ATLANTIS

The dreary gray day is over, the great waves

of the night have sank the hours

remaining in November's last darkness.

We, in our pitiful Atlantis,

in our lightless depths,

live among toppled ruins

of past dreams turned into nightmares.

The feeble morning shall raise us

to meet cold December's iron skies,

the landscape which in snows

reflects our numbed minds' own frosts.

30.11.2020

THE BROKEN PLANET

The wise lower themselves,

for it's easier to see

the world in truth

and it's troubled

crowds from below,

than from above the multitude;

harder to be like the arrogant

lords of the dying planet

in their keeps, to think

yourself separate

from the thronging mass

of suffering humanity.

Necessary to

start the healing

of the broken planet

by throwing

the first stone

and the last stone.

07.06.2015-18.11.2020-30.11.2020

ALMOST

 There are days

when you almost

feel yourself

to be a human

being.

Almost.

30.11.2020

FATAL TIME

No existentialist bravado

will help us to live

with the knowledge

that we are mere ants

in an anthill being

kicked and stamped

on by the

relentless boots

of fatal time.

30.11.2020

TROJAN HORSES

Agamemnon and his fellow warriors,

returning from Troy, shall discover

that the homes they left

can be more dangerous than the foreign land

they turned into bloodied ruins.

Back in the lands which now

see strangers in them,

their homes shall be Trojan horses,

enclosing inside their walls

assassins holding unsheathed daggers,

on their faces masks of the people

the returning warriors left behind.

27.11.2020

NOVEMBER DAY

The day, born grey,

dies grey,

and between, lies

grey upon the

brown, barren land

covered with fallen,

soaked leaves;

an impotent day

that begets

but sour, grey

reflections

on the mirror of

of the human mind.

23.11.2020

PASSING THROUGH PURGATORY ON THE WAY DOWN TO HELL

To PRC

I think of you

in my frigid loneliness,

in this separation

which gives me

visions of your

scared flesh and the

purgatory I unleashed

upon us; in

your mound

of Venus I

see the lonely isle

Dante ascended

on his path

from Hell to Heaven -

but we,

guided by no Virgil,

but my folly,

are descending

to circles of the damned.

20.-23.11.2020

COSMIC HORROR

Simple people

who expect their gods

to be kind and forgiving

must never have beheld with clear eyes

this bleeding world they claim their gods made;

for every sin in human heart,

if divine beings exist,

must have their source in

the greater, fouler sins, of

the malign minds that would've

made DNA out of Earthen clay,

and with hypernovas would now,

across entire galaxies.

extinguish life.

23.11.2020

ON A:S BIRTHDAY

Snow fell on frosty ground

in the gray, bleak light

of the short November day,

and melted,

lies in dark pools

embraced by the starless night.

20.11.2020

CETUS

GJ 3053,

a red dwarf star in the constellation of Cetus,

the Whale, 39 light-years from Earth,

has three planets orbiting it. One,

a Super-Earth almost twice the mass of the Earth,

and in the habitable zone, could have

an ocean hundreds of kilometres in depth.

So says a new study. I think

of immense pressures in lightless depths,

of landless sea swathed in red light,

of my cat I named after the constellation -

one day, over thirty years ago,

brought back by my father,

who, returning from work,

found Cetus dead, run over,

at the crossroad near our home.

I think of my cat, dead in the trunk

of the Lada, I think of those

long gone days when I was young,

when we knew no planet around

other stars, when life held

wonder and promise,

I think of my Cetus,

how he must have suffered.

I think of the immense

depths of the faraway ocean,

the darkness and pressure like death,

the end that awaits

when all wonder and promise

lies dead.

18.11.2020

EMPTINESS AT THE HEART

There is a void, a terrible lack of

universal compassion at the hearts of people;

lives lived with the paradoxical expectation

of global compassion, while having none. 

26.11.2015-18.11.2020

FOR I HAVE ENTERED THE WORLD OF MEN AGAIN

To PRC

Such a bleak, dark day

that barely dawned to gray light

and tones of brown,

and with mind full of worry

of thinking of you, so

far-away, trying to read

about Hobbes and Descartes,

waiting at the dentist;

cold and blind as a mole

on the soaked fields,

thoughts wandering - 

how I would like

to open your legs and taste

you, enter you, but

your soft skin lost, all

I have are Descartes

taken from his Bavarian oven,

shivering before the queen of the Swedes,

Hobbes with his sovereign

tyrant and making a fool

squaring the circle, same

people going pass and forth

in the hallway, again and again,

and beyond the closing and opening

doors, the bleak dark day,

in gray light the ruins of lives.

