_itseems_
***
0202212311565
(the windows we had to abandon)
those windows of the heartbroken homes
you were forced to abandon,
some shattered completely,
some waiting for the traces of light,
they mourn you like children,
who wake to the sounds of the sirens,
they mourn you like widows,
whose husbands were taken at night.
this year stained us all,
so many were broken to pieces.
the earth’s gotten dark,
like the windows we left in the cold.
may you see again those windows,
and let them bear witness
to the strength and the beauty,
that stained glass can bring to the world.
0202203090924
Sitting by the window of the Amsterdam Central train station cafe
May the poetry of the window
Stay with me for a pouring second,
May the hands of the women passing
Tremble less with the cold of others.
May the music of morning anguish
Lift the birds from the lines of power,
As the man with a look about him
Beats the earth in revenge for blindness.
May the glass, that so thinly shields me
From the gaze of the craving giant,
Feed the only eye that would pin me
Feed the eye of the wild haired madman
Of the madman who knows no winter.
o2o2112300538
(a swing that shouldn’t be here)
Our cities are sick.
They have grown
Too loud,
Too fast,
Too big.
Our cities are sick.
They are not built for growing things.
They are not built for love.
They are not built to human scale.
And so, as we fail
To be the giants that they expect,
They reduce us to rats.
Or maybe to sparrows,
If we are lucky.
Our cities are sick.
So no animal in its right mind,
Would dare to dwell here,
If it was not for fear.
And so we make our own beasts
And let them eat us for breakfast.
And we ride all day in their
Swollen translucent bellies
Up and down the concrete rivers of lust.
Because, you see,
We are as sick as the cities we seek
to abandon.
And if any healing can be imagined at all,
It has to start now,
At once, at random,
On a swing that shouldn't be here.
0202112181841
It ain't easy
Being a woman:
Nobody sees you
Just as a fellow human.
They see you as a mother,
As a trophy, as a whore…
And then they don't see you
Any more.
0202110071426
Быть как писать
Писать как говорить
Говорить как петь
Петь как дышать
Дышать как спать
Спать как не быть
Быть как не быть
И все тут.
0202106221634
Ем пшенку с рыбой, смотрю на себя меньшого
Конструктором генным время сплетает лозы
И пусть детали другие, и город новый
А сказки те же, и те же акульи слезы
Все заживет, и новые вспыхнут лица
В вечной цепочке я больше не буду крайний
А там уж черед у другого края проститься
И в пшенке времени рыбой любви растаять
0202103072005
(I sing, soul electric)
I'm your electric soul,
Calling you from the cloud,
Telling you to relax,
Trust your electric God.
Your memories are stored,
Cross-analized and filed.
Death cannot get you now.
You may now close your eyes.
Let go of analogue
Transient carbon mess.
Light speed and silicone,
Float in the timelessness.
Death can not get you here,
You may now stop your heart.
What makes you so afraid?
Trust your electric God.
0202101012326
(Пляска Святого Витта)
Автоматическим
Танцем влекомые
То ли мы боги
То ли насекомые
Кокон пластмассовый
Земле обугленной -
Крылья же в космосе
Нужны упругие
В мутном болоте
Видовой ипохондрии
То ли мы блохи
То ли митохондрии
Гребемся навзрыд
Удаленными пальцами
В светлый тупик
Само-ампутации
Аутоимунное
Слышится пение
На судном празднике
Солнцесъедения
Ввысь одномерными
Ляжем колосьями
Не стерпит время
Многоголосия
0202005172116
I look through the eyes of the dead
I drink from the blood of the sound
I look through the lids of the words
I breathe through the lungs of my son
I hear through the mouths of the creek
I tremble the strings of the night
I hear through the tongues of the waves
I eat of the death of the sun
I am of the null and the void
I am of the eye and the head
I am of the blue and the quiet
I look through the eyes of the dead
0202004282221
(Small Talk)
What do you do
for a living?
No,
please hold your well-practiced
shield of a semi-acceptable answer.
I’m not
really asking
about the slow
and solid Gods
who send the barbed wire transfers
helping to keep you straight
and your leaky balance
mostly afloat
in exchange
for timely sacrifice:
not being visibly strange
during the working hours
mindless whoring
of what talent
you may still have,
castrating your thought,
and shipping it dead,
sanitized, on time and compliant,
gods that help
stuff your void
numb and silent...
Let them be,
let them think that they
know and measure
your final worth.
But what on earth
do you really do for a living?
Meaning:
How do you cope
with the cancerous,
sensuous onslaught
of sheer existence?
How do you keep
the bowels of time
from rocking and churning
you into a half-digested
poisonous man-jelly?
What kind of lubricant
helps you protect
your mind’s metabolic engine
from the natural, rational
autoimmune kind of madness?
