PASTICHE FRAGMENT

A rose bush lives longer

than a great love

might endure,

when marble and dust

are the lover and the loved,

one last flower blooms

for love, life and death

of love, and the flesh

that loved in embrace

among all the thorns

of the world.

17.06.2025

IN THE WARM SUMMER NIGHT

The night lies over the land

a warm blanket

of dark blue

warm and soft

over you, underneath

half-believing

the golden hours

of the day

a dream you dreamed.

14.07.2025

HOW LUCKY YOU ARE IN THIS WORLD OF DEEP SORROWS

When you get stimulation

for the mind and the flesh alike,

seeds cast into your mind to germinate

and offer back in lesser or greater bloom,

depending how great was the care

you took, and your flesh gets its share

more than plentiful, an abundance

of which you can give

back only its manifestations,

further growths in the mind's soil,

what can be captured in an image -

when you are given this

each fleeting day, then

how lucky you are in this world

of deep sorrows

to have such a muse.

06.-14.07.2025

ONLY THEM

Each day

he gets what he needs

to excite

                 the mind

                 the flesh

from his muse

& can give back

                              only words

                              only images

of the mind

the flesh

                only them

                only them

07.-14.07.2025

MERE LIBATIONS

She gives him the clay

and the soil and the seeds

and the water to grow

and water the the verses

in their pots. And what

does he give her? The crop

of poems harvested,

some images that capture

his admiration but fail

to show its magnitude,

mere libations

compared to her

sustaining gifts.

06.-14.07.2025

LIKE ANOTHER DAWN

A fleeting moment

of golden sunlight

in the late afternoon

after rain,

before rain,

like another

dawn

flowing over the land

07.-14.07.2025

A DAILY HARVEST

Each day

his muse gives him

seeds to plant

on his sheets of paper

on his screens,

his fields,

to tend to

so that they will

sprout and grow

irrigated

from her spring

into a harvest

of poems

to be grateful of,

to be offered

at her fain,

yet this planter

and reaper

of plentiful

crops, hearing

Priapus chiming,

would also

plow

her furrow

07.-14.07.2025

AT MIDNIGHT, CLOSING YOUR EYES

The heat of the day

lingers into the night

and at midnight

closing your eyes

feeling the warm air

your mind

is filled with the light

of the summer day.

13.-14.07.2025

151 KILLED IN A SINGLE DAY BY ISRAEL IN GAZA STRIP

Yesterday Israel killed

151 people

in occupied Palestine's Gaza.

151 people.

And that's not counting

those still under the rubble.

This slaughter

brought the official death toll

to 58 000.

Real one is much higher.

And still the world

refuses to act.

13.07.2025

LIKE GOLD FROM A SUPERNOVA

She makes me hard

in such awkward places,

my muse, filling

me with wanton thoughts

and carnal dreams

while people around

speak and go through

their mundane acts

like there wouldn't

be a treasure of body

and mind for me to gain,

of which both

I receive only secondary

experiences, yet

experiences like gold

from the heart

of an exploding star.

09.-13.07.2025

THINKING OF HER IN THE SHOWER

He imagines his hands,

all in soap, running over her body,

lingering long,

and after washing off the soap

with slow, caressing strokes

under the running water

noticing

he might have missed

something

starting anew,

fingers lingering

caressing her again.

11.-13.07.2025

THE SOUND OF FALLING RAIN

A sudden rain

begins after afternoon

had darkened, 

brings a steady sound

of falling water,

spreading rings in the dark puddles

on the asphalt and the gravel,

but each droplet

hitting the dim waters

is silent,

you don't hear them

from the rain.

11.-13.07.2025

SAED SALEEM AL-LAQQA(2024-2025)

Saed Saleem al-Laqqa, 

8 months old,

beheaded by Israel

last night, his family killed,

and all those politicians,

all those journalists

who shouted about and cried

for imaginary "40 beheaded babies"

are silent.

They don't care,

they don't oppose

what was done to Saed,

aged 8 months

and his family.

No, they support it.

