dear Donald
fare thee well
and may you roast
in hell
for all the damage
you have caused

born 1900
when Austria was still a monarchy
    that did not know
    it was approaching its end

growing up as the daughter
of the mayor of a little district town
    big fish in a small pond
educated accordingly
as a ‘higher daughter’

   be a home decorator
   do needlework
   be a gourmet cook
   play the piano
   be a respectable member
       of the community and the parish

when she turned 18
after the end of world war I
the social order for which she had been prepared
simply disappeared

her father became a disillusioned monarchist
the town’s republicans elected a new mayor

she married a railway engineer
who left her after her daughter
    my mother
was born
she managed to survive world war II
as a single mother

watched her daughter
    fall in love with, at Christmas 1946,
    and marry in April 1947
a guy who had just escaped
from a Soviet POW camp
looked like a walking skeleton
       my father
AND
was the son of a communist
who  had survived  world war I
as a POW in Siberia

strange bedfellows

     they used to play cards together
     once a week
     with great gusto

     class warfare
     morphed into social entertainment

both my parents were working
grandmother  led the household
on the side did bookkeeping for local businesses
     to bring in some money
practically raised me and my brother
cared for us when we were sick
taught me to play the piano

was always afraid we would not get
enough to eat

for a while, as a little child,
I slept in the same room with her
and  learned that she had
a wondrously melodious snore
    going over an octave & some such

when, after grade school,
I had to leave at 5.45 am
to catch the train
    pulled by a sturdy steam engine
that took me to the high school  
    50km down the road
she was concerned when I
   rushing out the door
just grabbed parts of the breakfast
she had so lovingly prepared

when I left home for university
she was not happy
when I went to the USA for a whole year
she was disconsolate

she did enjoy her great-grandkids
when they visited, though

too much distance for too long
from the place of her birth
made her uncomfortable
in her later years
she needed a familiar place
that came with its familiar things
to do and know

she lived to be 87

I saw her last
after a second stroke
had mostly incapacitated her

a tiny woman
curled up
waiting to leave us
for a world that finally might heal
the pain and disappointment
she had so bravely mastered
throughout her life

grey times
roll over me
with their silencing howls

they close my mouth
cling to my thoughts
press me downward
where light is not

they love the dark
where one is like the other

no more difference

everything grey

gruesome

grief can be a temptation
and relief

you plunge into it
immerse yourself
dive to its depths
look at the world
as through a glass
darkly

you meet the others there
   who plunged before
you talk to them and feel
the water slowly rising in your body
and recognize that they
drowned years ago
and you have not

yet

you have done wrong
you know it
you hate it
you cannot undo it

how do you cope with it
how can you
look at your face in the mirror
and live with it
  
how can you heal
the pain and hurt you caused
the wrongs you did

guilt is a dangerous friend
strong for some time
full with repetant deeds
   you go widely out of your ways
   to make up for past mistakes

yet over time
this may become a habit insincere
  you do the proper things
  but in your heart
  the hope diminishes
that they will show
   eventually
an exit from the past
   into a brighter future

leaving you
   stranded
in a world threatened by fake remorse
   where penitence becomes routine
   the rituals of asccusation and defense
play themselves out like in a loop
   in endless repetition
    without relief

the pain you caused
the wrongs you did
are thrown up in your face
with unrelenting fury
each time a knife
   twisting in slow motion
   right in your heart

each twist draws blood
and gradually you feel
   your lifeblood flow away
with each renewed attack
   determined will
   suffers another blow

temptation to give up
grows stronger and
   at times
seems like the way
   to ease
   tormented souls
   to break
   the self-destructive circle

if you fight on
   a battered knight
   in shredded armor
it is not out of guilt
but out of love
   that wants to heal the wounds
   you cut in selfish moments
out of responsibility
   for what you did
of which you are ashamed
and cannot love yourself
until she loves you back

   again

          * *

the night in which
the dead come alive for a while

only to be frightened
right back to death
by the terrible masks and pumpkins
of the living

the night in which
the dead come alive for a while

only to be frightened back to their graves
by the horrible masks and spectacles
of the living

the night in which
the dead come alive for a while

only to be frightened
right back into their graves
by the horrible masked spectacles
of the living

the night in which
the dead come alive for a while

only to be frightened
right back into their graves
by the horrible masked spectacles
of the living

my wish for yet another year
    apart from all the usual
    of good health luck success and joy
is that the news become more elevating
inform us less about what's going wrong
foreground the positive
not only the sensational alarmist frightening

in short
provide a better balanced view of our world
to make it clear from what is seen and heard
that even though
room for improvement on the globe is plenty
we can do it

