Everything changes

and suffers from it, I too --


am living that way.

Love: forgetting you

know each other, discover --


each other once more.

To keep her and me

from being alone, I put --


an arm around her.

She likes me, so she

does know human nature, or --


is she just stupid?

So I'm a poet,

which was once just a pose, but --


I conformed to it.

From the river, forest everywhere
with yellow knights, turkey tails
and white-bearded trees

Sometimes there is a silence
and I hear the treecreeper
here and there a stone

which is described
on the map of this area
a map that is not a map

but a summary
of intersections, bridges
and solitary trees

Tonight I will rest
in an easy chair
that important invention

after the folding chair, the tilting chair
the swivel chair and the wheelchair
luckily I'm whole inside

not shaken in a coach
with suspension
fit for a rest day

for considerations
about my journey and the world
accepts the outcome

Every day I pass

the forest, it's hard to see --


that we're transforming.

Taking a deep breath:

there is space, calm, sometimes joy --


It's the real nectar.

Wait for a new age,

when there will appear new priests --


to reinvent God.

A romantic kiss;

her first, so her eyes tell me --


dying passively.

But in retrospect,

I wasn't really unhappy --


It didn't mean too much!

My love must not seem

like desperation, that would --


be a proposal.

She broke up with me.

Overwhelming! Finally --


something big happened!

Appearances are an art, a few strokes
form out of paint, an intimate experience
of velvet, skin and sadness

There is no better job
than feeling proximity and depth
shamelessly direct, like in bed

Appearances are deceptive, my insolvency
is just a façade, like a name
given to you in ignorance

I no longer have debts
nor money, I earn nothing
and can work without worries

So let the pious people talk
I take care of Hendrickie
and Titus, everything is theirs

The old actor has

been playing all grandfathers --


for twenty-five years.

Trolley cases on the quay, tourists
are part of it when you live here
And Thin John, sitting straight on his bike
every morning three times around the block
in the afternoon on foot the other way around
Mario the Sidewalk Speaker also
is part of it with his dog

Children jumping cannonballs
next to party people in their sloop
Anyone going on vacation
Every two minutes an air-plane
against the wind, low over the houses
Cyclists with their priority face
and the people who live here

The Americans in front of their café
on the corner, where believers sat
when the church with the tower was still there
Red Mia shuffling around
the litter bins, and neighbours
arguing again
They all belong

Here and everywhere the world
is maladjusted, we know
about ourselves and we address
each other: Hello! Good morning
good day here where we are at home
and can only wish that
everything remains different

We are beautiful

and special, all of us, it's --


just ordinary.

Like you, I look
for the distinctions to understand
what has been

different in the womb
in the neighbourhood where we grew up
and with the people who lived there

And I do not know
We look alike, this or that way
we rolled down a sand hill

whistled on a straw or acorn cap
discovered the zero after a lot of counting
learned to write with bread

and tried our best to get permission
to eat the letters, it was
all differently the same

Also the uncles and the aunts
and the children from the neighbourhood:
the differences are numerous

but too small
to be able to catch them
So I have to swallow

and admit that it is true
that you are just as good
as I think I am myself

Life is learning that

you are No'other, almost --


the same as I am.

Our beautiful life, preserved
against the cold that may return:

cans with beans, old newspapers
worn out clothes, jars of jam
up to the ceiling
the hard land, and the hard way
of the great leaders, and the little ones
who fought for their own advantage
the heroes of steel, later torn
from their home and from the books

But we are still there, in our musty house
we still share - a beautiful life

The audience isn't

listening to the concert --


It's background music.

Everything is there,

but it gives me no idea --


what to do with it.

There is your laundry,

which I will clean, but for whom?


Will someone wear it?

The songs of that time

were our world, the places where --


we saw each other.

We didn't dare, but could

we have done it anyway?


Just believe in it?

My hand wants to know
what I, what they
want, do, and to
understand what is happening

to my body, and what
it has to do with me

My soul also wants to
know in order to know
and to laugh about it
when I think I know something

Laugh relievingly
Think about why

others do what they do
and then, what hold
my hand has
to help

I think ahead
behind my clouds
the sun shines
the sun smiles

People in the street

are making jokes with a laugh --


that they give to me.