They made it possible.

They made it possible,

the deaths of the hundreds

of real children

beheaded by Israel.

10.-13.07.2025

IN THE TIMELESS ETERNITY OF GOLDEN LIGHT

Awakening, the golden July

sunlight

               gives little indication

at which moment in the day

I have surfaced;

                           it could be

anything between mid-morning

and late evening, this brilliant

light beyond the windows,

its spears through the rooms.

I get up, 

              pick up

and pull my trousers on,

shambling into the kitchen fill the jug

of the coffee machine

with water, dish out the ground

coffee, turn the machine on

and leaving it running pour

and drink juice a glass of juice,

a mix of strawberry and raspberry,

visit the toilet, and back in the kitchen

pour the black

liquid into a mug

                              still adrift

in time

             after all these mundane

acts,

        standing in the spear of light

I give up,

                take my phone

and flicking it on

I enter the stream of defined time

again. 

           18:56.

                      I have slept

about eleven hours,

                                 and now

the light loses its timeless quality,

becomes the light of evening

and the landscape outside

accordingly shows its lenghening shadows,

evoking the coming night -

as do my thoughts, my mind

taking its cues from my surroundings,

the mind that briefly floated

in the timeless eternity of golden light.

03.07.2025

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Poetry Poem Poems Verse

DRIFTING ASLEEP

After a night of hammering rain

the morning dark green

in gloomy hours

before 

            drifting asleep

through hours darker

than a summer night

I cross into golden hours

or into the sound 

of the restarted rain.

06.-12.07.2025

A PLEA TO HIS MUSE

Take me with you

next time in the shower,

an image in the mind

if nothing else, what has been

offered for your gaze

and imagination,

and when you move

your hands on your body,

think of them as mine

wandering over your flesh

relishing in their discoveries.

09.-12.07.2025

DUST AND SILENCE

Early in the morning, after

the short summer night spent awake,

I read Ray Bradbury and Margaret Atwood,

her character's reminiscences

wandering World War Two Canada

bringing up childhood memories

of summer trips to Lapland,

his evoking memories of reading his books

on days when rising from my bed,

setting aside The Illustrated Man

or The October Country

I wouldn't have wandered

through empty rooms but into conversations,

into life, directed

into action, wanted or unwanted,

while now I linger like

the spirit of the long dead in the tombs

whose doors Belzoni, the man-bull,

breaks down in the third book I'm reading,

dust motes and images and the echoing past

carved into wall and memory

flicker in the light of his lamps,

in the rays of the risen Sun.

12.07.2025

WITH A NOD TO FRANCOIS VILLON

Summer at half-point,

light declining each day

and where did it go,

that time of growing light,

the high mid-day of summer?

Where the snows of yesteryear

did go, down the stream

of passed time,

into infinity's void.

10.-12.07.2025

THE SOUNDS OF MIDSUMMER

I thought it was the sound of rain

beginning again,

but it was the wind in the canopies,

sighing.

11.07.2025

IHRA SATIRE

As Israel was committing genocide

in occupied Palestine's Gaza,

the member states of

the International Holocaust Remembrance Association

gathered in Berlin

to wine and dine

and listen how Israel lectured

about the memory of the Holocaust

and how "all forms of antisemitism"

must be opposed, 

more pressure used,

and taking their eyes

from their plates plentiful in food,

raising their wine glasses,

they smiled and winked -

knowing it didn't mean acting

against those who make Hitler salutes

as they force states into Fascism -

as Israel was slaughtering people seeking food

from American mercenaries in Gaza.

03.07.2025

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THE WORLD ALLOWS

Over 300 people murdered

in fourty-eight hours in Gaza

                         by Israel, 

over 300 people

murdered by Israel

and the world allows it,

the world allows it,

the world allows mass murder,

the world allows genocide,

the world allows.

03.07.2025

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18:26 P. M.

Ten hours gone,

sleep's wormhole

through time,

from a gray morning

into a gray evening,

ten hours of change

no change to my eyes.

03.07.2025

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06:45 A. M.

