EASTER
A start like a recipe for spring. I was going a long journey in a fast car. Everywhere there
were clouds, I appreciated the value of the sun-roof. We passed some storks, so I said:
look, storks. He said: you’re happy like a little kid. Stupid, I said, I’m happy like a little
kid, because you’re speaking to me like to a woman in April, be my friend, I want to be aglow
from that. Then
I called the witnesses on the spot, e-mails, ballets. All in pretty big quantities, because
nothing stubbornly would do for me. Doesn’t matter, because the calendar resurrection’s on the
way
for this I’ll bring the world a cheesecake.
Let them all love me, since you can’t.
SUE RYDER FROM THE SQUARE
Sue Ryder – she encountered misfortune early on, when along with her
mother she visited hospitals and the gravely ill.
www.dom-seniora.ovh.org
Greetings to you, Sue Ryder from the square, on which no window of mine looks out.
Greetings to you, because I don’t want to go back to my place today. You’re in the snow, and I’m
in a strange kitchen, my dear Sue Ryder, in the Wild West.
Not long till high noon now, so I’m meeting you, we’re meeting, Sue Ryder, I’ll bring the
cigarettes. Now I’m scraping paint from the windowsill with my nail, then I do it the other way
round – do you like manicures?
I like them though I shouldn’t, since it’s possible to do so many serious things, and here
there’s the bishop’s violet in a brushstroke across the nail bed and you have to watch out for, fear
the consequences. There awaits us, my dear, a silent cloud in the earth
- the square behind the bus stop needs work. Dear Sue Ryder, and even then you can’t be
sure, since the toilets by it will stay triangular – someone might find that ugly photo of you on
google.
Greetings to you, Sue Rider, masterless cow-girl. Already we’re away from everywhere –
the address books of mothers, our own beds, at the ends of the nerves of enemies from many
nights, of brothers from just one.
Already we’re away from everywhere, so don’t look round, my sad Sue Ryder,
you’re nowhere to be found.
POSSESSIONS
It was your evening, uneven boy. Your eyes get smaller as evening comes on. Long ago I
was taught not to hold out my hand, so when I come home by some chance taxi, I’m thinking of
kissing, thinking of the platforms we could say goodbye on, if by some miracle we’d met.
Oh, no exaggeration – I feel God’s will in these bright nights. But in my home, drought
and withered ferns, no one calls by. To close my eyes here means to look at paws smeared with
juicy fat, means to face up to the fancy floor above, means to horn over. You can come into me
like into a swamp.
Uneven boy, right behind the lilac in the square – all my lymph;
the shroud possessed from lips.
TRUST TERRITORY
A dream of seven nails in the skull. I hesitate – for none of the possibilities is ready for
sense. My father says: think, you don’t cry out. I say to my father: cry out, don’t think. I live free
as the wind, she feeds me.
And now look – I’ve picked up seven nails for my dance; seven guys from the Albatros
and one dead girl. I lived over brow, over tit, over the wise stream, but the time came when they
threw me out and led me to the field.
And in the field the harness goes on. Hi hi, the harness goes on in the field. Long live
want and barren sand! May the grains fall to the depths of the seas, may the ponds go down in
algae and black duckweed! Here the earth’s only good for covering things up.
LOCUS FOCUS
You were right barely to own up. At a distance your mother is cutting her hair very short
again, though she’s still young, though when she visits parks, the ants use her thumbs as smooth
ladders.
She waves to your father, in her hand she holds a handkerchief of lignin. Eternal farewell.
Daughters are so goddam clever, when they don’t have kids or take a long time to graduate. Not
her case, MA and children, virgin birth in action.
But the butterflies from her belly live on distant meadows. Even the word meadow is said
here with a light breath – like many other words that never get the right reflections. Creep off to
the cellars, to the attics – on heated perches
your a-minor molecule passes the night, girl. In the darkness you shake, in the sun you
over-expose these photos. So to rank fears – the word husband clearly goes to the head of the
line, and over the head it’s better to draw that wisp of hair,
like when you wanted to kiss with some guarantee, but you didn’t have any - I don’t know
– charm, courage, fancy frock. Oh, I know – you prefer to stick pins in yourself,
because you alone know how far it is to the flowing life for which you’ve no proof. And
though I bet you’re lying – you are lying. In some summer park, on a bench in the shade, you’re
poking at your eye with the forbidden splinter
and nothing changes.
HANDY-SIZED
A clot of color falls from the widow – to the scaffold to the scaffold. For when the cat
comes to bed with its claws, when the fledgling chokes over the canal, the lizard wakes with a
new tail, which really is no good – it gets light. Cover yourself with dark
up to the eyes, you crumb, go into town, into the world – look around a bit. On barges and
rivers, coffee is drunk now, on the lawns ritual spreads. You will not catch yourself out – nothing
can be undone. Look – it’s all gone, some rains,
books, clocks, some drownings in the bath, fingers round the throat. To be in your own
place now in a city full of strangers, to look on as the boy with too long eye lashes longs to take
someone’s hand, but doesn’t reach out - and not to have any sympathy at all.
To carry a well with you, best a handy-sized one.
To use it according to need.
To get rid of it according to dreams.
Driver’s License
Strange these dates and strange the wood, strange winter sarcophagi of ants in it. You say:
no ever died. I say: you can bang on about the hawthorn blossoming as much as you want,
nothing will come of that, better get on to the car
and lay down our heads on the dash.
Orbi
Such an inclination – not to value light and world. Of course, the albino stag steps through
November, calamari are mostly smarter than cats and from another’s fingertip to the deeps
the sincerest scarab can reach. Of course, rain on the asphalt turns to mercury, mercury to
a tear, a tear to a dream, a dream to a story of birds that over the body’s temperature cut all those
spins,
and then peck your eyes and lips,
your in-breath and out-breath.
CONDITION
Hum me and rock me. Two strings – trusses and a question mark. Night on the ward,
when – I confess – you were the only thread, the thin skin that the scabs holds on to.
I thought my legs were gone: two hearts, two clear joys, that in the containers at the end
of the tubes that grew out of me, I was gathering. O morphine – I had no fun with you.
I’m talking about admitting. I admit – that chair is constantly changing signs. I lay down
though I was still lying and then you lay down with me like in a fragrant sled. And now tell me:
what kind of happiness needs
a knife in the back and a dried-up river?
FILLING IT UP
It takes us – the time between.
In the dream there was a banquet and leather – the string in the shoulders gave out no
sound, the asphalt hadn’t dried out yet, the cake clung to the fingers, the icing sugar to the chin.
You had naked breasts and a tangled tongue in the middle of the do,
you danced, but afternoons are for the family. Tribute not fox trot – whoever doesn’t
know that dies or suffers. So your heart full of aspen pins, so your head under the faucet, knees
under the chin. And what would happen
if you could see more, if it was brighter. And so: flounder and visit parks, in cloudily-lit
afternoons embroider peaces on others’ frames, gather air in the lungs of the vacuum and take off
the example. So:
fill up the time between as tight as can be, so it doesn’t grab you.
And if it grabs you – drown.