A HAPPY NEWS YEAR 2020

I wish you all
most pleasant days
   no matter what the virus says

and that the year 2022
brings out the best
for me and you

      think positive, test negative

a better New Year to you all
reach for the skies, try not to fall !!

it is hard
   to love
and feel that love
   is not returned in kind

it is hard
   to feel unable
to respond in kind
   to love so generously bestowed
   deep and sincere

it is hard to see
   what might have been
   a love together
even at a distance
   falling apart
   in silence and in tears
   because people and things
   have come between
in bad moments

it is very hard
   to lose
a lover
and
a friend

* *

last night I went
to a movie rated ***
as I had assumed
in its course I consumed
a remarkable amount
of visual ***

a rare accumulation
of buttocks and *******
and genitals and pimples
floated over the screen

   all the heaving and thumping
   looked like old-fashioned plumbing

   it was the least exciting thing
   I had ever seen

I wonder why

it is not that I'm shy

maybe it's the explicitly
commercialized felicity
as mentioned above
that reminds one so strong
of the things that belong
   to love

people are dying
all around me
   my mother did
   my aunt looks very much
   like she would follow soon
and remind me
of my similar future
at some unknown date

my father
still holds on to life
out of defiant habit
an example of sheer living

always a fighter
he now fights biology
unto the last

I love him
also
for that

I have you
you have me
always will be part of thee

if you want me
I am thine
wake you mornings
rise & shine

shine and rise
and take me all
summer winter
spring & fall

have me
upside down & straight
I’m the lure
you are the bait

have me
down in bed & up
have me
in your chocolate cup

in your drawers
in your chest
everywhere
I’m in your nest

in your PC
in your tea
always will be part of thee

having me
means that I am there
where you are
don’t matter where

never leave you
always stay
no more sadness
always gay

have me

       * *

quipping maliciously
the learned scholar
outdid himself
and keeled over backward
into a huge barrel
of seething criticism

what do you know
about the hearts of people

you have to listen to them
they are pulsing
  very much
sometimes they can tell you
what they feel

among the tall slenderness
of poplars framing my view
the poised spire on the home
of the Sisters of the Holy Cross
looks tiny
in its striving heavenward

I do not know
that poplars think of God
   when they grow towards the sun
   and every year bring forth new leaves
   brave storm and droughts
   survive

I do not know if the nuns are much concerned
about their spire’s minor reach
their rules are as clear
   as their evening songs
   floating across the garden
   on moonlit winter evenings
their dedication is to care
   and heal some of the human suffering
   with love and prayer
or with magnetic resonance
   in more contemporary ways

the poplars grow
   and annually sprout new life

the nuns preserve
   the frailty of human bodies
   for after life

* *

a balmy summer evening
on a countryside
dotted with villages

a man on his motor bike
100 hp between his thighs
a stretch of straight road
   rare in the these hills

he lets go

he can
he can do it
   tear early sleepers from their dreams
   make people flinch at their dinner tables
   plough through the fairytales for the little ones

he can
he can leave the noise behind
   together with the thoughts
   of his monotonous job
      security night man at the bank
      well paid, though
leave behind the memory
   of the diverted gaze of his wife
   who would gladly trade
   the 100 hp
   for one more room
   for their children

children

just in time
   he saw her
just in time

the girl carefully walking
   over the zebra stripes
with a mug of beer for her father
from the pub across the road

just in time

nothing spilled
   except a little beer
   under horrified eyes

children

another stretch of straight road

he can
he can do it
he can let go

he cannot resist

you have the feeling
days go by
   in a sequence of unnerving sameness
punctuated only by familiar rituals
   without alternation

a sluggish stream of time
enveloping
   a history
  of not really noteworthy past events
and similar future ones

everything stays the same
   nothing changes

eternal boredom

this is hell

         * *

the United Nations
ever and again call to raise billions
to help countries devastated by war
or other mostly man-made catastrophes