Early morning all

sound of rain, gray

light, and tiredness

that engulfs, a dark

ditch unreflecting.

03.07.2025

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AND I WILL

Yesterday I slept just five hours

and now, at four in the morning,

as the landscape brightens

and the birds are singing

loud, I'm tired. I could go

and sleep ten hours, or twelve.

And I will, and fifty people

will be murdered while I sleep

peacefully on my bed or sofa,

entire families to be dug up

under rubble, bodies torn

or burned. I listen to the birds

singing, decide to try to translate

one short poem before

I use my privilege

while others will be murdered.

No bomb or missile

will interrupt me, leave

the poem unfinished,

the dream unfinished,

the life unfinished.

01.07.2025

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A LATE EVENING WALK ON THIS FIRST DAY OF JULY

The evening is all tranquil beauty,

calm, nothing stirs,

silence

broken by an owl

in the distance, among darkening trees

where the Sun sank.

01.07.2025

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THE DAY HAS GONE SO SWIFTLY

The day has gone so swiftly,

gone like a bird

through the foliage

after some insect,

it would be night

except at summer,

and it being summer

it's still just evening.

I will make another pot

of coffee, take out

the trash, get the mail

as the clouds above

break, their gray

becoming white

on a pale, pale

blue sky, leaving

behind my screens

on which people die

because their lives

are not considered worth

enough to save,

at least 70 today in Gaza,

after 105 yesterday,

in Sudan the numbers

not counted together,

while I take my walk,

throwing the trash bag

into the bin, gathering

the mail from the mailbox,

gazing at the white clouds

on a pale, pale

blue sky, as bombs

and missiles will keep killing

people, people

who are now still alive,

afraid, hoping for survival,

dreaming of liberation

and peace, people

who will die

because their lives

are not considered worth saving

by those who decide

these things,

covered in their

deep blue and golden yellow.

01.07.2025

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HAVING THE HEART AND NOT THE KNOWLEDGE

Amidst the images of death,

death in lowercase

and in overflowing quantity

that closes graveyards

where every spot is taken,

life raises its head,

like a plant among ruins

from the loins,

not knowing

it will always be defeated

by Death, personified

Death with a capital letter,

always victorious Death,

the grim reaper,

but for now

life stands erect,

after and before images of death,

foolish like Sven Dufva,

brave before extinction

and void, having the heart

for the fight

and not the knowledge

that it will fail and fall,

knowing only the call of life

from before consciousness

made us know Death,

the grim reaper, and death

the end of all our struggle.

01.07.2025

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ALWAYS READY

Dear muse,

you are my

Wonder Woman

and my knob

is always ready

for you

to save the day!

01.07.2025

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MAHMOUD BUSTAN, AGED 2, WAS KILLED BY ISRAEL YESTERDAY WITH HIS MOTHER AND HIS SIBLINGS IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE'S GAZA STRIP

Two-year-old Mahmoud Bustan lies dead,

his eyes forever closed, on the operating table,

the fight lost. Israel killed him yesterday,

with his siblings and their mother,

and in the United Kingdom

who conquered Palestine to give it away

to colonizers, the rulers are upset

that a singer and a crowd chanted

"Death to the IDF!", that paint

was thrown on airplanes. But

not upset for Mahmoud Bustan,

who lived two years and was murdered

by Israel, little figure shrouded

on the arms of a medic

facing a world that cares more

about words that hurt the genocidaires

than about the victims of the genocide.

01.07.2025

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ROOTED ON WORDS

A long summer afternoon in blue,

green and gold heaves

beyond the open window,

but here I'm writing,

rooted on words,

like a tree at my appointed place

where a cone fell

and a sapling grew.

01.07.2025

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THE CONTOURS OF HER FLESH

He imagines his hand

in the place of hers,

a wandering explorer

on the map of her skin,

never in a rush,

taking its time

from one wonderful scene

to another, mapping

her responses from mound

to valley and peak,

the contours of her flesh

becoming a familiar landscape,

paths between her landmarks

retraced, again and again.

