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Cat watches the waning

embers of the day

from the kitchen window,

I listen to the 'Wandering Star'

after a long day spent

'saving' the world at the computer;

another person from the web

left with 'a sorry' the

world they cared for,

and whatever Lawrence

wrote, there will be another

torn red sunset to come.

27.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE JULY DUSK

...and then the rain starts

again, falling, falling

through darkening hours

&

when it fades, in the evening,

and sunrays break

through the clouds,

the wind rises, comes

over the woods branches dripping,

across the soaked fields,

comes with the pale, warm

light softening the colours

of the landscape...

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIONEL JOHNSON(1867-1902)

Not the Warhammer 40k

Primarch (bless him),

but the privileged drunk,

depressed because he wanted

to have sex with men

but it was the Victorian era,

so drinks & 'finds' religion,

converts (as was in fashion)

to Catholicism (thank defector

cardinal Newman) &

continues to drink & writes

the most cliché poems

he can, cheap kitsch

porcelain given written form,

& being privileged,

& thus well-connected,

gets declared a great

religious poet.

Then falls when drunk

and dies.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FAR BEFORE SUNDOWN

The day ends early

in rain and gloom,

under sky cast in white,

under trees darkening

with every gaze.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FROM THE DISTANT PAST UNTIL YOU

Those crude, short acts,

endless long months millions of years

carrying in wombs,

last years spent feeding, looking after,

fearing for, repeated

four million years, five million years,

until now, until you.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EVOLUTION'S MACHINES

Human sexual urge evokes pity;

machines of flesh evolved to carry genes

across aeons seeking pleasure

because they are programmed so.

All our lust pushing us to create

beings to reach past our lives,

garbing it in seduction and romance,

yet mere husks to be abandoned,

tools discarded like our ancestors

left theirs in Olduvai Gorge.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AFTERNOON RAIN IN LATE JULY

The rain starts, suddenly;

the wind stilling it pours

from the violet-hued clouds

for one minute when sound

returns to the sweltering landscape,

flood of raindrops hammering,

and as suddenly as it began,

it stops, and all sound

drains from the land in gloom.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DRIFTING, NEAR RHODES, WITHOUT A MOTOR

The Hellenic coast guard stole a motor

from a boat carrying refugees

across the Aegean, and they are

drifting there, near Rhodes, on that

wine dark sea which I once swam,

and that is quite normal, and not

worthy of attention in our Fortress Europa;

yet here I sit thinking about it,

on a hot and overcast day, watching

the raging wind bend the trees

and make the long grass

flow like waves.

26.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE CLEAR EVENING OF A LATE JULY DAY

The hours have gone

down the hot gravel roads

of the late summer day,

and I have sat here,

before the computer

and a closed window,

tweeting about people

hanged by the military junta

in Burma,

of ethnic cleansing blessed

with holy mantra of 'Shared Values'

in Masafer Yatta,

and of a demoracy, won

with fire, being stolen

via a farce in Tunisia.

Front of the window

which closes out the summer

I can act, not think;

those long gravel roads

amidst fields and woods

would force me to think,

and thinking is something

I can't bear on this late

stretch of my life.

25.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE TWO ENEMIES OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION

There is only one more

despicable type of a person

than the privileged one:

Those who could challenge,

crush and discard

the privileged ones, but won't.

25.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ABOUT MAX HASTING'S VIEW OF THE BEGETTING AND BIRTH OF ANTHONY POWELL(1905-2000)

 Old Max Hastings,

he of the Telegraph rag,

he considered it

very odd

for a man of twenty-one

to have a child

with a woman of

thirty-six.

Old Max Hastings,

he of the Telegraph rag,

he didn't consider

it odd at all

for a man of sixty-three

to have a child

with a woman of

twenty-one.

25.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIVES FROM DEATHS

Our lives

are build

from

headstones

upon graves,

marked

and unmarked,

generations lost.

18.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN MY DREAM

In my dream

my father lived again,

were with him

for what,

in the dream,

felt like hours,

but must have been

mere minutes.

Just like they feel now,

those brief decades.

18.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ALONE

These silent mornings,

without words,

the landscape outside

reflecting,

now until

the end.

18.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE PURITAN ETHOS

To Robert Creeley(1926-2005)

You get the Puritan ethos wrong.

