TWILIGHT ENDING

I shall go to the dusk

like a bird rising

from among the foliage

seeks the sky

from the forest moving

dark and swift shape

coming through the underbrush

of time with a mouth

full of teeth glimmering

in the last light

31.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ABYSS

 The universe

erases everything,

with time -

even itself,

and time.

31.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

OUR FLESH AND BRAINS MIRRORING DUST

We are what others have been before,

not one thought in our turbulent minds

our own, never risen before; just

like our faces carved in resemblance

of so many ones turned to dust.

31.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FRANCESCO FURINI(1604-1646): HYLAS AND THE NYMPHS(1630)

Hylas, poor bastard with a face

like that of a weasel, gazes with

desperation, longing for the sight of his

lover Heracles emerging to save him

from all this soft female flesh

drowning him; alas, this overabundance

of limbs and curves will be his fate,

and Heracles, searching in vain, will

miss the boat, and all the loot & fame

the Argo would carry back,

and miss too that glorious moment

of chopping a child to pieces

to delay a pursuing father...

30.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GIOVANNI FRANCESCO GUERRIERI(1589-1655)

How can one artist differ so much

in quality? One moment painting Lot

and his misguided daughters almost like

Caravaggio risen from his grave, then...

a puffy miniature Judith with an embarrassed

head of Holofernes, head chopped off

after dying of shame for being involved,

and as you remember Artemisia Gentileschi's

magnificent avenger of male violence,

you feel near physical pain

gazing at this monstrosity...

30.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

REMEMBER THIS: A POLITICIAN IS A COWARD

 The anti-vaxxers, fascists

and big business,

the three-headed hydra,

made politicians

in our plighted nations

to stop saving lives,

made the politicians

to end fight

against coronavirus.

Illness and death,

millions of deaths, to appease

the three-headed hydra.

A politician is a coward.

Remember this.

A politician is a coward.

When you go demanding

good things, not death

like the three-headed hydra,

and come to the door

of a politician, his

home, her office,

remember this:

A politician is a coward.

Act accordingly.

30.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOLD THEM TIGHT IN YOUR MIND

Life gives broken

shards of the forever

lost past for us to hold,

pieces with sharp edges

cutting deep, and more

dear for doing so.

30.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GERMANY NEVER LEARNS

 The Germans they fly the Israeli flag and say

that because Germany did a genocide,

no one can Israel condemn or criticize,

it's war crimes must go unpunished,

human rights violations unchecked,

because Germany did a genocide;

the word 'Apartheid' must not be used

because Germany did a genocide,

and the only way Germany can repay

is to let Israel commit Apartheid,

as in German mind only innocent blood

can innocent blood repay.

27.08.2022

#Poem #Poens #Poetry #Verse

OF LIFE

Life gives

you ample possibilities

to repeat old mistakes;

but the chance to correct

old mistakes -

so thrift is life with that!

27.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FOR WHOM THE COUNTRY BELONGS

Neither the poor

nor the rich

have a country:

Patriotism, all that

'home, faith and fatherland'

is for the middle-class.

Not a piece of

the wealth of the country,

whose flag flies above

her head,

belongs to a poor;

and to a rich

belongs the entire world,

all the flags of the globe -

they fly for him.

27.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LOST POEM

You have to remember this,

I thought as I repeated the few lines

in my mind before falling

asleep on the sofa, too

tired to get up and write

them down; and now,

of course, they are just there

beyond remembering, hovering

as shapes refusing to clear

into words, ghost

of a lost poem.

27.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NOW

Faint echoes of real lives

in the void past death of stars

glimmers of consciousness

entangled living endlessly

fragmented memories

as endless now

27.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHAT YOU ALL WERE TO ME

Under the azure skies

of late August,

under the still,

yellowing crowns

of trees towering

through my five decades,

sorrow and grief

for all you loved people

I left to run as dust

between my fingers

to the parched ground of

years, a Judas to you all.

26.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN I SPEAK OF WE I MEAN ME, NOT YOU

To PRC

We people childless out of choice,

out of inability to be worthy

of the trust to beget and raise,

betray seven million years of evolution,

all the dead generations begetting,

carrying in their wombs, giving birth,

raising and losing child after child,

burying them across seven million years;

we betray the survivors of those aeons

of loss, those becoming parents, dying

child after child, parent after parent,

the rare ones seeing a grandchild

in their senescence in their thirties and fourties,

those grizzled matriarchs and patriarchs,

betray seven million years of their crude and

short copulation seeding short lives,

briefly flowering, early withering,

suffering generation after suffering generation,

and here we are, here I am,

at the end of seven million years,

and girl, I so wish I could have

been what you needed,

and we could have thrown seeds

in time for another seven million years,

human buds blossoming

from our fossilized skulls.

