Is it getting boring with all the “strange lights”? Well, here’s the thing. I wrote poems in my early- to mid twenties and, though I would indeed never venture to call myself a poet (I wouldn’t want to step into that elevator, to mis-quote Orson Welles’s comment on “genius”), I thought I’d just throw them (“texts” maybe?) out here, for whatever it’s worth. Whilst working at a printing company I thought there’d be a chance of making a few copies of a little compilation. It was never done, whether it was due to daydreaming or fear of reprimands for stealing company resources (!!!!) I don’t recall, quite possibly a combination of the two. However, Strange Light Poems was the originally intended title of the compilation. I do like broad metaphors, and light circumstances too for that matter. Here are some of the poems.

 

 

Smoke floating out of the chimneys

moving like restless waves

looking tall and superior on top

of the bricks

and this life

well

it is tedious

it is just about half of

what one could expect

with no blame given to anyone

but for now

all things put to wait

for now, it’s a bird

singing for the tickle of it

making its introducing mark

upon the unwritten page

some little girl, dressed like a jockey,

gripping the bag on her side,

brooding about the boy

but for now

all things put to wait

the surprise of colors, firm shades,

cold and vivid on the stiff branches

all fresh and magnificent

but the same for

a million years

do your eyes shine up behind the red nose,

when you’re wrapped up in this

piece of art,

with no frames, no boundaries?

can you feel the beginning?

I’d like to see that gift in you

boil until your feet start to dance

But for now   22/1 -08

Not that long ago

I couldn’t set my mind up for

what I just saw

a little parade just outside the kitchen window

people around my age, familiar faces

of the old place, leading their baby carriages, cautiously

turning them and stomping

in the mud and in the snow

young fellas creating the same cocoon

as the one in which they used to lay

having mothers with aprons

looking over their heads

always on their backs

they’re reliving it, safe, or just plane boring

or just both

now they can have their wives making pancakes

the way they want them

once a week maybe

and there’ll be sex on a very tight schedule

all with a little strap or something else tied around

wrapping it up

and from there

it will be slow progression

the want for safety and COMFORT

has wiped out the edge of life

leaving a very round and exact shape

a cocoon, once again

and here I am, beholding

without any of that

free and lonesome

free with a twist

either way the blackbird salutes us all

wrinkled, mad, burnt out, stuck, living, trying,

horny, uninspired, lit up

it just hovers

Nameless   26/3 -08

It was sometime in grade school

maybe ten years from

this

he limped upon the bus

and sat down on the right

me and the chums were

in the back

he started chewing on a harmonica

playing it like

a hungry rabbit

not really good, not really bad

passionately

he wore the cap of a 5-year old

single-colored, decorated

with a ball of ripped-up wool

he walked past me this morning

under the same cap

and I thought

What have we been doing?

The last snow-joggings on earth  20/2 -07

This is a big bulb of a city

one steamy pot

working its engines

in the eyes of the night

2000 lit windows watching

the night sky

and the vast city streets

cuddling in their cradles

between the brick walls

perpetual cries

untied knots, the torn relationships

of the past

and their ghosts

roaming restlessly

this is the city and the ongoing swirl

Engines  10/2 -08

The sun came out the same

as a couple of days before

not a glimpse of it before noon

when the rain poured down, gray,

thick and steamy,

putting a blanket on the world

past 3 p.m. it started to look promising

as with any other weekday afternoon

I tried to turn every minute into

something useful

the way of the working man

I put on a black track suite

light cloth I’d put on a hanger over a plant

on my balcony

I met roamers on my way to the lake

afternoon prowlers inhaling

the strong air of autumn

what a good run I had

about 5 km on my way

the lake laid out proud

with the sun resting its glimmering steam upon

the cool water,

peace in a box

wrapped with the sobbing pines

cheering at the ones I passed,

an old man with stiff legs, muscles like

a clenched fist

there wasn’t an awful lot of people around my age

adolescents shone with their absence

alone but encouraged

by the forces out there

the sun, the bulging surface, the light

the kind of solitude you can endure

even get along with and

put in your pocket for later

a teenager and her dog passed me

on my way back home

she had big curious eyes, asking a lot of questions,

and her hair whirled around like after

a bad night’s sleep

you try to hunt your passion

and every now and then you get

to see some

in the narrow opening of the door

to life

September hits the light patch  18/9 -07

We used to run here

I had my loose tracksuit on

with the logo on the back

the guys strolled group-wise up to the park, trotted

upon the maple leaves with their busted sneakers

coach never managed to make a team

of us

it was the bragging, the beholders, the submissive,

the kind and the slightly damaged

there was the self-declared elite

who had their parents kneeling for their trash, indifferently putting up

with their disrespect, their remarks

who bought them chicken mcnuggets for a moment’s peace

the elite formed their own little kingdom

I lived in a slightly distorted reality

back then

the world was more of a fantasy

than the actual THING

I saw myself as some sort of mystery, a beholder

with an aura who stroke from below

that made me feel mentally superior

towards the spoiled brats

a wise guy

who never intruded or even dared to try

so I could take a shoulder punch in the shower

once in a while, the hints and the undermining

even if I had no guts

what makes a difference now?

The echo in the trees, remote howls from days

long gone

the chute has been blocked, partly overgrown

and the guys flaunt their smiles elsewhere

I reach for my pocket

the air is moist and it’s been

half my life since

Sport  29/10 -07

My arms feel so young

still

I expose them to the wind

and let them hang loose

as the trees hush

and summer, slightly gray, but spacious

like the open road

it tickles me

young

and for all innocence lost

time is a matter of practice

spiritually a little undermined

bullshit-tempted

but I’m raising my fist

slowly, but soon to be noticed

painted and bruised

a little stained, at least

safe in growth

emotionally blurred

and indistinct

yet

there’s no stop in me

Young arms 5/7 2008

Girls were something ridiculously immaculate in those days

as if they never took a dump, because they hardly ate

as if their under-ware smelled of roses

They were living semi-goddesses

who walked freely, giggling their godly secrets to one another,

with an invisible threshold between Them and the lumping sag-pants,

which was us, the earth monkeys,

And they had at some point emerged, maybe fully dressed, out of

a shimmering bulb that smelled of foreign, magnificent flavors,

and then, for some reason, they had been put down

among the most primitive of creatures

To be verbally neglected by these strange, fantastic semi-goddesses

was the ultimate insult

and after such incidents one seized to exist

So there was always a distance,

there was always a giant step to take,

and there was always vague rumors of some who had found

unknown, unearthly pleasures

you untouchable little fairies

Strange light of forever gone 10/8 -08

 

The old man is

no more

he died early this morning

he left the smell of his old body

in the dust of an abandoned home

the sun stings it’s lemon shine upon

his medals on a shelf

a sink mechanically clean

from mustard

days from now, maybe just

two or three

the handle will turn again

his relatives with kept composure

Death

it will sail around like

fireflies and touch them

like random memories

don’t die bitter and mean

it’s strange enough to

LIVE

Report from the green 3/9 2007