I suggest we operate by the causality principle:

the countries who sell all those arms
    and military support to the warring parties
    or leave the natives no land to grow their own food
simply use the money gained from their sales and appropriations
to help the refugees they created
    build up all the cities their weapons destroyed
    provide a living for the farmers whose lands
         have been sold to agrobusinesses
    pay for the education of all the children
         unable to have schooling
    reconstruct the societies their greedy actions destroyed

sounds like a fair proposal

doesn‘t it??

two leaders once met in Helsinki
for talks that looked somewhat *****
as it turns out
                still nobody knows
what they were talking about
and that indeed smells rather stinky

burning rain forests
wild animals with shrinking space to live
growing air pollution
smog in major cities
more than 3,5 million deaths
     due to respiratory diseases
global warming
new insects and other beasties
    in the formerly cooler regions
extreme hurricanes  rainstorms  heatwaves
excessive use of fertilizers by agro-industries
bees are dying
blossoms are left unpollinated
biodiversity is in a flat spin
deserts keep growing globally
fossile fuels are still polluting the air
curious dolphins die in the water of the Thames

after so far hundreds of thousands died of Covid-19
it is high time to see the larger picture
to comprehend interactive phenomena

the pandemic brought earth a little recovery time
the waters have cleared
you can actually see fish in the canals of Venice
satellite pictures show clear air over metropolises

suggesting: the new normality after the pandemic
must be significantly different from the old one

do we really need hundreds of thousands to die?
does it need a virus for us to understand

that we need a different relationship to nature?!!

old letters  postcards  color slides
entries in diaries  drafts
of letters maybe never sent
fill boxes after boxes after boxes
left to me by my parents and their ancestors

going through them
I sort out letters  documents certificates
prayer books with scribbles on the margins
school grades  awards  old birthday wishes

of all the photographs I only keep the ones
on which I recognize the faces
those of the strangers I have never known
     and never will
I ditch
together with the many color slides
of mountains I have never climbed
     and never will
and of my parents friends whom I don‘t know
     and never will
with whom they somewhere spent good times

all these were part of my dear parents universe

in my world they mean nothing
have no significance beyond allowing me
to glimpse selected moments of the lives of those
who‘ve come before me and have gone
disappearing quietly
     into the mists of history

leaving blurred views
      as through a frosted window
about their pleasures  loves  anxieties  
catastrophies and tragedies

     enough to tease imagination
     too pale for certainties

hints from the past

when the telephone rang
at six in the morning
four days before Christmas Eve
   I knew
things were not right

they told me
   my father had died
   at three in the morning
   and would I please come by
   arrange for the burial
   and collect his belongings
at the senior citizens home
where he had spent
the last four years
of his life

they had rested him nicely
he looked at peace
I kissed him on his forehead
   like I always had
   at the end of my visits
and cast a last long look at his figure
   before the body would be taken away

    and suddenly I noticed
       how big his hands were
    they’d never seemed so prominent before

as if in death they sent me a reminder
of how much he had loved his hands
   for work   for play  for sports
   for fight and for survival
   to point and to gesticulate
      they held me as a baby and
         some times
      slapped me as a child
   they repaired toys   split wood
   built sheds   drove cars and motor bikes
   were patient and precise
   caressed and soothed and loved

they were his life
they held his world

my father’s hands

do we really want
our country imprisoned by a wall
and all the seasonal Mexican harvest workers
locked out?

California and other
southern border states
do not seem so enthusiastic
about this concept

legal or illegal
they need the (wo)man power
to get their fruit and vegetables
to the (super) market

therefore, dear ICE
& other border guard units

get your act together
do NOT separate children
     from their parents    
try to use your brains
      rather than follow your orders

and act
like good Americans would

Your body covers mine
we deeply breathe each other
our skins are one
limbs stay entwined
lips touch
hands seek and find
slow  joyous  motions
join
and we are
home

be honest

do you always
like yourself
   your partner
   all your friends
   your job

do you not feel
    at times
that you are quite abominable
   your friends are boring
   or turned into enemies
that your beloved partner has become
   an obligation rather than the joy of your life
and that your job is just
   a never ending treadmill

if all of the above applies
then it is time to take
   a mental step or two
   back from the everyday

look at yourself
as from a mountain top
and honestly acknowlegde
that you belong
   to the seven billion people
   on this globe

who struggle

          * *

how dare you
discriminate against
those who have
escaped their death
and fought their way
to our land

how dare you
ridicule their pain and suffering
their loss and incapacity

HOW DARE YOU!!!