17.11.2020

FADING RAIN IN THE NOVEMBER NIGHT

Waking up to the sound of fading rain

in the November night, alone

but the cats, and thoughts

a swirl of loss, I pick up Du Fu

and start reading about

his last years amid the southern

waters and crags, wandering,

having lost his northern land,

waiting for the years to close,

until that final crossing

on the Dongting lake.

17.11.2020

FATHER'S DAY II

In the disappearing light

of the chill November Sunday evening

all candle-flames flickering on graves

are cold, frost dancing

ahead the falling night.

09.11.2020

FATHER'S DAY I

 Frost on the graveyard when I come

to your graves, and with most

of you have I walked here to the graves

of those who I never knew;

now I know more here, in the evening

light of November cemetery,

than in this blighted county alive.

Thus is the ending I fashioned

in my long defeat.

In the waning, cold light,

before your names engraved in stones,

I can, with strange calm, confront

the fact more deeply chiselled in

absence, that this is what life

has come into, that this

is the path I carved across years

for its flood-waters, and it

took you in its rushing tide.

09.11.2020

POLITICS AS USUAL

Observe how those

who were silent

on Haiti

are now loud.

But carefully,

notice that.

Support

that can be

withdrawn

at any moment.

29.07.2019

REMEMBER, YOU ARE DYING

Remember, that on

each day

you think you are living,

you are dying.

That last moment

of thought closer,

the end when you

return to nothingness.

From nothingness you

came, to nothingness

you will return,

all these brief days erased.

07.11.2020

CARDINALS(1973) BY YOSHIDA TÕSHI(1911-1995)

On a drab autumn day two

cardinals, red and light brown,

perching on a black branch

amid yellow and dark brown

leaves, bright red rowanberries,

forever.

07.11.2020

THESE DAYS, THEY JUST SPEED PAST

Briefly I awakened to sunlight,

almost eleven a. m., got up, went

to the kitchen, grabbed the phone

charging from the laptop,

send a text message that needed

to be sent, went to the toilet, changed

water in the cats' bowl, gave them food,

came back to kitchen and drank

some distilled juice, and then down

in to the crumpled sheets

again, the mask on the face,

air flowing as I dived

away from the world of light,

surfacing in the darknesss

of six p. m., November night,

black house in a bleak world,

as it should be, the golden

rays a fading memory like

a fairytale half-remembered

from childhood, half

made up.

06.11.2020

UNTIL DUSK

What a fine summer morning,

meadows shrouded in mist

and birdsong, 

as golden sunlight comes

and touches each dew drop;

what a fine summer morning

to close tired, aching eyes

and fall asleep,

dream away the day

until inflaming dusk.

 

20.06.2015-02.11.2020

EQUAL

 Beyond the windows, an Autumn

near November - the withered

season hangs dripping

on bared branches;

inside, winter frost

on each sharp surface

bisecting life, flesh.

29.10.-02.11.2020

MAKE EACH OPEN WOUND A HEALING SCAR

To PRC

We talk, and it ends

all wrong, again;

you asked for an explanation,

once more, and here it is -

I just want to fuck you,

be inside you, hold you,

take you, ram you,

make you scream...

but never, ever

should have you

trusted me, or me myself.

I dream of having you,

open before me,

accepting, welcoming;

of tasting that moist depth

and the smooth flesh...

but the trust that could

send me into you

was shattered, and

only sharp fragments remain

bloody in my hands -

and in your flesh.

Oh how I wish I

could pluck them out,

insert them in me,

make each open wound

a healing scar, and

an eternity rush deep

into you.

29.10.-02.11.2020

WILLIAM WHARTON

 Only people from the United States

are real; from Paris

the quintessential American 

told us

the world a mere mirror

for them to watch

their reflection.

29.10.-02.11.2020

TERMINAL CHILL

October moonlight glittering

on bare fangs; red orbs

of blood falling,

shooting stars of fading

heartbeat.

29.10.-02.11.2020

SYMMETRY HAS LANDED

Snowflakes float slowly

on brown, yellow leaves

covering the soaked

late October land.

I want to be a

seed in your

womb.

29.10.-02.11.2020

THE HEADSTONE

 A brief moment of sunlight
on this day of endings;
when your name is on a stone
above where you are laying,
something has come to an end -
a curtain has fallen, yet
only for the half-time
in this mixed tragedy and
farce. You the tragic victim,

betrayed by one you

trusted and loved,

I the farcical villain,
who bumbling destroys lives,
ends lives - the very lives
he professes, even
to himself, cherish most.

Then, occasional rain
with memories and guilt -
but guilt has never revived
a human being lost, and

in memories you return
only as puppets sculpted
by our subconscious;
the same subconscious
which seeks to absolve
and condemn, and
can not end this fatal farce
or avert yet another
prophesied tragedy - only
my own death can, when

the clown exits the stage,

and leaves behind mere

names on stones.

25.10.2020

SO ADEPT ARE WE AT BREAKING EACH OTHER

Oh humans, so adept are 

we at breaking each other,

willfully blind to the hurt

that makes others crumble,

even when we break

them apart, even when

we break apart.

24.06.2015-23.10.2020-25.10.2020-05.02.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poets

SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS

Birdsong in the summer night,

darkness in the autumn night,

the years they took the songs

of birds and human beings,

and this true darkness brought

which, inside us,

devours the seasons,

in shine and gloom alike.

23.06.2013-23.10.2020-25.10.2020

SEE THE FANGS OF TOMORROW CLOSE IN

The future in its

gaping maw holds,

shivering with dread,

the frail, doomed today.

04.05.2013-23.10.2020

THEY ARE DEAD IN US

 Our lost beloved ones
don't live on in us;
they are in us,
dead.

Dead
like the deceased are
when their memory
is not yet dust like lives.

22.10.2020

LAZARUS

What mercy is there in dying twice?

Facing death and its cold oblivion

a second time, with the fear deepened

by memory of the vast nothing

that was between the last heartbeat

and its thunderous renewal,

and made bitter by the knowledge

that no travelling prophet

with his gathered entourage

shall come to raise me a second time

to declare in flesh his mission from God!

20.10.2020

THE DEATH OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE(1540-96)

Francis Drake he shat himself to death

while they were putting him in his armour,

and no wonder they then shut him in a lead coffin

and threw overboard into the depths; no

wine casket for him like Nelson,

no boiling of flesh like Henry V,

not even a heart cut out of his chest,

just the deep blue sea and the devil

rising in a wave to take his own.

18.10.-20.10.2020

THE LAST ASCENT

A climber who never fell,

never had his bones broken

with gravity and stones;

the peaks long conquered and long lost,

had his rope at last cut

when the sky was a blue sea after rain,

climbing the rainbrow bridge,

like a beloved pet he had become,

from the hospice window

to the Alps of the Moon.

20.10.2020

IN THE LATE WINTER DARKNESS

The March night;

in black wastes

the world erased.

01.03.2015-16.10.2020

UBASUTE

1

We came to the mountain

where the wind cries

abandoned elders.

2

Carried to her death,

the old woman still

holds tight her son.

28.02.2013-16.10.2020

NOT QUITE A HAIKU

A short, late spring

birthed a hot May,

summer of bees.

19.05.2013-16.10.2020

FALLEN DEAD THINGS

Broken tooth, fallen leaf.

Both yellow, picked

up from where they fell.

From the bloody sink,

the soaked ground

under the stripping trees.

The bloody gums, the

birch branch they grew

and flew from -

how many shall break

and fall until the snow

comes silent in the night?

05.09.2015-16.10.2020

NO MEANING

A brown leaf falls

on the dark reflection

in the cold water

holding the clouds.

14.10.2020

THE OLD AGE OF W. B. YEATS

 When the man became old
all the old answers wrapped

in flag or dead,

the world stale,

the swans flown,

the beautiful women grandmothers,

and what the old man had

were testicles of apes,
and blueshirt fascists,
to questions of limpness
of organ and mind.

14.10.2020

ALL POETRY IS POLITICAL

There's no poetry that wouldn't be

political to someone;

no escape from the reality

for the frail critic

in search of pure literature,

the essence of experience

untainted by ideology

and views roughly sculpted

by the necessities of life.

Even utter gibberish

can speak of despair

towards world gone mad.

23.06.2013

THE WRITTEN WORD

flowing on the page

dreams and hopes in ink

a lifetime spent

chasing mirages

22.10.2013

AFTER THE STORM

The wind shakes

the trees that remain

after the storm

felled the tall firs,

bending now the

remaining

alders, birches and junipers,

the lone high pine;

not breaking

them,

for now.

14.05.2015-12.10.2020

WHAT HAPPENED

Ripped off their beautiful wings,

ripped off their fragile dreams

of butterfly wings,

after opening the cage

and promising them

the blue, warm air of summer

amidst the flowers in bloom.

22.01.2016-12.10.2020

SIMPLE

If you want respect

from others,

never ask for it.

If it's not given,

never show a sign of it affecting you;

if it's given,

never show a sign of it

either affecting you -

just tell you

owe all to others.

For the best way to

avoid envy is to share,

and to give up is to keep.

02.01.-04.02.2017-12.10.2020

BIBLICAL

Blood for blood.

