What there is


Every time you come to me,
deceive a caress around my shoulders
my head suits itself to what it 
imagines to be loved
and waits there for what doesn't sleep,
doesn't wake up ripening in you
because you always go further 
to where you have no business looking
you let me search in places where I can't find you,
not where you are, not where I want to see you,
wind, indifferent wind,
you're not there, I'm alone
and listen every night
to what I once thought of you. 

Chairs on the terrace

Then let me be the woman who folds
open the chairs and spreads them out,
one chair for each thing she doesn't
say, one for every non-touch.

And then let's go there, you, me, 
each separate, sit,
just for a while, maybe.

Counting the chairs under breath,
making visible that what didn't happen,
make it attendable, make it dreamable.

Let me.

Highway to hell

I distrust people
-not like a zebra
who suspiciously looks
at vague contours
in the high grass
near the watering hole-
no, simply like how
a little boy
in Hiroshima
looked at
Little Boy

Don't trust poets

No poets who 
empty pens to made up exes
exploited with a loose wrist

Daddy-issues made into a puppet show.

Better to grind the machine into the ground yourself.
Pin their opinions to your forehead.

A collection that adapts itself so it becomes personal.

Don't be mistaken.  The dialect
from Amazon warriors, turtles and goosebumps 
is in all seriousness and reason the strongest.
Each step we climb higher. More nostalgic.
To the essence. Until you recognize yourself. Pick a fight.

Don't trust poets who
turn in notes like stalkers,

Better leave poetry to read today's newspaper.

Brain me out. Let yourself be needed.

Go and experience some shit, loose drinking games,
rape nights. Channel your skin inside out.
Walk away before you and everyone around you turn into words.

putrid 


this time let us not talk about
timeless things
like wars that pass
and wings that carry oil

but let's talk about me

as soon as I was born, I
started dying

my intestines molded like cheese
but my skin straightened everything out
because it's the outside that matters

I'm about the outside

so I put black around my eyes
paint my lips red and lungs black
because organs are not about giving
life but about extending life 

In truth I am the most putrid person
you will ever encounter
best not to run into me

beware 
this is a warning

I'm not suitable for all ages
and I'm not responsible for any possible consequences 

Italian Noir

 

 
like crumbs she collects her tears 
the room speaks carelessly for itself  
even silhouettes are invisible through the antique curtains    
so she decides to give the night-moths a voice  

acherontia atropos she claims 
 
wrapped in negative frequency  
desperately drawn to their ill fate 
 
the Goldberg variations - Zimmerman 
 
(Glenn Gould did it better) 
 
she cuts faded photographs into a sepia collage  
her knife cuts open landscapes  
where the sun inevitably sets
 
I leave the room and decide that a single sheet will suffice 
 
her leg slowly rubs against mine 
it feels inescapable - time only has a final destination 
 
lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate 

I pour myself a drink 

The voice

In a hotel room in the Barrio                                                                                  
you are once again in play

instead of
over her shoulder
you are suddenly in my mouth

as if you want to show her the secrets
that lie at the back  of my throat

every small word I now want to utter
is being cut off  by your thrusts

you should have let it go, you say
what good did it bring us?

this afternoon behind the curtains of
Buenos Aires
I'm his lover and her illusionist

from my open mouth I fabricate
a monotonous string of mourning-cards

one guess who's name
is on  them?

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 

You say...



You say that I don't know you.
But even at a distance I check
your pulse daily,
breathe every moment of you.
I read you
swaying on your tide.
I decipher you
in the hidden atlas of your desires.
With one hand tied behind my back
I sail along with your laugh,
your fears,
your desire for me.
When you approach me
when you distance yourself
when you adore me
when you despise the shadows
that I cast
over what seems life to you.

I know you.
I've been there all the time.

A tired wink Even a tired wink is too much for you. You, paper mummy, there, in your library. You feel nothing, nothing touches you, even if an oak tree would shake all its leafs, you would see a wooden lighting bold. Well, congratulations. Your whole oeuvre fits in your daddy's invoice binder. Now you've heard it from someone else, lily of the valley, traitor, blank-stick. With your mole face you sniff out words from the books of others, rearranging it all into poetry, sniff, sniff, with your pointy nose, to which the shavings from red pencils of poets past seem to stick a little too easy. Bye, scholar. The paper says hi to your dad. That's right, the paper.

Until we are firm enough


You enter quietly so that your staying
will be less noticeable and we talk about things
like vacuum cleaners and fabric softener.

The words take on the form of my spine:
just meant to keep things up.

I press my elbows against my sides so that every goodbye
fits within the doorframe and I say: remember

that we used to throw paper planes around the house
so that we looked bigger and leaving seemed less significant?

You nod and say that you read somewhere that chewing gum,
depending on how many people walk over it,
stays in the street for very long time.

Fold your hands in front of my eyes and push until
we are firm enough

to not disappear.

Regular Hangout

Coffee is running, burning black holes in my head
I brew white clouds from conversations at the bar
one is resentfully complaining, the other is reading a newspaper
while putting sugar cubes in his pocket

Air bubbles are hard to swallow for Bernard 
who let's himself be called The Time
his whirling grey hair follows him somewhat behind

Next to me sits a girl who is never herself 
becoming herself in a hand-mirror
she is a nervous rush hour, talking in klaxon
her trembling left leg is keeping us alive
in return we listen to her blare
It's starting to sound more like speech as time goes by
drowning your sorrows in a Pumpkin Spice latte is hard 

Can it continue?

The difference beween waiting and
expecting you learned
from a cat who ran away twice
but only came back once

You think about the oxygen bottle
that kept your grandfather in an
artificial coma.
Could it continue like this an
aunt asked.
On Google maps his bike remained 
in front of the house for another three years.

After that there was the person that
said that he didn't want be with you
anymore but that's why he remained
all this time.

At night you tell him about the time
that somebody once called you a whore 
just because you waited at a red light.

He says that 'walking' in Russian
has two verbs, depending on
whether you have a destination or not.

no face


we say grow your beard
we generation online
of many we are with the most
but we never come together
we blend ourselves 
to an image

we create events
like they are hormones
breathe down our own necks 
that show us unsolicited tattoos 

appreciate our status
pay our name
acknowledge the remains
of our inexistence 

Light

How you, because you don't trust yourself,
reconsider a good decision

regret being right or wrong
that is how you sometimes love somebody

for what he could have been if he wasn't 
what he became without you. 

You know where the earth and sun belongs
you know of the blood red moon but remain 

blind in the fog and clouds.
Later you see the images others made

they are familiar to you
like a distance you cover everyday.

I keep falling off the world

I keep falling off the world
when I stand still just to look around
I loose nose, ears and smile to the windows
I pass
during the day

the perfect society demands
perfect indifference so I use 
the streets like I take the subway
I wait, get on and hold on 
to a leather strap

and I worry
does the one who is dying has to die today
or tomorrow?

You're asleep, spread across the bed
so you can always turn to the middle
to see me

you're a vulture who's smelling
my decaying flesh
you're watching me die
much to your delight