Sticky Words

           

                                                              We rarely say what hasn’t been said before

                                                               it breaks my heart and tongue.

                                                               Just as I was about to analyze               

                                                               the anatomy of words,

                            my mind stopped under the pressure 

                                                              of other people’s lines

 

 

There was nothing but the sky before

and not a bit has changed since.

 

I’m looking at it…

 

A big lazy centipede of a cloud

is about to swallow my favourite star.

This pale-blue sky, in endless rebirth,

brings more than I can bear,

the heat makes my senses loose,

the air is filled with sticky thoughts,

sticky fingers around a sticky pen,

sticky, sticky words

 

Womanity

 

When we are  young,

When we are girls,

We climb trees, play hide and seek,

We don’t have balls, but we have dolls

It’s not a problem if we’re girls or boys

As long as we share the toys.

 

When we grow up

We get the balls, lose the dolls,

Release the braids and ponytails

 and wait for a suitable wind.

And then we get a bit older.

 We become a mother or a woman,

or  if we are lucky, both.

 

When  we grow  old,

we  look more like a father.

Our breasts  flatten  and rest,

we  get a quite, unwanted moustache,

 very thin hair and a shiny scalp.

We, men and women,

 do become equal, eventually.

 

 

Too late

 

It’s too late now, darling,

we’ve slid away from each other,

like a baby slides away from the womb,

we’ve moved to the opposite sides of the door,

building an entire continent between us,

 avoiding roads to be made and paths to be invented.

 

It’s too late, you know,

even the birds have fallen asleep,

and the wind has hidden itself inside a tree,

the water has stopped by the shores to rest.

Would we dare to disturb nature’s peace and quiet,

and cause an earthquake to destroy this rock of buried memories?

 

No, dear, it’s too late,

we’re a patient in a coma hoping for a flat line.

 

 

War

 

 

Come, come now, we’ll shed blood in vain

we’ll cover the walls of the world in red,

then we’ll tear them down and stone each other.

 

Come. The way we’re acting

we’ll only reach to the tip of the nose.

Eyebrows covering our cheeks,

we’ll roll in the great nothing.

 

What a waste of material humans are,

to think they were given to breathe,

to be born, to live, to love,

to lose and win,

and here we are again, longing for death,

hungry for someone’s heart,

we fall asleep on a full stomach,

a gnawed bone

sliding off our fat bellies.

 

Come, come now, and don’t forget

to bring a pair of scissors

to cut the thin thread

we are hanging on,

alone, pale, naked and freezing,

with blood and war under our feet.

 

Don’t forget to bring those tears

to clear our eyes,

don’t forget to bring

that fresh dew, to wake us up.

And don’t forget to put your arms around me.

How else would we learn

that we’ve been wrong,

that we’ve been rampaging?!

Poor humans.

They think they’ll repent,

that they’ll get over it,

that they’ll be forgiven.

 

About crying

 

I often dream crying over things;

in my dreams something burns my chest

and I start screaming,

my face hurts from the jaws wide open

as if to make more space

for everything to rush out of me.

My cheeks are burning from the salt

running down my wrinkles and through my nose,

I torture myself while breathing in,

my chest feels like a brick, like a wall.

And I’m standing there all in tears and a running nose

while a single thought pulsates in my brain:

It hurts!

It hurts!

And I want to continue,

then my own screams wake me up,

but no, I left crying

in my mothers‘s womb

in the fall off a bike,

with the toy taken from me

in the lost...

(I’m lying, I’ve never cried over a lost object).

And so I stop when I wake up.

Awake, my walk is firm,

I look things straight in the eye

I don’t cry!

I don’t cry!

The horror.

 

 

 

The greatness we strive for

 

I’m watching the end of the day

with the sun that birds flying,

carry upon their wings,

up, up in the sky.

Here, where I’m standing,

the sun has already set

behind a building.

