Desire

From the tips of my outstretched fingers

you act like you play the part of water,

yet you don't play.

Look, you say, this is thirst: I offer you something

to drink

and you pretend like you have never drank,

reaching for little airwaves above a hot road surface

to pause for a while.

If you would desire me that much, you say,

I would play the part of love for you

and you would pretend as if you never had loved.

Just like it would be, if you would be little particles

of death, you say, if I'd play the sun for you and you

had suffered night after night.

The locksmith will come

I've been wondering for weeks: shouldn't I have
cleaned, vacuumed, done the dishes? Put some stuff
aside, just in case? For whom? 

When I lay on my back things seem to really
withdraw from order. The mail behind the door
is claiming more and more space,
slides continuously closer towards
my glasses, of which one glass is missing.

The only thing that stil moved, the antique clock,
stopped yesterday. What has sunk in me is
slowly revealing itself. A few streets away
a lease agreement is terminated.

And then he comes
like a woodworm through the keyhole.

Art Makers 

my first wannabe-master was the      
che-guevarra look-a-like painter 
who in the late 90's let himself 
get stuck with this prostitute 
and a drug smuggling route 

courtesy  of the  Bulgarian mafia 
he died like a spineless mosquito 
in is own jeroen bosch painting 
 
I met a colleague poet  
with in his eyes the absolute black 
his favorite book was cloud in trousers 
by Mayakovsky with the M of 
mysterious from the morphine alphabet 
 
there still is this colleague poet 
who muffles away the cum stains on his shaky  
recital paper with buttered excuses 
a poet who wins one slam after the other 
a slam is a small competition 
average poetry recited to judges 
who smell like steak 
 
there was this Slovenian street clown 
who gave workshops in building high riding bicycles  
in murky squatting houses 
who with a one-snared instrument 
wanted to copy the vibrating signal of the moon 
 
there was this local city poet with lordosis 
who survived all the doom and disaster 
until a small mistake in diagnosis 
his favorite lines written in tunnels and  
on garbage trucks 
 
there still is this lisping poetess  
with big ears and Cinderella thoughts 
who these days starts every poem with 
once upon a time 
 
there was a man on a roof 
there was a roofing tile stuck in her snatch 
and then she formed a thought around that 
 
there where her many boyfriends 
of which one had warned her about  
using words like roofing tile 
and that she had understood oyster 
and that it was funny to write  
about this misunderstanding 
 
and that another boyfriend then said: 
that's a cheap way to make everything funny 
you take an ugly building 
piss against it 
skip away on a skippy ball 
and have it filmed by a girl  
with down syndrome 
while you let some autist make the music score for it, 
you call the movie estrogen  
and write another vague poem about it 
 
there was this new-age witch with a healthy clam 
who told me I was a born performer 
and that I could get away with anything 
if I dressed scantily. 
 
there was the old school poetry slammer who found Jesus 
 
there was the coke sniffing poet on his fixed gear bike 
 
there was this farmer poet who attracted rain 
 
there was this German queer with 
dry camels in his expired passport face 
 
there was the night man who ate jazz who had jazz 
who wrote jazz who read jazz who stayed jazz 
 
there was the pipe smoking poet with 94 versions 
of the lingo-poem w-o-r-d /word/ 
 
there are and there were more and more than there were

 
balancing on the word cord 
 
I once snored Juliette Lewis out of an hotel bed 
but where and with whomever I slept 
 
it where mostly the poets who surprised me with their portraits  

Scissors

sometimes I apply scissors to my hair, yesterday evening I watched 
a TV program about becoming happy, I wasn't
during the commercial break an ad about the satisfying effect
of a new kind of shampoo with salt crystals that should work
like a tiny universe to which you would ascend to.

this morning I was taken aback by a drop I saw on
a leaf, stay close to yourself I thought, both feet
on the ground, be sparse with big words, avoid
elaborate metaphors, they could easily turn into clichés

J.H. Leopold wrote about life mirrored in a drop of water
after the rain had gone. He used his scissors for the
Frankfurter Allgemeine and his birthday was May 11

in the program an expert was interviewed  
how can it become and how does it then feel, somebody from the audience asked
one feeling of happiness isn't the other, often you notice it when 
it has passed, then you get dejected, dejection is a disease,
nostalgia on the other hand is something you can live with
sometimes I apply scissors to my hair
how perfect could a perfect day have been

companionship verse 
 
she plays with her hands 
they obey like dogs 
she's intrigued by the threat and at the same time the salvation they assume 
she dreams about elephants in a snowy landscape 
she feels compassion for people spit out like prey 
in doorways of government buildings, she gives them a classy gutter made of poetry 
she likes the company of men 
she like to play the game with women 
she likes the gravel in her village and the wet parts in the city 
 
but she can never stay too long 
she becomes like a hairbrush or a wrench 
always put back in the wrong place 
her heart is like 
an old city 
there is the old centre  
and there are new parts