26.06.-01.07.2025

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THE POEM YOU END UP READING

The reader makes the poem complete,

the poet only gives the ingredients

for their imagination to assemble

their unique experience,

and the poem you end up reading

is a poem no one else

will ever read.

01.07.2025

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THE GREAT COMFORT

How she gets me up

again and again, each day,

at first I thought

it strange, this arousal

at awakening, before

the sleep, now natural,

the great comfort

of each of these

troubled days.

01.07.2025

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JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, LISTENING TO BIRDS SINGING

Seven and half hours

of doing something

to share

what is being done

to human beings

in Gaza,

and now the day

is over, the birds

sing in the summer dark

and my mind

seeks her image,

raises it before the world's pain,

imagines her beside

me, listening

to the birds singing in the dark,

the blood that courses

in unruptured veins, following

the need to forget, briefly,

the people who sat in a cafe,

waited at a warehouse for aid,

and are now dead, never

hearing the sound of birds

singing in the summer dark

when guns are silent

and those who broke

human body after human body

after human body are caged animals.

01.07.2025

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ON SUMMER'S DIVIDING LINE

It seems I never

hear them during the day

now, the birds,

singing in the midnight

gloom, so loudly,

like it would be

still spring.

01.07.2025

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JUNE NOW OVER

June now over,

it feels like

the summer

is over, somehow,

that all that

is left now

is to wait

for the smell

of autumn

in the wind,

the first yellow

leaf on a branch,

the first leaf

falling brown

in autumn rain.

30.06.-01.07.2025

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PANDORA'S BOX

The feelings you

keep inside

are a Pandora's box.

Be careful

who you allow open

it, how much

they will let out,

what they will leave

inside,

what they will

put inside.

28.06.2025

SO I DRINK MY COFFEE

I'm drinking the last mugs of June

coffee in the gloom of the summer night,

never again shall I live these days,

little will I remember of them,

but there will be words

I will barely remember writing,

own and adopted, there

will be posts cried into the aether

until some algorithm decides

I'm a bot and erases

all the dead and wounded

I spend these days sharing.

So many years like this

and never enough time

to write or share

what would need to be shared.

So I drink my coffee,

and will turn to verse

and broken bodies.

30.06.2025

EVEN IN SUCH TIMES AS THESE

It's easy to be healthy

and stand tall

when one has such

an inspirer

as his muse,

even in such times

as these, even

as in such times

as these, it's easy

to be healthy

and stand tall

when one has

such a muse.

30.06.2025

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FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

The land is running out of soil

on which to bury the shrouded bodies,

the hundreds of thousands dead,

the land is running out of soil

to nurture the lives stolen

into rebirth as the land itself.

The land is running out of soil,

the walls and the fences must break,

the land must be whole

to embrace and nurture its dead,

the hundreds of thousands dead,

into rebirth as the restored land itself.

30.06.2025

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FOR ISMAIL AL-HATTAB AND FRANS AL-SALMI, KILLED BY ISRAEL TODAY

They killed the photographer

and they killed the artist,

the genocidaires killed them,

the hands that captured

and illustrated the slaughter

and the joys and defiance

among the ruins

are broken and covered

in shrouds.

Ismail al-Hattab is dead,

his last photograph taken.

Frans al-Salmi is dead,

her last image painted.

And they killed thirty-one others

or forty (the numbers

change so often now

as the wounded die)

with the photographer and the artist,

and the yard is full of shrouded bodies,

the yard is full of stolen lives

and the land is full of hasty graves.

30.06.2025

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Poetry Poem Poems Verse

A UNIQUE DAY, INFINITE REFLECTIONS

There is no free will

and this day has taken place

exactly the same

again and again and again,

and with slight alterations

from the scale of the atoms

to the path of a raindrop,

but still, forget all that;

this is the only time

this version of me

with this consciousness

experiences these hours

for the first and the last time,

those other other infinite

reflections in a multiverse

without end and no

known beginning

are not me,

so we all think

at this particular moment.

29.06.2025

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