26.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IF YOU WOULD BE HERE, I WOULD HAVE YOU ON THE YARD, NOW

To PRC 

I still dream abour your breasts,

your ass,

oh god, if I could have them here,

and rest of your flesh,

on the early afternoon grass,

under this azure sky,

and not a word would be spoken,

but the neighbours would

hear how much I love

your flesh spreading on

the late summer grass,

unlocking the deep gate

to your inner being

opening between your thighs.

26.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A GOOD POET IS A POET DEAD IN THEIR PRIME

I like my poets

dead young

and bitter,

rockstar-like,

before their poetry

grew stale,

before the tragedy

was that of longing

back to the middle-age.

26.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SOME KIND OF DOCTOR MOREAU

The past carves the future

in flesh, with a dull knife,

and this ever-fleeting moment,

the always bleeding wound.

26.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DOPPELGÄNGERS

The enemy of your enemy

is not your friend;

the enemy of your enemy

is the mirror image

of your enemy, and his

once and future friend.

25.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FINDING THE YOUTH OF A MASTER POET ON THE PAGES OF OLD POETRY MAGAZINES

There is something awkward,

embarassing to suddenly run into

the poems of a great author's youth,

when they seemingly tried everything,

from concrete poetry to classical forms,

searching what would open a path

to their own voice; these abandoned,

Chernobyl-like ruins suddenly overshadow

the polished masterpieces wrought

in their unmistakable mature style -

for they show that even masters

are not born but made, evolving

through myriad forms into

the shape the creationist reader

has held as unchanged perfection.

22.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE SUDDENLY CRISP MORNING BREEZE

After the great heat dissipated

and rain swept the night, on

this morning the light touch

of autumn is everywhere

to be seen, smelled and heard,

from the proliferated yellow leaves

on the high leafage of aspens, 

birches, lindens and junipers

to the altered faces of people

passing below on the alleys,

on which dark pools of rainwater

reflect darker clouds; those

transfigured visages of human beings,

with a touch of regret and loss,

reflect the arriving fall,

withered leaves to descend.

22.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THEIR SECOND DEATH FOR ME

 Now even the night and dreams

don't recover my beloved dead for me;

they came and spoke and gave

their loved voices back,

speaking to mind from mind,

and that was a solace and a joy

even when in dream itself

I knew they were but

part of me, garbed in sight

and sound entombed in memories,

and mirror of my longing;

yet now in sleep they are as dead

as in day's blinding light,

and the bleak hours of the dark

too haunt me with their absence,

for I have lost them twice.

18.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE FRUITLESS HEMLOCK OF LATE REGRET

How I wish I would be have been

a better man, a man who could

run behind your naked form

through the warm rain now falling,

how I wish I would be the man

who would have my hand

on your quivering breast,

and not the man who cut down

every dream you had.

17.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

UNLIKE THE MALE GREEK GODS

Greek goddesses never came

to mate with mortal men

in the form of a cow or a bird,

they came lush in human flesh,

not with horns and tails

or beating wings,

and this tells us something

of the Greek men spinning

myths and telling tales.

17.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SUDDENLY HIS EYES SAW

High in the tall birch

a stout branch

full of yellow leaves

among still bright green;

in the midst of summer,

autumn; among men

in their prime, an

early, withered old age.

17.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LONG DROUGHT

This dying summer

leaves rivers running as gravel

and burns the flowers

and the grass on graves.

14.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WITH NOW TIRED EYES

The day I slept,

a golden day,

to a pitch-black

night I awoke;

and as the morning

came pale with rain,

I watched it fall

with now tired eyes.

11.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NOW I WAIT FOR THE THING THAT SHOULD HAVE FIRST COME

There was a time,

long years gone,

when I lived for people

and the years to come,

and through those

long years gone,

foolishly I lost the people

to death and own mistake;

withered the years to come

until the branches of time

now stand bare, 

and death I await here.

10.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN YOU KNOW IT'S OVER

Under the azure sky

and the still green crowns

of swaying birches,

in a moment of almost

sheer happiness,

a thought enters

the mind and engulfs it:

It's over. All the

important things

set to happen

in your life have taken place,

and no matter how

many days like this,

how many years will come,

your life is forever

in the past,

in the moments carved

into your memory,

not in the world

opening around you

into azure green depths.

02.08.2022

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIVE

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