I don't understand this poem.

While silence clamps down the poet
the father says: 
"I don't understand this poem".

Tightly fitted in the background
he is shriveled between the loud painting
and the misted-over window.
The kitche table between them is
at least 9 meters wide.
When his eyes are searching, she can't 
tell if he's distraught
or scared.
Or both.

When her father's mouth moves, 
and his words walk up the paths
he cut out for himself,
the poet thinks: "Show me the way
to your dark forest, or draw a map
that guides me to your paths".
She doesn't hear that her father
is asking her for the same.

Between two wavering mouths
it's raining distance.
Outside blows the darkness and inside

the father says: " I don't understand
this poem,
"it must be a good one".

Lay down


'Oh', she said
and she wished that she could cut off
the resonance of that word
to glue a tight white sound behind it
or a jagged edge;

from now on she would lay on the rocking floor
in the tide, her arms and legs curled up
in a skin of wood

then suddenly stand up and lift her tight stockings, 
for once not tripping over sandbanks,
and feel the slushy mud settling between her toes

'Wait..' he would now only mumble
to a faint reflection in the water.

The rooftops of Paris

I got a hotel room with a balcony.
Sixth floor. You, dead for a year,
sat across from me. Morning.

A very tall black guy brought us breakfast,
he smiled. In between us I arranged the
cups and knifes. I moved a croissant 

on your plate, here, you like this, I talked.
Are we going to the department stores, palaces
or shall we just sit at the lake? I thought 

about the sun on your shoulders, now, clear skin.
gold, and your hair, uncombed, which color 
in this light - I looked outside.  The sky

was lead above the rooftops, waved
grayish into the room and ate the bread-basket,
the butter, your legs, your voice and your hands.

Again I did not succeed. I closed the doors,
went down, fast. Another day had begun.

Beginners 


Miss Guerlain, do sit still
You're moving incessantly
That way (that's no secret)
nothing will come from my 
professionalism.
I am of depth
In fact I am the man
of the life story,
the existential crisis.
According to my profession
I'll have to ask you
to go through the knees
and to cooperate
Answer my questions
Appreciate my humming
with a tidal wave of new words
and stories.
Don't you see
how they're looking at us?

Double-hearted

Proudly I show you the gifts that I bought you:
no hate, no love, lot's of indifference
and stoically wrapped lies.

My kiss on your night-cheek dissolves during the day
and when the night comes I'll erase my memory
in retrospect.

Closer you think, but that's not true. I bounce off
disappear from sight and leave all questions
a hundred times unanswered.

Gone in fragments

1

So where were we? With impunity
I could say together, rising and descending
like children on bread warm air in dreams

of clouds. Or reversed, like islands in the sea,
inching closer together but backwards in time
floating towards an inevitable perfection.

But was it like that? It is not known 
and you would deny it. Maybe that's why 
poetry exists.


2

Come, let's go back. Let's explore
the shores, think away the hotels,
visit the graves (strangers in a strange language)
where we took the picture, the one in which you laughed
and remain young (not us, not us, not us).

Let's go, determined and regretless
until I find the origins of the world
again folded in your lap
like a love letter.

We go to prove that we still
can casually spit the rain back 
into the sky.

We go to throw each other soggy
sandwiches on a deserted beach. Wait there and know

how I wanted to keep your face above water (your body
a diffuse presumption among the small fish) And that is
why there is poetry.


3

It was already behind us; a veil
of a thousand white stairs. The road
to the house of God on this mountain.

There I unfolded you, like a butterfly,
like the Bible. Took you in deeper than before
there on the altar. Madness under the cross, 
madness in the crotch.


4

Something became a sin, something we couldn't live with
and something became forgotten, something was accomplished, 
something became a word that grew longer. Until nothing

became our shadow in which the road got itself stuck,
so there was nothing more to look forward to
and even less to look back at. What remains

are clouds like sucked-away-fat from which rain falls
and falls. And poetry only exists because we never did.
Because this has not been written.

Get lost!


I saw death
a street away
I looked for the hollow eyes
the silence
I was still young

he seemed more for the tropics
an African or Indian
but he had it in for my dad
'get lost' I shouted
not a word too much

later he assisted in healthcare
screwed me proffesionally
we stood and looked at it
the incubator
bundeling a premature

I regocnized  'blind' death
when he had it in
for my lover
and didn't want to show me
if in his eyes
there was a heaven.

The ax

breasts and thighs are
still flattened on the mattress when
I wake up by my own strength

I have to make sure to
bring these well rested body parts
with me to ascent up into a new day

when you tell me that this is normal
that everybody does this
I feel the strong urge  to
put them back

to cut off
what is mine
to stay extraordinary

shivering I know
that it's possible
that deep far jump 

Slumped over


I want rain for my umbrella
Addiction for that packet of smokes
Morning for my coffee
I want to get used to fucking
A movie for my talent
I want to bleed for my cleaning cloth
Break because I have duct tape
I want a nights rest for my pillow
Booze for my hangover
A walk for my shoes
Down the stairs for the stairs
I want cancer for my lung specialist
I wish
a car accident for my personal account manager
at the insurance company
A broken bone for what I'm thinking
The booked ambulance flight is
a filling for the ravages of time
My life takes too long
I want to send my blind hate a postcard
I'm losing it, spinning faster than two days on Saturn
My moon has broken down
Probing the sunlight I count the nightly hours
I make my bed in the dark
with sheets unfulfilled when I masturbate again
dark and sad and turn away
facing the wall

Valencia 

What is Valencia really?
strangely formed tiles under his feet
and a sun that casts shadows across facades
and pigeons.
Towers,
who with their classical shapes
are a feast upon the eyes
He washes his hands in the fountain,
whispers to the sun and water:
What is Valencia really?
What is Valencia, without her?

So he sighs
all his lust away
and feels the last coins in his pocket.
He can't stay here.
Not in this sun. Not by this sea.
Not in this city.
What is Valencia really?
Unusual,
far away, abandoned
and nobody who understands his words.
The hours, the days,
that sometimes feel like months
in this cosmopolitan city 
they bang like fists on doors,
like hands on drums.
like sun on water.

A card with greetings 
about love and fun.
But rather than a card
he wished for her to be here.

The queen of Thebes

They say that she is crazy.
With her leg stomping
she stands at the cash register
holding a can of coke.

"Tomorrow I sleep in a
house", she says, "with blankets
that don't mind my old skin and
hug me and kiss me".

While I pay, I ask her
about the old days.
It makes her go silent,
she becomes a little girl.

She fiddles with the little ring
on her can. 
She looks at me and smiles.