warm them all,

the spring breeze will bring them cool.

That is enough for me.

08.03.2016

The Tempest - Call for a Revolutionary Theatre

In a better play

Caliban would have them devoured

and reigned master of his island land

with Prospero's skull as his cup,

just like the merchant Shylock

should have gotten his pound of

Christian flesh,

and then another one.

Those made into monsters

by others' monstrosity

should be our heralds

shouting for a better world

from the stage before

and after the curtain falls.

01.03.2016

Peter Pan and his brothers

Peter Pan, Peter Pan

under a train he went.

Peter Pan, Peter Pan

his brother Michael

in a lover's embrace drowned.

Peter Pan, Peter Pan

in his brother George's head a bullet went.

Mourn them? No.

They all to Eton went,

so curse them.

26.02.2016

Borea

No refugees, they shriek,

they must go somewhere else,

anywhere else,

they must fight wars they are fleeing,

they must stay in refugee camps near home,

they must die of disease epidemics

or just plain cold while trying to cross borders,

they must drown while trying to cross

from one continent to another,

they must be forgotten in huge refugee camps

or lodged in corners of existing ones,

hidden in abandoned subterranean garages.

They must go somewhere else,

anywhere else,

to white or blue death

but they must go somewhere else

because here we have no compassion,

here we have no conscience,

here we have no empathy,

because here we have no humanity left,

we have no humanity left in us.

10.02.2016

Conquest of the Human Mind

Rome was a horror unleashed upon the Mediterranean world,

a flood of genocide that crashed high upon its shores.

Jerusalem, that cursed city, begot horrors of another kind -

prophets and messiahs to unbalance the world,

to make the future reach at heaven and not earth.

Stepping in the deep footprints of Roman military sandals

the religious set to conquer the human mind.

06.02.-08.02.2016

Watching a falling star

a piece of ancient rock

deified in its last moments

among the fusion burning giants

08.02.2016

Rainer Maria Rilke(1875-1926)

Its easy to believe in god

and write love letters to it

when you are the favoured pet of the 'noble' rich

and gaze out from their castle windows,

seeing angels and missing

the burning world

you have no connection to.

08.02.2016

Even the Buddhist master

claiming that all is illusion

is illusion.

02.02.2016

Time seals the mouths

and silences the voices of men.

Their shaking hands cease writing,

the turmoil in their minds ease.

Time embraces man

and man crumbles to dust

in its arms.

02.02.2016

Paw prints on the snow spreading,

three dogs running

into the morning darkness.

02.02.2016

In midst of the blackness

of the winter night

it has snowed.

02.02.2016

I was thirty-eight when for the first time

I did not get any gifts on Christmas.

I could not expect any, in the circumstances;

I was not sad; yet in slight melancholy and nostalgia

I had to reflect. A turning point in life.

I had passed through
one of the little crossroads of life.

31.01.2016

We need a new
Lenin in every country.

We may have to shoot them afterwards,

but we need them.

But no Stalin.

New Stalins need to be shot now.

29.01.2016

King Charles I on January 30th 1649

- or an ode to an axe

When a ruler's head doesn't bend,

it needs to be cut off.

28.01.2016

Ode to the October Revolution

The world

needs more

Jewish bolsheviks.

28.01.2016

A Dream

During last evening's hopeless sleep

I found myself holding brand new novels

by Jean Genet, hardbacks with

red, smooth cover papers.

I was, I noticed, in a library.

Why Jean Genet, I wondered, why now?

I woke, remembered the

library book I had lost,

its rough, brown-yellowish soft covers

holding inside the birth of a revolutionary spirit.

28.01.2016

Listening to Dowland,

drinking old coffee and lemon tea without sugar,

trying to read

a path through the hours of the night

between pale blue covers,

until a late red dawn sets snow on fire.

28.01.2016

Poetic was the death of Poe

Poetic was the death of Poe:

A slave at last

the supporter of slavery,

drink after drink down his throat

and a change of clothes,

taken to vote

again and again,

the sacrifice of the Great American Author

for a little political gain.

Poetic was the death of Poe.

28.01.2016

Ars Poetica Spatia

A poem without a message

is a scream in void.

A poet without a message

is a cosmonaut doing

a space-walk without a suit.

The former isn't heard,

the latter doesn't survive long-term.

Thirty seconds in the void

screaming and heart fails.

28.01.2016

To Michael McClure(1932-)

The only thing your cigarette was an emblem of

was and is the bloody cancer -

and your black lungs. Art

has no need for the devices of a suicide

to represent it, death in form of smoke

to creep inside, to worm its way into cells.

27.01.2016

Peter Orlovsky(1933-2010)

In a relationship of two poets

one has to be silent,

in the background,

the one who needs to be identified in photographs

showing them together.