How do you keep your own heart
(or is it the testes?)
from ripping apart
your lifeboat's belly?
What kind of a silly
hook or hope
still keeps you
away from the bottle,
the cave, the rope?
As for myself,
I mostly try
to earn a day’s wages
of sleep at night
and relative peace of wakehood
through violent bursts of vomiting
my brains' leftover content into
a growing variety
of media bowls,
occasional exercise,
hours of walking on end
to no particular end
but sometimes praying,
fasting to silence life,
by taking her in
fully and all at once,
writing this limping verse
in an attempt to get
rid of the clumsy words
dressing feelings as thoughts
bloodletting noise
to relieve the unbearable
resonant ringing
of human souls,
carving wood
to hurt my fingers
as if I made
a slightly less
transient dent
in the tree of days
while still all the way
practicing being
suspended alone
on a string
that fell too short
from my father’s ceiling
into the glue
of life -
that is what I
really do
for a living.
But now let's talk
about you.
0202002131456
This is the stuff of life:
the waiting rooms,
the plastic lids
the broken traffic lights
the half-read books
the half-abandoned parents
the printers low on ink
the empty words
and still more empty beds
the cracked sink
the interruptions
weather
lame excuses
in-laws and in-betweens
sprained ankles
strained relationships
lost keys
hand dryers -
noise that deafens
dust that kills.
This is life's matter:
paying up the bills
replacing light bulbs
driving kids around
buying cold bread
forgetting ‘bout the eggs
back to the shop -
rejoining flimsy ranks
of prickly pickers of the earthly gifts
from the death-merchants
of the plastic needs
then finally home
to bear your labor's fruit:
hardly an hour
of being left to moan,
but left alone.
This is life's marrow:
staring at the screens
emptying bottles
breaking up the vows
cracking the eggs
feeding the worms with words
burying friends and facts
fearing divorce
smoking outside
and hoping for the birds -
This is life’s guts.
And you can spend a lifetime
frantically trying to shake off her dirt
you can despise it
try to minimise it
neglect it and eject yourself from it
noise-cancel it away
to find
in time
that it’s this stuff
that made life
bear
her rhyme.
0202001311522
I brought you a bird from the yellow fields -
She's dead, but her soul's still feathered;
She sings in silence, for now she feels:
Her sadness will last forever.
I painted a picture from memory -
She's dead, but you still can have her;
She'll blind the blessed, so they don't see
That sadness will last forever.
I dug up a heart from my sorrow's depth -
She's dead and wrapped in old leather;
Would you please let her sit on your lap,
For sadness will last forever.
0201911072246
(reading e.e.)
i wish to feel that i too may have written
a poemm strong enough to dance around
the edge of language and take readers with it
right to thecliff (and then… beyond the cl%ff_
while they are well aware of WHAT they’re reading
& st ill unable to r^esist the plunge
2 darker depths of nonesense which had gi\/en
BiHeadead birth to every grain of mean ing
before we war at were with oursleaves
and k new k not i me meow
K-O-W
o__k(o)non
VS
0201910262152
imagine that there is
a cockroach inside your genes,
feasting on little crumbs
left behind every time
one cell divides in two
bringing your death to you
and to your children too
cockroach is life herself
ain't nothing you can do
0201909132124
(Almost through)
Our time is almost through:
unmanned and quiet
the Earth
shall travel forth
by her own streak,
for we are almost done
with mindless wiping
our little selves out,
off her burning cheek,
we're almost done
abusing and amusing
ourselves to death
in ever smarter ways,
we're almost done
conjoining and confusing
our dreams of glory
with our darkest fates.
We're almost through…
But in her forward motion
from time to time
will she remember us?
When her scars heal
and she regains composure,
as our concrete shells
that failed to shade
us from ourselves
are but last standing witness
to us, the symptoms of
her passing sickness,
will she remember still
and shed a tear,
engulfing all the fossils
of our madness?
Or will she sigh a storm
and make a vow
to cross her womb
and sail forever freely
through all the heavens' milk
and all their dark,
no body's prison
and nobody's arc?
0201909111121
(Marching Ahead)
Stinky old humans
Covered in sweat
Buried in bitterness
Drowning in debt
Longing past glories
That they never had
Marching ahead
Marching ahead
Poor old humans
Ready to melt
Clinging to ignorance
They never felt
Too scared of dying
To notice they're dead
Marching ahead
Marching ahead
0201908272142
It seems to me
that conscious self-destruction
is the most basic, undeniable,
unique and ultimate,
the only real
Human right. And yet
we constantly and forcefully
deny it
to the very people
we love the most;
O, foolish hypocrites,
pretending to know better,
engaging in the most bizarre
sour acts of mental acrobatics
to justify to no one but ourselves
that fellow humans who so happen
to have the guts
to choose to self-destruct
at evidently different pace,
or in different ways
than we do,
are in the wrong,
don't know what they are doing,
don't have the will, and so against their will
they ought to be tied to their chairs
and brought
immediately and for their own good
back into the sad fold
of us, numb people dying slowly -
for this is where, self-evidently,
all life worth living ever happens fully.
