ON THE STAGE OF LIFE

All the real stories are tragedies;

all others are fiction,

mirages of the human mind

in the desert of the real.

A philosopher said

something, of that nature -

it was fiction, naturally,

shimmering

in the parched vision of the lost.

29.-30.11.2021

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RUNNING UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT

  all these words

won't save us

from the

void

but

what else

do we have

to fight oblivion?

12.11.2021

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DANDELION WINE III

Bradbury's

magical summer of 1928,

yet already in the delicious

all-American apple

a worm stalks its prey,

the Lonely One

turning warm nights

into fear -

the killer soul of the nation

breaks through the boyhood idyll,

into dreams

pours napalm.

No new sneakers

will allow you ´

to outrun

the memory of the

dead baby in the crib.

12.11.-06.12.2021

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ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON THE INDUS

People start to die

on the day

when they have to

accept that it's time

to turn and

go back.

Until that day,

when they were

always pushing onwards,

they were immortal.

Now, death

has a hold on them,

a claw on the shoulder

tightening its grip.

As they turn back,

they know

they are starting the path

to that day

which to them

shall lack

a sunrise or a sunset.

Sometimes

they last until

Babylon,

sometimes,

like with the aged Seleucus

(still a young general

on this fateful day

when the great

adventure ends),

death catches

up with them

on the borders

of Macedon.

11.11.2021

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HORROR HAIKU V

 why doesn't the

blood on the wall

dry up?

11.11.2021

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ONCE THIS MEANT SOMETHING

Given up,

life hasn't ended.

Not sinking,

floating across

unchanging days,

with closed eyes

to keep the dead

from escaping

into the light.

09.12.2019-11.11.2021

HORROR HAIKU IV

in the bright moonlight

no shadow of yours

on blue snows

11.11.2021

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HORROR HAIKU III

 between the clouds

the ghost

of the moon

11.11.2021

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HORROR HAIKU II

 the sound

of a Pound

eating a frog

11.11.2021

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HORROR HAIKU I

the sound

of a pond

eating a frog

11.11.2021

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RHETORIC

words

build the world

and

words

make people

blind

to the world

words

built

11.11.2021

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BEYOND THE HOURS OF LIGHT

 how the long

november night

erases the world

outside

is comforting,

liberating;

a sheltering

coffin

to be buried

alive in.

10.11.2021

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EARLY NOVEMBER AFTERNOON

darkness,

not of winter

yet,

past autumn,

gathers

the shivering

day

in its cold arms,

smothers

the light.

10.11.2021

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A DAY IN NOVEMBER

the sound of the rain

falling asleep

in darkness

awakening

in darkness

the sound of the rain

10.11.2021

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BELOW FREEZING

near midnight

the rain stops

it starts to snow

across the dark

 coupling space

and time

into night

09.11.2021

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BETTER OPEN YOUR MOUTH NOW

   always remember

only the living

can forgive

the dead

are frozen

embracing

the last

hurtful words

your regrets

09.11.2021

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NOR ULYSSES

   Twenty years,

and Penelope

hadn't aged a day.

09.11.2021

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THE MOON BETWEEN THE CLOUDS ON A FREEZING NOVEMBER NIGHT

  The less said,

the better.

09.11.2021

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NOVEMBER FLOOD

 All I've got

this evening

are words

freezing

in time.

09.11.2021

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IN FLESH AND BONE

if you can't be

someone's dream

come true,

be assured

that then

you

are someone's

nightmare

made manifest...

09.11.2021

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CHOICES

 shall we

embrace

the night -

or the

light

in it,

the stars

between

the clouds?

09.11.2021

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FILLING THE VOID

 trying to fill

the emptiness

of existence

with words,

we tend to

forget

that we are

others

attempt to fill

the emptiness

with flesh.

09.11.2021

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NECTANEBO II(R. 360-343 BCE)

one day

the great king

in susa

let's you drag

back to the

land of the

black soil

your

cousin,

teos,

the one

you deposed,

in chains;

and then

comes the day

you find

that you're

sailing down

the nile

to nubia,

escaping

another great king

of susa

marching to memphis.

09.11.2021

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THE HUMAN CONDITION

1  

let us

save ourselves

from hope.

2

see,

still praying

to the void.

3

let's save

ourselves

from hope.

4

see,

still denying

the void.

09.11.2021

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TWILIGHT ON THE NILE, CIRCA 450 CE

what did it matter

that one resurrected saviour

god was replaced

by an another one,

a hundred gods

in one

by three

in one?

same temples

still,

same worshippers

with the same

human desperation

before the

darkness

descending.

09.11.2021

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AFTER FAITH

do old unemployed

gods

die homeless?

09.11.2021

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THE BROKEN THREAD

 existence

is an unraveling

loop

in time

09.11.2021

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LETI

What you have here

is the broken skull

of a child,

aged four to six,

left in a narrow cleft

in subterranean darkness

for 250 000 years.

What hands

last touched it

before yours?

09.11.2021

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FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA

a human being

is just a linear chain

of thoughts

09.11.2021

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THE LOVERS

It's true that they loved,

and more so, each other,

briefly; one of those

sickly loves which flickers,

then seems to grow -

and dies, like they

did, laying now in their

separate graves,

mouldering leaves

of yet another autumn gone

covering broken lives.

06.11.2021

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TIME AND THE HUMAN BEINGS, SECOND VERSION

Time shall belong to man

Dylan Thomas(1914-1953)

It's not time

which belongs to man,

it's man (and woman and child)

who belongs to time,

and time shall play

with the human being

for a brief moment,

and then it shall crush 

the human in

its hard, rough hand

and throw away.

