From the kitchen
(for F.)

My blonde girlfriend and I.
are like two big apple trees
firmer and lovelier than ever, in bloom,
before the orchard is harvested.

When we get together, for instance
to talk about the best kept lady secret
of all time, or about how we
abide by the laws of the world,
continuously, and why. 

She tells me that we are afraid 
of our own power.
And indeed, afterwards I sail down the stairs
with joyful and increasing fear:
What will be my big enterprise for today?
Which cold undeniable truth am I going to reveal?
And when, because I'm on fire,
am I going to wage that war?

Aesthetics


The most elegant is not the swan, but the water
in which the swan is reflected without a trace,
a wrinkle or a friendly shiver.

The most elegant is not your body, but the mirror
in which the body, slightly hurt, is reflected,
while a hand shifts over your skin,
a caress, an embrace of yourself
that lays to rest on your body.

While my glance can't capture it permanently, 
it remains detained, and unembraced,
like someone who was once invited for pleasure,
but then forever remains a hostage by pain.

A Message


This is indeed unbearable.
Empty rooms look at me reproachfully.
I rearrange the boxes again and make it an early night.

Someone, I don't know who, told me that it supposed
to be this way. When everything is over, It too will be
forgotten. But I'm bad at forgetting.

Someone came to help me. Now the boxes
are in their place. I rest, although I
accomplished nothing.

This is indeed very different, new rooms.
In all rooms my life is turning It's back
on me.

How she stumbles

How she stumbles over the shadow of the moon
her old tracks heaving in the tree branches
her nocturnal wedding gown bleeding silently 
in a dawn of things never said

I pick up the tense words
smell the scent of vulnerable and alone
carry the little girl in the inside pocket of my vest
save and secure, free to cry everything to shreds

Very small ode to my love

This morning
I saw an empty 
Heinz bottle
lying in street:
Immediately I thought of you:
57 varieties

Bahía Blanca (Argentina 1989)

You dance to keep you from your thirst 
Waving hair and a scent that transpires
A horizon up for grabs
A shack that topples over in your head
Gasping for breath I repeat the names
of the port cities like prayers
and watch with you over your shoulder,
the little orchestra that plays, your eyes..
My daddy is dancing a tango

It was in Bahía at a café 
- you don't dance a tango in Vienna-
The bandoneon, the sun, you became like a wax figure,
with the caption blurred, gone

Misfortune in your hand, the glass
that you raised, your eye that saw the powder
breaking, cigarette smoke and lipstick
A veil of memory shaking the music:
My daddy is dancing a tango

Strange body

Liquor - and later a strange body:
my hands are still skillful tools;
my mouth is thinking of something else.

My mouth, my whole body is thinking:
The right body, the familiar 
is not here.
It lives again in a soft focused green country:
whispering grass,
lied flowers.

And here, this strange and of course 
lonely body against mine:
when morning comes,
I will avert my eyes
and just sleep
and sleep.

Heart

Only the deepest I keep of her,
what I say, silences her language.
She carries her heart in me
It spurs me on daily.

We talk and she nods at no,
violently wrong. Liquor consumes her.
She still laughs at old jokes,
laughter that I hide.

Later on she stands crooked
in front of her house and waves,
I drive away in a hurry,
she is already asleep in my head.

Cleaning and swimming

That is all that I have to do today.
I'm not going to appeal to friendship
it doesn't have to see me to be there.

That is what I'm going to believe today.

That higher cause can also wait.
High causes are known for their patience.

Today I don't have to stand on a roof and sing,
I don't have to be the unsolicited angel of the city.

I'm going to think a little about my mother
how much she loves me.

That is what I am going to believe today.

I know there is a dog
with folded ears like beech leafs.

I know there are dandelion seeds 
being carried by the wind.

Somewhere there is a guy playing guitar.
Somewhere the sun is bleeding out.

I don't have to see it today.

Clinging

Apart from my feelings,
I hold, until I heal fractures,
everything together.

Ulysses 
 
I've seen too many fights, 
heard too many lovers whining.  
I've always traveled too far. 
 
A show-box replaced my eye, 
A humming top my ear. 
 
Too much mud, 
too many bitches in it. 
Too much joy. 
 
Now I hide between the lovers, 
those beggars.