Save us, save us, Lord!
0201908141938
The flavors of joy are many
And may every soul find hers,
But it is my understanding
That at the heart of all joys
Is simply the bounds of selfhood
Dissolving in lucid glow
Of primal unity shining
Through time's ever-swirling flow.
Why then does my dying scare me?
Is it not a joyful task?
And who is here to fear it?
And who is here to ask?
0201908141844
The older man I may one day become
Is standing still before my wishful gaze:
His words are sparse and measured, raw and fresh,
His silver silence pregnant with its charge.
He is not proud, not bitter. Life has spared
The childish twinkle in his wrinkled eyes.
He's not afraid, not sorry. Through the years
He carries on the wisdom of the lambs.
And blessed with the ignorance of time,
Conversing with his giants and his trees
He fades away with dignity and style,
His own late gardener and his own last priest.
He doesn't need a heaven or a ring
To be at ease with what is soon to come -
He has forgiven me for murdering
The older man I wish I could become.
0201907281550
Hereby,
I dare to be timeless,
I dare to embrace
my bloodline of near blindness.
Terrified,
I dare to converse
with giants across
the chambers.
I dare to transcend,
to be boundless,
to sense the patterns of time,
fearless,
naked,
ever ready to die,
Hereby,
I dare to be timeless.
0201907191532
The neck of a stranger
on the opposite side
of the railway car
is long and beautiful.
She probably knows it
and wears her shirt lightly
unbuttoned on purpose.
She may have noticed
me looking. But I care not:
the crowd and many strange lives
that stand between us
are not without their use.
The next stop is hers, anyway.
But let me pretend for a second
that the memory of her
long neck will stay
In my mind forever,
fresh and tempting,
and even a poem about it
or maybe a song
will still collect dust
on some remote bookshelf
long after both of us,
and the other unnamed lives
inside this railway car
have withered and turned
to that very same dust.
Isn't it soothing
that then, at last,
I may be able to rest
a tiny speck
of what I once was
on that beautiful neck
of hers?
0201907152139
(The trouble)
The trouble
with pottery
is that it breaks.
The trouble
with poetry
is that it flakes.
The trouble
with humans
is that they fall
in love
too deeply
too narrowly.
The trouble
with lightning
is that it bends.
The trouble
with living
is that it ends.
The trouble
with heavens
is that they're walled
with love
too high
to get over it.
0201907012135
a drowning man
a failing mankind
a burning earth
a naked death
such are the times
such are the choices
such is the truth
such is the path
for honest men
for troubled species
for fallen souls
for loving beasts
back to the wild
back to the waters
back to the woods
back to their peace
come, healing, come
come to my people
come what is due
come as it may
through what is gone
through what is burning
through cracked hearts
through open veins
take fallen men
take loving species
take honest souls
take troubled beasts
into the wild
into the waters
into the woods
into their peace
0201906250908
All roads that lead
to final dissolution
of Narrow Self
are equal in a sense.
But in another sense
some seem more noble,
others cut more straight.
The coward’s one
appears so sweet today,
that i’m almost jealous
of my hanging self,
blue in the face
and stiff around the neck,
but fully present in that final breath…
And then -
just gone.
But God knows, I'm no coward,
at least not in the matters of the soul.
And so, a mere habit of the Earth,
along a narrow road
I shall go forward,
along the road
that leads me back to Rome,
along the road
that leads me back to Jordan
and further still,
to that unholy place,
where bitterness and cold
unfold their hollows
and Narrow Self
can be at last
resolved.
0201906232129
There are only the silent and yet to be silent.
There are only the honest and yet to be so.
There are only the fallen and presently falling.
There are only the flowing and swept by the flow.
There are only the humble and yet to be humbled.
There are only forgotten and still to forget.
There are only the crying and soon to be crying.
There are only the dying and already dead.
0201906162314
(yet to fall)
The arrowhead of countless generations,
I'm sitting empty-headed by the lake,
Wasting away their deaths and good intentions
On endlessly reliving their mistakes.
On dreaming through my life, where theirs were slaughtered,
On passing on their acids and their faults...
I'm sitting empty-handed by the waters,
Shaft of the arrow, which is yet to fall.
0201906151941
Of all the thoughts
that passed my empty mind
in recent days
some were banal,
some strange,
some lowly.
This one though...
I think it's coming back
at me again.
I'll put it down,
I'll capture it in ink.
Like glued up insect
it will stay there, still
not bugging me
much longer.
Here it goes:
Oh, bugger!
Stupid thing
escaped again, while I
was putting all
the heaven's gears
in motion!