cope with all the greed  injustice and brutality
we learn about day in  day out

with some luck
these are not part of our own experience
but second hand  from news and media

this does not make it better  though
when trusted public figures fail

how to react
    to priests and teachers
          who abuse the young
    to presidents  dictators  populists
          leading astray their countries
    to our elected politicians
          unable to resist the lure
              and money
          of those special interest groups
    to ruthless powermongers  businesses
          that only work for profit
          not the common good
    
resistance is not easy
the choice of weapons in this conflict difficult

yet if we not resist
not make the global and the smaller perpetrators
accept responsibility for their misdeeds

our living years will soon grow fewer
and we shall hasten our journey
     to the end of all our needs

if at all,
how to approach?

if approaching,
how to be accepted?

if being accepted,
how to avoid
too much of it?

if successfully avoiding,
how not to hurt
or miss
the most important?

if not avoiding,
how to maintain
yourself?

if maintaining,
more or less,
your sense of self,
how to transcend it?

and if transcending,
how to appreciate
the other
for what s/he is?

how to be close
without the pain
  of loss
upon retreat?

how to acknowledge
that the other
  always is
out there
  and yet
in here?

     * *

the other day
I occupied a chair
at a sidewalk café
watching the vanity fair of the quotidian
float by in quickly changing apparitions

an endless flow of different ages, nations, fashions,
skin colors, miens, ****** expressions, postures & gaits
kept passing through  my field of vision

it made me wonder why
some people get so furious
when they  just hear about
    not even meet
    the ‘others’ different from themselves
that they start dropping  bombs and shooting rockets

I think they rather should be curious
and eager to discover
how the immense variety of humankind
can help expand a locally grown mind

and recognize
that we are all of the same kind

the other day
you asked me
   what I thought about you
and I did not really
   answer your question

we all have our idiosyncracies
they make us unique
   and sometimes
a pain in the neck

being overpunctual
   or always late
staging an appearance
   or fading into the background
griping gruffily
or glossing things over
   with sweet talk
verbalizing everything
   or very little
sticking to long-made plans
   or making your mind up
   again
   in the last minute
swingin wildly
   or staying calm
pontificating on what is right
   or listening quietly
   to what others have to say
   indicating your respect
   for what they want to say
being a control freak
   or leaving people enough leeway
   to find their own approach
worrying permanently
   about friends, children, parents, family, the world
or believing that they
   can occasionally
do without us

there is a fine balance
    difficult to maintain
and more often than not
we fall off on one side

   or the other
   from that narrow ridge
   of mutual acceptance
grow irritated or disgusted
   in wild moments
tell her or him that THIS IS IT
   and s/he can leave
   the earlier the better
   and NEVER come back

when such tempestuous events
give way
to calmer contemplation
we remember
that time is short
   life is precious
   and love is what makes it bearable

and we reconsider

I feel so uninspired
maybe because I’m tired
of all the nicely rhyming jingle
I’d rather wish that just a single
great thought or image would appear
of love or hate or lust or fear
unfold is imagery of riches
     no matter whether clowns or witches
that might be generally admired

alas, I am still uninspired…

If you step on my toes,
I kick your shin

sitting on my loggia

on a balmy spring evening
   after a short return of winter
a drink on my side
the birds chirping their evening song
the sun slanted
straight into my eyes

my favorite radio station
has declared jazz day
so I have been enjoying
Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker
    Joe Zawinul, Benny Goodman, & cetera

lovely

yet I have the blues

I had to take
my woman to the airport today
she’s now miles away from me

she mailed me
she arrived safely

I am glad to know

but she still is
miles away from me

I have the blues

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;  
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:  
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,  
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;  
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;  
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;  
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;  
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;  
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,  
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:  
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.  
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:  
(I measure time by how a body sways).