Such a simple

equation.

Justice paramount

when your shrieking

soul demands.

And wrong

when your opposite

wants it.

It's you who

pierces one's own eyeballs

with a blazing-hot needle.

16.11.2015-12.10.2020

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

THUS I HAVE WALKED IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

A morning, an autumn.

Bright sunlight, cold air.

An evening, an autumn,

bright sunlight, cold breeze.

06.09.2017-12.10.2020

AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT

It grows dark early, under the iron-gray sky,

and the wind keeps blowing, taking leaves

off alders and junipers, birches now stripped bare;

cold, quick rain falls on short intervals,

water drips from the eaves, the branches,

and still, there is a flickering light

inside the damp dark of my thoughts,

feeling of happiness on this

early October evening,

as the northern wind rises to a howl

and the soaked land buries

itself in the deepening dark.

09.10.2020

AFTER YOUR DEATH IN VENICE

To Ezra Pound(1885-1972)

Having loved, and written

so much of the southern land,

at your death they should

have salted and taken your corpse

over the winter passes, upstream

into old Burgundy, sealed

it in a tarred cask, hand-crafted,

to remember the good old ways,

and sent you down the river

on the voyage to the sands of Arles,

where at Alyscamps they

could bury you, or let you rot.

09.10.2020

OCTOBER RAIN

Sun started to shine, and I made

to rise from my chair

before the window and the computer,

to go outside -

in the yellow-gray autumn

made golden and silver;

then the rain started to fall,

hard rain amid sunshine,

and I sat back, watched

it fall as the gold

and silver waned,

and the sound of the falling rain

rose, beating thunderously,

as white clouds drifted

against pale blue sky

above the birches.

08.10.2020

THIS AUTUMN LAND

 A shaft of pale sunlight

pierces the thicket of yellow-leaved birches,

rising where often in my eyes still

firs and pines for their hundredth autumn

rise to block the sky,

above paths now overgrown

with devastated years.

08.10.2020

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A LANDSCAPE IN OCTOBER

In this yellow autumn,

under a milk-gray sky,

I am a fallen leaf, red,

amid the dying weeds

as the cold rain comes.

08.10.2020

PLAYING WITH THE BLUE MARBLE

Snow falls,

rain falls,

a cycle through

a changed December,

snows washed away into

puddles and streams in a soaked land

as the heavy rains come;

up and below zero

temperature fluctuates,

humanity playing

children's games

with a small blue orb

in the endless void.

18.12.2015-08.10.2020

NO FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is never earned,

but always granted

out of mercy for

the undeserving.

But how do you ask for

forgiveness from the shattered

people you broke,

from those entombed?

12.06.2015-08.10.2020

CHICKEN SOUP WITH REMORSE

Awake, sipping watery chicken soup,

perhaps should have added that cream,

a lot less water,

should have made the effort,

rolled from the sofa to the floor,

called, risen to my knees,

shook and awakened,

listened, truly listened,

made a search for symptoms online,

made the fucking call, in time,

and then, not this -

not this purgatory,

not this watery soup

when time has lost all meaning,

and days go down the drain,

down the drain like the lives

we let fall past us our fingers,

our own with them.

31.07.2017-08.10.2020

PLATO

That mere longing for something beautiful,

beautiful and lasting in

a world of loss and decay,

is taken as philosophy

is a condemnation of philosophy.

27.11.2017

OUR PAST FALLS APART

The past is a closed book

with a cracked spine,

falling to pieces

when forced open,

shedding leaves

tumbling, scattering

on today's floor.

18.02.2016-07.10.2020

FALLEN LEAFS

 Like the brown leaves floating
in the muddy pools
amid clouds,
once we
shall, fallen,
be dead things
amidst the earth and the sky.

07.10.2020

THE GOVERNMENT MEN RETURN TO LIGHT

The 59 officials and priests of the 26th dynasty,

raised from their millennial darkness,

their coffins and mummies in bright colours

again among the sands of Saqqara,

and perhaps they would understand -

these were men of the government, after all -

that they are here to bring money

to the ruler's coffins, to hide

the 23 executed who are being put

in their own dark holes in the ground.

06.10.2020

JUST A COMMON AUTUMN MORNING

On this rainy October morning,

looking out of the window

waiting for the coffee to drop,

I'm glad it's a proper autumn day

after the warm red yesterday;

rain and cold wind, brown

leaves falling to puddles 

in the gloom under an overcast sky -

it will be nice to have a brisk walk,

remember all the autumns gone

and get a common flu,

as long as tomorrow

brings back the warm red light

and still air of the Indian Summer.

06.10.2020