The sun does not rise in the east anymore,

nor does it set in the west,

but comes out and goes down a building.

 

We live in the shadow of

the greatness we strive for.

 

 

 

If I ever die

 

If I ever die

look for me in the water

where in my childhood

I used to quench the thurst for life,

look for me in the summer sunset

where the colour of my loud heart pulsates,

look for me under the quince

where I used to spend the shortest night,

drawing lines connecting the stars,

there is a piece of sky of my own up there.

 

If I ever die,

look for me only if you had found me while I was living,

if not, don’t even bother.

 

 One life, one death

 

We meet, two strangers,

on a bridge stretched between two mountains.

Here, in the middle, the heaviest spot,

the time before we knew each other

meets everything that will be.

 

We are two out of four out of

a thousand eggs of the king salmon

that didn’t get to be crushed by a stone,

that weren’t pierced by a beak of a bird

How special does that make us?!

Here we are, the two of us, one life each,

and a long way to the sea, where we’ll be living

and a long way back up-river, where we’ll be dying.

One life, one death,

and all the loves, all the patches

of body and soul,

all the time we were given

and the two of us in it.

 

 

 

Forgive me, mother

 

Forgive me, mother,

for I have sinned,

I’ve been multitasking,

I did it all;

I electrecuted myself

with duties and chores,

put my hand into the dishwasher,

hoped to wash myself from sin

down to the bone,

spread my thoughts on the floor,

made a puzzle of my past, my future

and the many presents I have to live,

did it all while reading a book,

while fixing the mess and burning the roast,

saying grinning Goodmornings to neighbours,

I did it all while watching the news

and crying over some mother’s child,

while carrying the weight of the century

and charging myself with fear for my children,

while licking the wounds from the lashes of time

while putting a smile to my pain,

I did it all!...

Forgive me, mother

For I have sinned,

I’ve been a woman again.

 

 

A sky in a cage

 

Maybe it was the sun in my eyes

or the splitting headache I get from life,

or maybe even my lack of sleep trying to make ends meet...

Maybe it was the urge to limit the infinite sky,

limit it to the voluntery confinement in which we live,

fed with the illusion of freedom,

but I could swear I saw the sky in a cage

while squeezing my face between the bars.

 

 

 

 

Love is a fast and hungry beast                                             

 

Once I was a thousand years old,

I had the blindness of the prophet

and the madness of the king,

I had the weight of a doubt

and the weightlessness of a white lie,

and a picture of me alone, on my own, at a table,

tossing and turning, waiting for you, only you...

 

Once I was a river that owned a sea

a river of thoughts that don’t age,

roaming the earth, changing the maps,

flowing and breaking, in silence and roar,

carrying the weight of pebbles

and the weightlessness of cloudlets,

rolling and tumbling to you, only you...

 

Once, or twice, or maybe more,

I tried to die, to cut the sore,

erase the lines and hide the signs of you,

hide you in the weight of words

and the weightlessness of paper,

hide you in my core, you and me only,

but then again and in the end, you, only you...

 

I could have run, I should have run,

but love is a fast and hungry beast.

You can climb the sky, cross to the other side,

and it will still hunt you down,

еat you up and keep your crown.

Whatever I choose, whatever I lose,

all I am left with is you, only you...

 

 

Notre Dame

 

First there were the worried,

they said It’s burning! What a catastrophe!

Then there were the appalled

they said It’s burning! It hurts to the stomach!

Then the hungry for miracles came

they said It’s burning! Only the cross isn’t!

So the scientists came

they said It’s burning! Gold melts at 1064°C, that’s why!

Then there were the indifferent ones,

they said It’s burning. Could you, please, tell me where the railway station is?

Then came the Governments, and the rich, and the idle,

they said It’s burning! We are shocked! Common mortals, hand over your salaries!

And then came the poor, the refugees at the borders,

the hungry and thirsty, the forgotten ones and the ignored ones,

and they said,

We are burning!