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;  
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:  
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,  
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;  
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;  
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;  
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

even on a day
like this one
   when

   with all the blue sky
   and the sun

life suddenly
looks grey in grey

so different
from the day before

I do love you
even more

   *  *  

try to imagine
your own death

at first
your mind just balks
at the idea

but once you concentrate
you may get puzzled
at the endless opportunities
you have
  of dying

warming to the subject now
images start flitting through your mind
like you were flipping TV channels

you see yourself dead
  with a trickling bullet wound
  in some dark street
  victim of street crime unpredictable

or have a vision
of a scene of accident
where white-clad helpers
carry a distorted body
to a waiting van
in vain

or you are in a clinic
rigged to electronic gear
the nurses look discouraged
slowing beeps
flattening curves on monitors
and you feel darkness creeping in

or you blow-dry your hair
with the old dryer
and the bathroom floor
is just a little bit
too wet

a plane falls from the sky
in a fireball

a stone gives on the mountain path

you ski into whiteness

the railing breaks

lightening flashes

a snake bites

what.... -

all of a sudden
  options explode
your mind reels from the truth
that death is all around
in infinite variety
and may be yours

now

or a second later

imagine

(Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)


I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!

THEY claim that their laws
protect the rights and lives
of women and children

that’s why they criminalize
women's rights over their bodies
children's rights for knowledge
     of their history, basic sexuality, etc.
     and a safe school environment
banning books on global warming
     and *** education from libraries

over 200 mass shootings with 264 deaths
in the first five months of this year
strongly suggest that information and
the right over your body
are not what’s killing people

yet THEY are unable to react
with tighter gun laws

     praying for the victims and their families
     does not prevent the next shooting

dangerous signs
of political and ethical impotence

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Especially in bad times, giving up is not an option!

our daily information
defies all expectation

reporting in unnerving detail
how trains derail, tour buses fail
   to stay on roads without a rail
how terrorists attacked again
    when nobody expected them
what nonsense politicians spew
    unfortunately quite a few
how the economy keeps getting worse
    yet billionaires still fill their purse
pollution levels have ‘improved’
El Nino has the jet streams moved
millions of refugees are loose
    around the globe, few clothes, no shoes
armies and gangsters flex their muscles
cannot resist the deadly hustle

and for the icing on the cake
thousands of lives are now at stake
we learn  without too strong emotions
that a new virus was discovered
the waters of our rising oceans
     have by now covered
     a third of several island nation's land
no more idyllic beaches with white sand
    
all this mixed in
with those exciting human interest stories
about the latest dog show winners
some brilliant wunderkind beginners
major and minor worries
from  distant neighborhoods
commercials for the latest fads
and all the current healthy foods
self-advertising TV channel ads
who’s s great in sports
    and who of sorts

in short  
24/7 of much useless blather
that neither alters our lives
nor can we change its mostly dreary facts

yet we risk drowning  under this debris
    of cacophonic sound and image bites
unless we learn to
    set our marks
    clear our sights
    turn into info sharks
devouring just those bits
of almost hidden information
we can make sense of and digest
the clues to what is really going on
below the surface of our media-created ocean

it’s the commotions in the depths
    that teach us best
    give us a glimpse behind the curtains of stale words
    make us aware there’s little time for rest

love that is generous
and waits not
   for a thousand little things
   to feel diminished

love that speaks openly
   rather than store up
   the souring years
   of unsaid bitter trifles

love that enjoys
   it is returned
knows that it is unique
   yet may not be the only one

love that does not possess
    and has no need to rank
    itself on a monopoly
    carrying the seeds of self-defeat

love that gives freely
   and takes in alike
   but never needs
   to add up scores

   is such a love
      inhuman?

* *

an evening sky
of slowly waning azure
hints at the radiant horizon
   behind rooftops

little clouds
    are blown by high fast winds
and quickly lose their rosy edges
   on their journey East

your voice
   tender and small
   as the evening song of blackbirds
recalls the importance of moments

I look into your shining eyes
and see the sunset sky
   reflected forever
in brilliant rainbow colors

               * *

most people
do not want to hear about
views different from their own

so
though you may think otherwise
if you want something from them
   love, attention, business, money, ***
you tell them what they like to hear
to fill their needs
to please

yet
after a while
you recognize
that with each time
you cater to the needs of others
you give away
a part of your integrity
and that you better
   watch out carefully
lest you become merely
the sum
of their reflected selves

           * *

the sight
of a blonde Austrian 5-year-old girl
happily hugging a Senegal mammy in Vienna
joys me beyond belief