Hard-work had been taken granted

by everyone except the aristocracy

and the religious.

It was one of the certainties of life.

Then you got the emergent bourgeois,

who didn't have to work hard,

if they wished so.

But that meant the family fortunes

would diminish, not grow.

So you needed an ethos

to keep the fortunes growing.

The Puritan ethos. And so, like

someone indulgently pissing

on the street from a second or

third story window,

it rained on those below

who had to work hard to survive,

without any ethos driving them,

and soaked and stained them.

18.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A FLY SITS ON THE SCREEN OF MY LAPTOP AS I AM WRITING THIS POEM

In the dawn,

in the dusk,

the rain falls,

the wind blows;

all through the hours

in which these

moments of our lives

are buried in.

17.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIFE, INTELLIGENCE GETS NO FAVOURS IN THE COSMOS

To the universe you

don't matter

more than a drop of

rain, a red dwarf

star, a shooting

star on the

sky of a planet,

uninhabited,

habited, a whale

or a cricket,

a ladybird

drinking dew.

17.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIKE POLLEN IN THE AIR

The day doesn't dawn.

The pale light of a late July night

remains

the pale light of a July morning

under overcast skies.

The hours drift in time

like pollen in the air.

17.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DRYING THE LAUNDRY

Throughout the long,

gloomy afternoon,

rain falls

on the laundry

left to dry

days earlier.

16.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NOVEMBER 28TH 1942, OFF THE NORTH-EASTERN COAST OF SOUTH AFRICA

Three torpedoes fired

by the U-177 sent

the Nova Scotia down

in ten minutes.

It would take two days

for a Portuguese naval ship to

arrive and start the rescue.

Of the 1052 people

onboard, 194 survive;

858 die.

650 of those

who perished were

Italian prisoners of war.

Robert Gysae, the commander

of U-177, would die in Wilhelmshaven

on April 26th 1989,

aged 78.

16.-17.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN MID-JULY

 On these silent,

cloudy, cool days

it feels that

the summer is over;

they have mowed

the fallow fields,

crushed the flowers

and the bird nests;

in silence the landscape

flows to autumn,

and I don't know

how to spend

these empty hours

under sunless skies.

15.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE HORIZON PROGRAMME

The European Union never

investigates what Israel does

with the billions EU gives it.

But if an illegal Israeli settler

group claims there is antisemitism

in Palestinian school-books,

the European Union will

immediately cease funding

and use a year and millions

to finally report

that there was one book,

among dozens,

with a questionable text.

While EU billions flow

into illegal colonies.

15.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON A MID-JULY MORNING

The day darkens

towards noon,

violet clouds

on the still

July sky,

landscape

waiting for the

sound of rain.

15.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

JOE BIDEN SPEAKS

Israel is not an Apartheid state!

How do I know it?

Because... I am a Zionist!

All the human rights organizations

saying that Israel is an Apartheid state

are wrong, because - I am a Zionist!

What are hundreds of pages of reports

by experts compared to that?

Here, Israel - take this $4 000 000 000

and keep funding the Republicans!

15.07.2022

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

EVEN NOW

Even now,

I still dread the day

when I no longer

feel the beating

of my heart.

13.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

MOTHER AND FATHER

Above the treeline

clouds

evoking memories

through

decades reaching

when

you both lived

&

lived here

unhappy I guess

(looking

with adult eyes)

yet the entire worlf

to us

then and now

13.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BEFORE THE RAIN

In the kitchen window, the old cat

watches the overgrown front-yard;

above, on the overcast sky

milky-white clouds

almost blinding white.

I stand here, in late

afternoon silence, and wait

for the first drop to fall.

12.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

YOUR PREFERENCES ARE NOT MINE

 You want me to

care deeply about Ukraine,

care with a burning anger,

o 'West',

care more than

about the pandemia,

care more than

about global warming,

but where have you

been these decades,

where are you now,

o 'West',

when it comes to Chechnya,

Kashmir, Palestine, Tibet,

Western Sahara & West Papua,

o 'West'?

11.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SUNRISE

The high crowns

of the birches and pines

bath in golden light,

and the yard below

dwells in gloom

with me.

11.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

MID-JULY MORNING

The night clears

into gray dawn,

into rain.

11.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON A LATE JULY EVENING

The still clouds

shine in the

fallen Sun's light

and I have

tears in my eyes

for all the pain

these brief years

we call life

bring for us all.