He talks about her

all the time, so there's a chance --


it's almost over.

Visitors give me,

as a sick person, knowledge --


of human nature.

The long way back
to my skin's old threshold
limits, replacing the alarm
with a notification
without crisis consultation

and more
than the sensation
of smells and tastes
and more
than the satisfaction
of strength and fatigue

and more
than laughing muscles to feel
there is contact
in between thinking
Placing a lot at a distance
to have space close by

to be balanced
and to love myself
to accept touches
uninhibited, not creeping
like the scent of wisteria

The baby senses

it, so it begins to cry --


Now we can cry too.

I pick up plants from the street and slow down
Caring with soil, scissors and cotton wool
I slow down and cook, for him, and with him
everything else slows down. I don't do much

At first wilfully, daily exercises
and meditation, my body asked for it
Attention

Esther covered my skin, he caresses
it, he catches my navel lint
Childish games, silly jokes
Giggling like a lama

Cuddling, energy
from the sun behind my clouds
Peace of on and off buttons

The slower ******* and spitting
of the ganglia in my head
No more overdrive
All neural pathways know it

So tasty, the smell

of steaming bread, freshly baked --


while I was sleeping.

This music is so

nice that I play it even --


better than I can!

The sitting room makes

me feel like I have to walk --


in a gliding way.

Father chases me,

we run around the table --


three times, always three.

Dad doesn't say who is

the most beautiful woman:


Your mother of course!

The wind blows away

all that love has been, it is --


rustling in the trees.

An elevator

full of weal and woe, up and --


down in my sick head.

Come in, look at me,

look at my inner world, my --


inner wallpaper.

Life passes quickly,

I hear the wasted time bark --


like dogs in the night.

Chance brought you here
and me, we don't look

too much, unconscious
of the questions in the eyes

the other one sees
We're on the way, talking

or silent, calmly
letting the energy flow

through the gates of desire
to the organs of our happiness

and we forget ourselves,
bathing in peace:

heaven supports the earth
she breathes her seasons

around and around in parties
of life and we are

The study takes years,

so it easily will take --


me even longer.

Freedom is doing
something for one's own
reasons, taken from nothing
and no one

A child is free
in its game, everyone
can be it and learn it
in friendship

Grown-up free
every new day
own agendas only
to live and let live

To do what you do and
to say what you say
for your own reasons
and not wanting it any other way

Very puzzling is

the miscellaneous news:


Hów did it happen?

You don't have to say a thing
not even my name
we walk a bit

from embrace to embrace
securing all the preceding
deep in our belly

Maybe there is too much
to discuss, but soon
half words will be enough

and we will kiss each other
with poetic sentences
full of love in their gaps

like our whole life is
an agenda full of gaps
filled with friends

care and roses
experiences kept deep
in our belly without words

I feel no worship,

no love or amorousness --


but a blissful fear.

It's Friday the thirteenth
again. I stay at home
due to circumstances:

a dragging wind
and storming sirens
The cameras break

taboos and peek
into windowless sleeping
rooms, front pieces

after the wind of roughskirts
who celebrate their gains
in stinking silence. I close

the curtains, my eyes and mouth
I'm not here, hello hello
don't you see I'm not here

and I can do nothing about it -
absent due to circumstances
which I can do nothing about

It is super thin,

the gold leaf that will survive --


the iconoclasm.

On the bridge before these walls
stood the spears with the heads
of all who were in the way

cut off on the block, with ravels
if the convicted refused
to pay the headsman

for a quick death, the heads
with holes where the blackbirds pick
the holes where the eyes were

The parishioners wore shawls
over their noses and mouths
during the Sunday service

in the church of the chains
because it reeked from the vault
full of beheaded bodies

oh, history lessons
don't make anyone happy
at best our children

if we don't let us be tied down
by complicity in injustice
lifelong guilt and shame

if we dare to count on each other
and rise up against tyranny