A contribution to the statistics.

Of every hundred people
there are fifty two
who know everything better,

insecure with every step-
almost everybody else,

willing to help,
if it doesn't take too long
- forty nine,

kindness personified,
because they can't be anything else
- four, well, maybe five,

capable of admiration without envy
- eighteen, 

living in constant fear,
for somebody or something
- seventy seven,

talented to be happy
- about twenty at best,

individually harmless,
but dangerous  in a crowd
- half for sure,

cruel, 
when circumstances force them
- how many, you don't want to know
not even approximately,

Sensible when it's too late
- not more than
before it's too late,

only desiring things from life
- forty
but I rather be wrong here,

curling up in pain with no light
in the dark
- eighty three,
sooner or later,

deserve pity
ninety nine,

are mortal
- hundred out of a hundred
a number that, for the time being,
doesn't change.

To the sea


at some time I have tried to fathom
your secret, but you took your salt
and carried the sounds away
in your waves it read:
no trespassing

I made futile attempts to put the
days into music
but 
even the rain passed me by casually
and with centuries of dust over my footsteps
I stayed in the sad atmosphere of old
prayers and worked somewhat confused
on a fairytale named peace

I let myself to be seduced 
and went inland with the voices 
but there were more things than a dreamer 
shall ever see 
and too many roads 
underway

and so I write the sea 
towards you
and even If you're too old
to be addressed with new words
I still ask you
drown out my thoughts
set foot upon my shore
and shut me up

Somewhereville


You sing like a robust guitar palm 
somewhat flattened out by 
plaster white bandaged love affairs
the words  
you sing
are at most, intense short sobs
blooming freely in spring
In the background of the horizon 
at each line break
they stutter out the last drops
of a ripe symphony in
fluent and demure gusts 
from long ago slit wrists

Summer opens willingly
a new perspective

Landscape writer 


First there is the horizon, from left to right.
Then describe the day, that starts uphill
over a twisting path between heaven and earth.
A landscape spawns from your pen and 
gradually increases in value,
till about noon. Then the ink has gone dry.

Every time, when the light falls from high,
the countdown starts and quietly everything reverts.
Just past the standstill appears the minute, 
and the striking of the clock returns to strength.
The sights have been set.

No view so close
like the fading memory sinking in wrinkled paper.
A field of clouds erases everything,
the afternoon delineates and comes to an end.
Silence makes its rounds.

Insecurities

Everyone who is cheerful, may go to the dandelion room.
That also goes for everybody who's strong and spontaneous.
The social and the tough will also go with Geoffrey.

The others will stay here to stir the paint and then apply 
a thin layer.
Somebody there has a question, in the microphone please.

What about the self-confident people?
Your attention for one more moment please! The self-confident people
will also go with Geoffrey and Sylvia to the dandelion room.

The son and the sea

Often people think I'm a girl.
A sweet, shy girl.
I don't have to do anything for that.
Men want to safeguard me.

There was this rose grower. He put me in his bed.
He called his mother, I've got a girl now, he said.
Every day he went to his greenhouse.
He never took any roses back for me, they were all for export.
I wanted to go to the sea with him.
He took a day off and came along.

There are mothers who don't teach their sons how to swim.
I carried the rose grower into the surf,
and gave him to the sea.
The greenhouse I let be. I called his mother
and told her about her son and the sea.

Assignment 

Do you still write my dear? my mother asked me.
You used to write beautiful poetry and stories.
I wonder: in what kind of world we are living in...
Do you want some more tea? I mean: all that trite,
they write about things for which there are no words.
She looked up at me. I don't understand why people are drowning  themselves in the maelstrom of this time. - come on dear, do something about it. Especially you. 
You are capable to create something of value for this life,
with as incentive the word of the Lord that is given to us?

She looked at me. She was grabbing her last chance:
Something to laugh about then, maybe. She smiled.