04.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE WORLD IN A DROP OF DEW (AFTER ISSA)

Everything must perish,

perish and be forgotten,

and we must pretend

that in each living thing,

in each human creation,

in ourselves,

we don't see a mortal

thing and being,

and a mortal memory.

We must pretend,

pretend and live like

everything

we value in this life

would be carved

into eternity.

18.06.-02.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON AN EARLY JULY EVENING

In the distance, thunder

roams the landscape

like a tyrannosaur escaped

from the clutches of deep time,

and here I am, finding myself

comparing its distant roar

to the buzzing of a fly sharing

this sweltering kitchen.

02.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LOVE YOUR PEOPLE AND THEIR WORLD

Patriotism is loving a state,

loving it's carefully

controlled self-image,

when you should love its people,

human beings as they are,

and its nature,

and the planet

they live on, Earth,

and its nature as a whole,

and its people,

the entirety of

our humanity.

09.05.2015-02.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FROM THE MIST OF A MID-JUNE MORNING

In the early morning gloom,

after the rain that swept

the night ceased, comes

from the mist enshrouding

the yard the biggest fox

I've ever seen.

16.06.-02.07.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THEY LIVE AMONG US, TOO

One who defends torturers

yearns to be a torturer,

to feel the flesh and mind

of an another human being

to quiver under his power.

In each of these

defenders of torturers

see, beyond their rhetoric

of excuses, the torturer

yearning to unleash himself.

22.03.2015-02.07.2022

#Runo #Runoja #Runous #Runoutta

URSULA VON DER LEYEN

Those cold, icy

German eyes

no trace of empathy,

no sympathy hold,

condemning refugees in

their thousands to drown

on the barbwire shores of

cruel Fortress Europa,

their desperate multitudes

unworthy to that gaze

to be saved, to live.

22.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT HERE ANYMORE

 To my mother and father

The Sun still shines

when the good people

are not here anymore,

the rain falls and

the wind howls

when the good people

are not here anymore.

The clouds part,

the Sun descends

through dusk

into the night,

and the summer stars

glimmer faintly

in the bowl of heaven

above the fallen fields.

Yet the good people

are not here anymore,

and the world

lies dashed,

the sun and the rain

and the wind and

the clouds and the stars

and the fields

all mere broken pieces

of what was once whole,

a sum of our existence, when

the good people were here.

21.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GOOD PARENTS

To my mother  

Only when you

lose them

do you realize

they were

everything.

21.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EROSION

Time erodes

human beings

like it erodes

mountains.

20.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HUMAN BEINGS

We are

what we

lose.

20.06.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LOVERS OF POETRY

 So few people are reading poems

these days, and especially those

who say they love them.

But then, do lovers of chess

really spend so much time

watching the recordings of matches,

or do they play themselves?

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NEVER OPEN THE DOOR

The sun shone, the air was still,

the trees stood lost in verdure,

and long I watched through

the panes until I opened the door,

stepped outside and stood

under the cerulean sky;

then the wind rose, frigid,

and clouds came, gray,

and filled the sky,

the trees swayed

and droplets fell,

and I turned

and went inside,

and through the panes

watched the long rain fall.

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A SUMMER SCENE

An old black-and-white

cat kills the orange-black

butterfly fluttering behind

the little cabinet in the

kitchen awash with the

light of a sunny

mid-June afternoon.

20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE WRECK OF THE GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

A man-boy takes religion

like a robe,

puts it on,

hides the man-flesh,

hides the desire

and the lust,

religion is good for that;

lets religion flow &

flood his poems,

verse another

robe to hide

desire and the lust,

but you have

to flagellate the rowdy

ones to inside

the robe, whip

desire and lust

with the spiked

language

of your own crafting,

keep them girdled;

whip them

and sprinkle them

with religion,

use the whip & verse,

& religion -

keep sprinkling it,

& thus man-boy becomes

damp with religion,

wet from the imaginary

soul to the neurons;

it pours, it gushes, religion -

a deluge of religion,

& no ark to float, he

drowns into it;

but the castaway

desire and lust

make it to the rafts

of the poetry,

escape the wreck

of the sinking Oxford Jesuit

as it goes down.

29.07.2019-20.06.2022

#Lyric #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse