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

Corn


Sometimes I train my disillusions like they're big
mad dogs. Preferably in high cornfields,

so much rustling that your disillusions seem
to walk straight out of your head, right in front of you
I call for them in all their painful detail
(Bring back! Come here!)
and let them:

Go! Sit! Lay down!

After which I lay myself between the the stems and
the broken off cobs, wondering which thoughts I
would put in place of the disappointments if

everything had gone my way: probably none.
How suffocating! Like erasing rooms from
the house you grew up in, including the

the ones you used to enter  for
no apparent reason.