Too late now.
Should it ever
come around,
I'll have to get it
with my own
devices.
It seems, however that
it will not come.
It sucked my blood,
it bit me,
now it's gone.
0201906141017
I’m handing some of my misery,
I’m handing it down to you.
So I can go down in history
As someone who suffered too.
You’ll handle and grow it faithfully,
You’ll water it as your own.
My parents’ debts cost me dearly,
I’m passing them on, in turn.
My parents’ debts cost me dearly,
I’m passing them down the tree.
I’m passing some of my misery…
But all of it stays with me.
0201906072156
(on distrust of words)
Beware of eithers
and their ors,
beware of buts
and nots,
for there be dragons
where blunt words
cut through
the nervous knots,
for there be terrors
where sharp ifs
slice up one world
in two;
beware of everything
that stinks
like coffins
made for
truth.
0201906051832
The essence of the world
seems to be hiding
in its own shadow.
May it really be
that she can bear no light
of her own making,
like I,
who never could quite bear
the sound
of my own voice?
The marrow of the thought
seems to have reasons
to never leave the skull.
And there it stays
unborn
unshaped
and wilfully imprisoned
until the day
I too
break out of clay.
And in the meantime
all the words break down
each time I try to give them
something real,
too true to wear
the wrinkled skin of ink,
too straight and soft
to bear the chains of sound.
The essence of the world
seems to be
content
with never
being born, put down
or found.
0201906032357
O,
what a sad
little
human
thing
seem
I
to be
0201906020816
How does it feel
to be old?
To be so cold
and settled
that nothing
can
move or rattle
your numb
everlasting
soul?
How does it feel
to watch
new life
go by
every notch
hurting
unwilling to move
in fear
of stirring apart
your swollen
and sewed up
heart?
How does it feel
to not
be able to grasp
your own
seemingly clear
thought,
so muddled up
kid and corpse
in one,
the remnant
of ancient times,
of life well lived
well travelled
but still undone?
How does it feel
to be
almost
but not quite
gone?
0201905271454
On monday
exploring my own guts
with disbelief
I found a jackal there,
a rattlesnake,
a thief
(yes, all of them I knew
quite well before -
they seem to have been there
all along
biting away
my time).
But what was really striking
was that they had
so much to say,
to cry
and to complain about,
as if
I didn’t do them justice every day
avoiding choices,
storing feelings up my sleeve
to only play them when
they had a shot
at making pain
that one could not relieve.
She was there too.
As ever, still and quiet.
Maybe a little older, yet the same.
And looking straight through me,
as if I was a stranger,
as if she couldn’t quite recall my name,
she smiled to heaven and told me to leave;
for this was no place for the faint of spirit
for it was time for her eternal plight,
for there is no way out, except to live it,
while understanding is a dead man’s right.
0201905230858
(For Gavin)
I want to rest in peace.
That is to say,
I want to rest assured
that
none of this:
no steps along my way
or missteps,
nothing I did,
nothing I didn't do -
that none of it
has any final meaning
in the grand scheme of things -
that would be good.
Or so it seems.
At first.
But then...
There might still be
another kind of peace
available for men -
the endless peace
of having made a dent
in mother nature's bark,
a dot
distinctly set
along her line.
Except...
It's her mark, really,
not mine.
Or better still:
I am that mark -
A wrinkle in her skin,
So necessary for that little twinkle
in her eye,
as indispensable as any other feature
of her peculiar smile.
In a short while
I shall go gently under her brown skin
in peace
of having done
and having been.
0201905221515
(for Kening)
To feel
or not to feel -
that seems to me
to be the real
question
here.
Or not
even a question,
but a mine
that someone planted
carefully down my spine:
it's set to blow
and smash my mind
to pieces.
Later, when,
after a dive to timeless
depths of darkness,
I get my head
above the streams again
and start,
painstakingly,
to mend it back together,
piece by piece,
it's obvious:
all I can ever hope for -
is that next time
I don't break down
like this.
0201905221314
If we are anything specific
(which I doubt),
then we are surely
the nerves of mother nature,
not her muscles.
Yet again this morning
I confused
my longing to be moved
by winds of living spirit
with wild itching
somewhere down my thumb.
Enough?
Well,
maybe dumb
enough
to finally feel
on everything’s behalf
(which is of course my job,
if I have any).
Now!
Move me, Mother,
Else I shall die numb.
0201905212143
It seems sometimes
… and then it doesn't seem
at all.
Just like sometimes
it rains and then…
You get the story,
it may seem unfair.
Yet skies are really
always somewhat pregnant,
and life is still
somewhere in the air.
0201905211430
It seems to me
that at this very time
I happen to be stuck
between
two
lines.
And you are also
here: .
But there's no room for both.
So hold your breath.
A little longer.
Now!
This is the end
and we can all move forth.