Thursday, June 18, 2009

to dad with gratitude

i would have liked to place a coin
  in your mouth for charon
  to carry you across the river styx

instead i got to listen
  few passages read without
  any genuine trace of 
  recognition of a human man's
  passage into 
  the great oblivion

all the while 
  remembering 
  the wonderful stories
  you concocted after
  each installment of 
  scheherazade's radio theater
  every friday morning

"demirbank demirbank demirbank"

tell charon a hundred years 
  is too long a time
  to listen to men reciting
  a text they barely understand

tell him he can have my golden bough
tell him he let dionysus pass once
tell him i owe him one
tell him you are a story teller
tell him you are my dad

tell him tomorrow is friday

Flashback: June 25, 2001

the feeling that time passes through one's body
that there is nothing one can do
that one's consciousness is but an error
  on the face of an indifferently silent universe
that one hangs on life because
  even this miserable existence is better than
  nothing
  the silence
that there is 
  no retribution
  no solace
  no reason
  no explanation for what has happened 
that there is nothing/nobody you can get angry with
along with there is nothing/nobody you can thank to
  for one's pain and hope alike
that one had no previous lives
  and is going to have no afterlife
that this is it, the only life one has
is an overwhelming burden on one's heart
  combined with one's regrets
the only things one can truly own 
  apart from one's memories

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

falling

falling

   even when the fall is only thing 
   one has left that matters

falling

falling

   picking up pieces here

falling

   graceful or your face in the mud

falling 

falling

   whether you shout into the night

falling

   and run like hell

falling

   or cry your eyes out
   pleading to whatever higher power

falling

falling

falling

   it isn't going to 
   make any difference

falling

   you fall

falling

falling

   but no worries: you won't

falling

   be there 

falling

falling

   to see 

falling

   the sudden stop

Monday, May 11, 2009

there is nothing to say

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

the night spreads on the sky 

a one-way-mirror 
  with tiny little peep-holes 
for gods to watch 
  the squalid human condition 

play, watch and laugh 

even if i know 
some of the stars i watch 
  are long dead 

even if i know 
in the no man's land of 
  all things since passed 
the words i utter precipitously 
  are long dead 
if not insignificant

as night spreads 
we despair, watch and remember 
  that history is not the antidote 
  but very reason for cynicism 

Sunday, May 4, 2009

bring out my stale words
two cents a piece
speaking of yesteryear's
love, obsession or heartbreak

two cents a piece

even if words without love
were as empty as love without words

but
they are two cents a piece
and i'm much too tired to sleep

Sunday, April 19, 2009

"hell is where
all hope is banished"

as I wrote this
in the margin of an article
which playfully explored
Leibniz, Voltaire and Maupertius
in a land
far far away from
any family I had
be it my own
or my own chosing
I realize that
hell is not a fate
but also one´s own chosing.

I may be living in someone´s
best of all possible worlds
but it is not my own.