Togetherness

there must be a world of lost things
in which a glove, forgotten in a hurry,
becomes friends with an old newspaper,
a scarf, a handkerchief or a comb.

the glove does not miss the hand anymore,
the handkerchief doesn't need tears nor snot,
even the scarf doesn't care for the warmth
of mothers and nursemaids.

all that is lost, is together,
but tenderness is getting redundant,
goose bumps are willing to be found,
the first wet dream, your funniest lover,

the toys of a kid that died.
and the presumption that we can forget everything,
although you, lost as a human,
have to be alone in the universe.

Agenda

Marcus: dead 12 years I write 

in my new agenda at the date of 
April 22 and I remember again how
you died and how I told my mother 
the news. How she sat and looked.

Every year again I write it down.
Every year your dead gets older.

When I write it down the day is still empty.
Later when I read it you are in between my appointments,

more quiet than you were before, but less fragile.
I also write down your birthday.

The 25 years between your birth and death 
are close together in my agenda.

First you die. Then you get born.

Present time


It's morning here. We notice the date,
look out the window, make a sandwich
and fear the worst without anything 
threatening us.

A morning at the edge of a calm little town
at the banks of a river. A church bell, 
a boat horn: It's time. Always.

This calling is enciting us, spurring us on,
no matter how still the grey light hangs over 
the water. 

Meanwhile a duck is bobbing undisturbed 
and the blossom is setting.
Their lives continuing unaffected,
taking place in the present.

Sometimes I open up everything  
(Massy-Essone)

The room that I made more lively
with sea side views and dead butterflies
wasn't build to last.

Here at 6.30 in the morning bicycles and ovens
are being thrown from balconies. Sometimes they
end up in front of my window and remain there until
somebody passes by, usually before first light and picks up
what could be of use to him now that it probably 
doesn't belong to anyone.
Everything often disappears with great discretion.

In the afternoon, with the same care I look down 
at a teapot that stands in a badly chosen corner of the kitchen.
It's not exactly standing. Five sharp pieces holding each other up.
It's been there for weeks belonging to no one.
I have to learn to be less doubtful and remove.

Without a doubt the room is now mine.
I live in it with the plastic wrap that made the windows
non-transparent. Sometimes I open up everything
because I have to learn to sleep with the sound of 
falling objects and bodies that enter each other.

Opium, Special K and horror stories


Four fifteen.

Rugs over the couch and your elbow on the floor
waiting

I said: divide me, put your needle in
my arm, consume me, make
that you never forget me. I wanted to love

you, I wanted to rob you, I wanted your lover, 
I wanted your skin to catch my breath
I wanted to warm you. You wanted to calm me,
I lost track of time. Woke up with my elbow in 
your wrist. The silence wasn't right and I thought about
Rimbaud, Nietzsche and with my lacerated arm under the blade

I forgot to count the strokes. I was expanding my terrain,
poppy seed grew from my lungs, my neck was a wasteland of quicksand where
everything sinks in. How can I be alive when tequila

worms can live of my blood?

The wool was woven with the hair of nymphomaniacs.
Pressure on my wrist, you lift me up and enter me deep.
With bubbles around my tongue I declare myself a legend in the making,
I fall back on the couch and rest in lust on your handwoven
Persian opium rugs.

Five thirteen.

Deeper

First time in the sea, our toes curling up
insecure like snails. Then more courageous
we wade in deeper.

Soon you give up- you can't swim,
later when you have kids, you might
take lessons- you turn back.

I keep floating, drifting
like 'woman on moon'. Over the waves
lather falls in emptiness, everything quiet, tight.
A splash shatters like glass.

When I turn around I see doubt in your folds,
you shake off a fear of droplets,
and I see you think: 'how do I save her

when she drifts so far away from me?

Leaving

Life is about keeping it moving
you said when you had just decided to leave
and never come back.
You held your bag over your shoulder
and looked to where you wouldn't see me,
but I nodded because you were right
life is about keeping it moving,
nothing more than that.
You already had your ticket, you knew
from where to where
you even knew which seat.
Window seat, you said.
And also that you had a lot of 
catching up to do.
And you shook your head, 
again not looking at me.
Your unease
with my teared up
eyes
and my kisses.
And I proved again 
that I'm not good at it.
Life.
The elevator door started to close,
I stuck my foot in.

Sunday 
 
 
More often he's tripping over syllables, gets up 
draws the curtains shut. Holes are appearing in the 
country where he used to be the enemy. His stories 
 
are unfolding themselves with increasing unease. 
There are his many swarms of butterflies, 
flying up from trees in India. 
 
I can't put a date on it, only the death species 
who hide here under glass. Discolored and silent 
they hang next to the stairs. There is the phoenix 
 
that listens when the subject is about strange skies 
over strange cities. It rises to become grey ashes 
and we think about: 
 
Sunday afternoon, empty glasses, origami. 
You take the napkins from the table and hope 
for swans as accelerators of time.

Stairway

the sky is made of copper
that day you have to make everything 
like it was for him

the room is barbed wire
here and there some wool
no sheep in sight

everything is in the attic
says the concierge who oozes loneliness
but of the inert kind
snail of the stairway
he is a man who stays inside
to complain about the weather

and then suddenly the stairs
so worn out that they become theater stages
they make you pound your chest and use the
elevator shaft as a amplifier for that 
one song you've been sharpening since
you got weak in the knees

upstairs you wipe your forehead with wool
and ask how much salt is needed 
to get an echo out of a snail-shell

Inside

I would like to know her,
a small door in her head 
where I could enter and tread carefully
through the maze which is her.

There's a room full of
everything she's missing. Facts,
days, people mixed up.
There has been a storm inside of her.

There's a guy who is dead
and a child that doesn't exist.
I snoop around in a life I can't
do anything about. 

It's a good thing that one day 
it shall perish.