As the work of the prominent partner

rises in quantity and appreciation,

in its shadow the poems of the other

grow few; one day

a young disciple of their partner

will ask from the loyal companion

"Do you write?" and

is answered "I did."

26.01.2016

Tomorrow will be gone,

yesterday wasn't here -

the human existence,

a thought between voids.

26.01.2016

16 & 22

Young lives lost in blood on muddy native soil,

"terrorists" scream the colonists who took photos while they died,

bled for forty minutes in the cold and the rain

while foreign medics proud of not treating the natives

were caring for their lightly injured fellows.

25.01.2016

from nothing to nothing

you are not

you are

you are not

so simple

but facing it

non-existence

you need to give

fear a good kicking

to keep it down

your loved ones

faced it

they are no more

you have to have

guts to accept it

the annihilation of self

the annihilation of being

24.01.2016

In the kitchen, lost in night time

Blood from the gums paints the

bottom of the kitchen sink red,

dark blood, iron deficient,

with those deformed red blood cells,

too few white blood cells

making from their part life what it is,

sleeping and being tired,

handful of pills keeping going

from nightmare to another one without dreams,

a fragment of death, void,

annihilating hours.

22.01.2016

A scene from Yemen after Saudi-Arabia's air-strike

Rag-dolls covered in plaster and dust,

painted with bright red here and there,

broken, blasted open skull or abdomen,

the fragile biological machinery stopped,

the mystery of consciousness ended.

Only death remains in the ruins.

22.01.2016

In the light of the reading lamp

On the bed, early Friday evening

and the black of winter night a wall behind every window,

water flowing to the sink in the kitchen

to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting,

and in 1944 New York rag-tag losers stumbling to murder

inside the yellow covers of the novel I'm reading.

I have no sympathy for Lucien Carr.

An awful killing, drowning a wounded victim,

makes sympathy impossible.

Somehow they are all lacking something essential

to humanity, these damaged people

rising to greatness in literature -

Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac and the lot.

Somehow they could not see themselves,

hands bound, bleeding from chest wounds,

regaining consciousness in the cold, dirty river water

with trousers' pockets full of stones.

They failed there. Fuck you Lucien Carr, you little rat.

Fuck you and fuck your loyal friends.

22.01.2016

Michel Tournier(1924-2016)

At that age

your path's end

is a summit of loneliness

to rest on

to gaze at what

is behind

your life a landscape

being lost in mist

of distance and time

22.01.2016

Humans trying to become god-like

and god trying to become human,

missing each other somewhere between.

19.01.2016

A World Ending

Thoughts drift like snowflakes

in the pale, faded blue

arranged over this freezing day,

these anthills of homes

among snow and trees,

the concealed faces

on the slippery streets of ice;

the darkness before and

the darkness coming,

these lives slipping through

the cracks opening

everywhere you look.

A world ending

with no news of a coming birth.

19.01.2016

Finland 2016

The future, sold,

shall always be

worse now, the Golden Age

lost in old 80s photographs

and memories of youth.

But watch your daily dose of unreality TV,

read about how much cleavage

celebrities have shown yesterday,

remember to hate the refugees

and support joining NATO,

celebrate ice hockey victories

like they would give something to you,

be the sheep that votes

for their own slaughter.

19.01.2016

TO WISAM MARWAN QASWANI

Wisam Marwan Qaswani(1994 - 17 January 2016)

No headlines for you,

Wisam Marwan Qaswani,

unlike for the illegal Israeli settler

killed the day after you,

in the so-called 'Western' media.

The indigenous gets the silence,

the colonialist the clamour.

No headlines for the brick-maker boy

shot by someone who wanted

to kill a human being

and no longer could control

the evil growing inside him or her.

They killed you, and they get away with it,

they get away with of letting you to bleed death,

there on the ground of your own land,

your blood on the soil of your native land.

As the stream of innocent blood shed flows, 

the anger grows. Hate that makes the fingers

pull the trigger to kill brick-maker boys

makes steel find its way through soft flesh.

Blood calls forth more blood,

said Alcuin of York.

Hate calls forth more hate.

Death calls forth more death.

Your death calls forth more death,

Wisam Marwan Qaswani.

The hand that made its finger pull the trigger,

the mind that sent the order to the hand,

the human being, lost inside his or her uniform,

is a future killer of so many fellow Zionists.

19.01.2016

All for them

Start the long goodbye,

wave already

when you see them coming

just to make sure

it will be done,

seeing you in good spirit

will please them,

smile so that

it will be captured

in a photograph

when you still can smile.

Hug, when people

still dare to approach you,

when the "death

is a contagious disease"

thought hasn't taken over.

Give them a good

final moment

when the pain is still controllable,

and then,

enter between the white sheets on the bed,

allow the tubes to be inserted,

wait, while death stays with you

as they all go away

to life, abandoning you

to the final moment

when the disease is in control.

15.01.2016