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Sunday, 17 November 2024

More poems


Another year of poems, and i'm not sure if they're getting better. more serious maybe. Last year was about the hof, and being in this new world, and trains, from here to there and back again. This year, or at least the latter half of it that i can comment on from memory, has been about the forest. These poems are pretty much arranged back to front, the first poem being the most recently written. The last poem is really a faded snapshot of a period this year that i didnt enjoy. The poem is perhaps the best thing to come of it. However in it I see what has become a compulsion to write about the countryside. It is nothing more than a desire to describe this place, and to give in a small way to anyone that cares to listen, how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like a full, and bulging balloon. Like a courting pigeon with a puffed breast strutting through paradise. I cannot believe my luck in having found this forest and in being totally free to explore it all alone. In this perfect loneliness i talk to all of you, and i wish you were here to see it with me. Or i take this loneliness as a blessing and i'm with the crows and other shy friends that write to me in the dirt. The winter is rolling in, and all I know is that things are changing. I won't be able to keep my fire lit, and the single paned windows will suck my room dry. The cold will  get into my bones, ill jangle along to the toilet where the water still runs, half man, half icicle, and i'll jangle back again to thaw off, pressed agaisnt the glass of the oven. Nothing will dry! I will shower once a week, i'll forget how to talk, i'll smile sparingly to conserve energy. And then when the fresh leaves spring from beach trees, and you all come to see me, you'll see what a pale imitation this all is in light of the forest. I'll be reborn, having learned again the essence of seasonal myths, and will smile giddily at purple fir cones, erect on their branches, in ecstasy under the checkered rays of the sun. Until then..   


Birthday poem 

28 in the wg

UFO out the window 

We are not alone! 

Pigeons crows and kittyhawks 

25 pushups by the mouse traps 

Put on my birthday suit for a scalding hot shower 

For the woman in me 

2 in 1 Sport dusche for the man 

Shoes shined 

Chin tanning 

You can see me from space

Nothing better! 

A walk on tempelehofer 

Nothing better!!

Man cycles past with a stogie strutting from his lips 

Dogs rolling in shit 

Making it look so good 

I might join them 

And the wind sock’s got a chub on 

Head long into it 

It’s pulling tears from my eyes 

That rollerblader makes it look like the tarmacs moving 

Whilst she stands still 

Don’t imagine it 

I’ll tell you 

It’s not all sunshine in this world 

Not now 

Not ever 

But I’ll nurture my piece of it 

Have to

Can’t not 

In light of darkness 

Happiness is the small resistance 

Gravity is the weakest force 

Honesty is a sword 

And sincerity is a shield 

Don’t let me spell it out for you 

Tell me if I’m teaching you to suck eggs 

Have a birthday 

Treat yourself 


-


Love permeates 

It oozes through you 

And love reciprocated 

The sweetest kind 

Is soaked up 

Like a sponge pushed hard against a bowlful 

And slowly let go 


-


If you’re looking for god

Look in the lightning 

Now as then

Blooming faster than the eye can see across the clouds 

Nothing happens in a concrete box 

But outside where the trees sway, 

And confection is lamp lit in the flash 

The fire breathes heavy in fresh water and casts it wildly around 

Until the ribs of trees remain glowing thirstily in the rain


-


A thousand leaves fall

And put the forest to bed 

The field lays fallow 

Beneath clover 

And the wild boar wallow in it 

Nothing turns grey 

Even the dead stems of grasses pull hues of golden blue from the light 

And what’s left of the beeches coat 

Clings to it 

Against the wind 

When will the last leaf fall?

Green still, orange and yellow 

Cascading down branches fluorescent with moss 

A breeze urges a single leaf onto its tide 

And it takes the stage

It flips along the air, dancing to thin birdsong 

On its way to greet the earth below 

To be played by my boots 


The belly of the beast is rumbling down there

Never sated 

Forever hungry 

Stay there I say

Come no closer 


-


ill ill ill 

push through my bones 

So my marrow sloshes around 

Like the sand in an hourglass 

My head 

If it is still my head 

Flops forward and backward 

Like the natwest bulldog 

-

A bowl

Round like the earth

And made from it 

Is

Already filled 

And impossible to empty


-


Wind come find me on The Rennsteig 


As the horses lead each other by the tail 

Dare me to push on against you and I will 


The bay and black mare stand amongst 

Their freshly mown lawn,


The trees cling to their green leaves 

The crickets ring their bells 


Tonight among thousands

As if nothing ever changes


-


I’ve had to stop and look 

At that slope

mouth spilling over

The buzzard circling over its brow

Until it stops where it chooses 

Letting the wind blow over its still wings 

Keeping it afloat

And motionless

The wind and the bird

And the trees and the shrub and the grass 

Blowing in it too

A westerly

Dragging the manes of the horses 

And its fingers across the heads of wheat tops like the velvet on piano cushions

It pushes leaves against each other in the tree tops 

And the cascade 

Can you hear the individual leaf rustle among the thousands 

The winds instrument playing to you 

And there the lone fox is hopping

Towards the young broilers adjusting in the barns endless night 

Soon to be strutting around their cage 

Behind the counter 

For the hawk and fox 

Who don’t pay for their food yet have expensive taste

Bums for the finer things in life


-


I slide the cup of my foot

Onto your cool calf 

And roll it over and back again 

To soak up the cold side of your pillow 

And my knees thigh rests below your cheeks

As the fan sings  

To the heat of the night 


-


Panna Cotta fields  

Yellow top and blue stems 

Poppys red in purple fields of wheat 

Uckermarkt fields 

Bachelors button, chicory ultramarine 

On a navy sweater 

‘Blau Blumen sind normalerweise giftig’ 

Ist das wahr? 

‘Isst du!’ 

He says over and over 

The bosses son 

Grass and daisy’s 

She collects a light bouquet for Mutti 

‘Tot tot tot total langweilig!’ 

Just grasses and yarrow 

Thin, and of course perfect 

Unexpectedly lacking in colour 

Held tight to save the arrangement 

Because a bouquet must be carried 

Held from the moment it’s picked

To the moment it’s given 

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