08.06.2019-04.11.2021

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ON THE 103RD ANNIVERSARY OF WILFRED OWEN'S DEATH ON NOVEMBER 4TH 1918

One day you are a young man

drifting without a direction,

your future shrouded

in unresolved mist;

dabbling in church,

and university,

and teaching, with poetry

on the side;

and then a lone gunman,

resolving his own mist,

gives you the choice

Paris was given.

And you take it,

and write,

until another man

uses his gun.

04.11.2021

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HUMANITY II

Our immortality

will be the same

as that of our

pelycosaur kin;

in geological strata,

dreaming with eyes

of stone,

until the Sun

becomes old,

and in its

end

embraces

the Earth,

immolating our

mortal memory.

18.10.2021

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HUMANITY I

So soon gone,

that might as well

not have come;

in this universe

where red dwarfs

flare for trillions

of years

in near-immortal

stellar mediocrity,

a brief moment

on the rim of the stage,

called back

as soon as entered;

while a black hole

evaporates

in 10^82 years,

dying on an

empty stage;

so soon gone,

that might as well

not have come.

18.10.2021

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LIFE

It's over,

you

just

don't know

it.

Yet.

But,

don't worry;

it's not

your

call anyway.

16.10.2021

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IT'S YOU

  It's not Life which

disappoints

the people

around you -

it's you.

Those people

who you call

your

'loved ones ' -

your victims.

16.10.2021

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SELF-DECLARED CHRISTIAN 'FRIENDS OF ISRAEL'

 If you support Apartheid,

you can't be an Antisemite,

so they tell us now, those

Antisemites supporting Apartheid.

14.10.2021

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EVEN THE ROOKS

Cold, silent days,

days of gray, pale light,

days of yellow and brown leaves

laying damp on the ground

after the rain went with the night;

and you, the only mobile thing

on your paths, carved in memory,

in the entire October landscape -

even the rooks

statues on naked branches.

14.10.2021

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1920-2021

I read 

In the words of Paul Celan,

a poet who recently

celebrated his centenary,

and immediately thought

that you are not celebrating anything;

they raised you from the waters

of your death's womb

half a century ago.

The sentience you were

has been erased from the cosmos.

What remains of you

are black words on white paper,

on computer screens

flickering in this dusk,

and they are

one long dirge,

an obituary,

for your world,

our world.

04.10.2021

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IN THE SILENCE OF THE EVENING

 Couple of cold days,

and even the sunshine

not enough

to bring back

birds' songs.

Utter silence

as the light wanes

from golden leaves

in the dusk.

01.10.2021

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THE FIRST OF OCTOBER

 The aspens stand golden

in the gathering dusk;

the wind having

followed the Sun,

not a leaf moves

on the branches,

on the ground;

yet many

stir and fly

in my mind,

a blemished mirror

for this landscape

through all the years.

01.10.2021

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IN THE AUTUMN LIGHT

In the old forest gloom

sunlight doesn't permeate

only through the

hundred-year canopy;

it permeates through

all the years,

all the moments,

in which I have stood

on this deep path

in the same light.

20-24.09.2021

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BIRDSONG IN LATE SEPTEMBER DUSK

Reading the old poets

of rivers and mountains

amidst fallen, brown

and pale leaves

in the gathering dusk,

the crisp clarity

of the season of

transformation

broken by a note

of warm nights

of rebirth.

22.09.2021

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THE BIRDS, AS IN SPRING

In the dimming eve of late September,

the birds, until late silent,

sing as in spring.

22.09.2021

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IN LATE SEPTEMBER, THE SOUND OF SUMMER

In the autumn landscape

the sound of summer,

abundant:

Birdsong.

22.09.2021

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THE FAILURES THAT TRULY MATTER

It's not our failures

which have left our dreams

ruined which truly matter -

it's the dreams

of others that really matter,

those ruined by our failures.

22.09.2021

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STARDUST, BUT

 We are stardust,

yes,

but think of the

poor beings

who will be

humandust.

21.09.2021

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WHAT IF IT HURTS?

 Writing confessional poetry:

A self-autopsy with a dull

knife and a rusted saw.

21.09.2021

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SUCH CRUDE BEINGS

Such crude

beings,

many of us,

most of us -

like the man

in the mirror.

21.09.2021

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FOR US

One day, time will 

end

&

with open eyes

we will

gaze

at the eternity.

20.09.2021

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WILDERNESS TRACKS

In the far distance,

the sound of an afternoon

train running

through autumn forests.

20.09.2021

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THE LIGHT OF WHAT WAS LOST

   In the deep autumn woods,

the shimmering light

of lost years

permeates through

canopies of evergreen trees

old when I was young.

20.09.2021

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IN LATE SEPTEMBER

After cold weeks,

suddenly azure skies

and sunlight; birds

singing, chattering

flood the landscape

with sound thought lost.

20.09.2021

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YOUR DEATH

I Infinitus

1

Remember, there will come

a day without you,

and the world

shall be as it was,

beautiful and uncaring.

2

    Your life, your death,

no more than the life,

the death of the animal

whose carcass

rots beside the highway.

II Oblivio

1

Remember, there will come

the final day,

for you,

and the world

shall end.

2

Beyond your final

breath, your final thought,

no great spirals of stars

and dust turning in the void,

only the void.

16.09.2021

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THE THING WE TAKE GRANTED IS THE MOST CERTAIN TO END IN THE FUTURE

   How strange, that

even in these latter days

of fire and dying,

we are still not surprised

to awaken

to this reduced world?

16.09.2021

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SEPTEMBER MORNING

  Morning awash in more

than the pale light of

overcast skies;

faint golden hue

on yellowed leaves,

dying grass

under gaps

to palest blue.

Yet the light seeping

into the landscape

has the cold

of sullen fall.

16.09.2021

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