Not Sleeping

And all is quiet

or at least pretends it is,

just like the night wants.

 

Except for my thoughts

that line up in the darkness

to face the future.

Sleep

Sleep like dust, blown away by thought.

Thought, fleeting and invisible,

but with a weight, the weight of ghosts.

Their fingerprints now on sleep’s dust,

a dream, a memory yet to come.

 

The body so solid in this darkness,

outside it, night,

inside it, a heartbeat like a prisoner.

This skin we have is too thin,

to hold darkness and heartbeat from each other.

Savings

I wish we could really save some hours. You know, just like savings for a rainy day. And when that rainy day comes, just before everybody starts crying, we say: ”Hey, I’ve got one or two days light saving, so I’ll be out of town. If you’d hold on with this for a while? Thank you.”

Then I would go out and lie down under a pine tree at the edge of a lonely beach. Pines, salt, cicadas, maybe thyme bushes too. Those were my heavens as a child, so I guess that would be fine with me.

Like Nothing On

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If we’re to be nothing after death

let it be nothing like nothing on,

like a dress you take off

on a very hot night

to feel the slightest breeze,

a dim light that gives you goosebumps.

 

If we cannot be that skin

we might be the breeze itself

or a thin layer of dust

under the bare feet

as we wait in a corner

for the good lord, the bad kid.

At the Monument

On New Year’s Eve a 50-year-old German citizen drove his car into different groups of people celebrating in the streets of the cities of Bottrop and Essen, in the industrial area “Ruhrgebiet” in Germany. Eight people got, some of them seriously, injured: a Syrian family of four (whose 46-year-old mother was in critical condition and had to undergo a difficult surgery), an Afghan woman and her 4-year-old son, a 10-year-old Syrian girl and a 34-year-old German citizen of Turkish origin. It came out that this was a hate crime and the man intentionally targeted groups of “foreigners”.

The Kaiser Wilhelm I. monument at Porta Westfalica is a monument finished in 1896 to honour Kaiser Wilhelm I. who was the first Kaiser of the German Reich after the French-German war in 1871. The monument was built in the regency of his grandson Wilhelm II., a regency marked by the rise of the German nationalism, antisemitism, militarism and colonialism that led to the Herero and Nama genocites in Africa, to the WWI and in extension and result to the rise of Nazism, the WWII with its millions victims and the holocaust aiming the extinction of the European Jews.
At Wilhelm’s feet quite a few families that a hater would classify as “foreigners” (among them myself, my parents and sister) take photos of the massive monument and statue but mostly enjoy the beautiful and peaceful view underneath: the river, the valley, the old train station at the bottom of the mountain, all look like a miniature landscape of a model railway. We all love this view.

Between 2018 and 2019

The sky breathed out its last colour

with a deep sigh. Night watch

for those who fear thoughts

sounding like broken glass

like a river going dry, like a fireball.

 

The saints of the other side

keep promises in their pockets

for emergencies like that

and for girls fainting in the kitchen.

 

Now we’re here, amid of mute stars

that have been waiting in darkness

for their ignition by a heart,

one of those out of beat.

 

Why aren’t we allowed to mourn,

over those cracked ancient souls,

why must we remain silent

as if we weren’t the right gods.

 

There is a time without place

where we can still meet and lie,

for if you cannot touch their skin

your language will go under it.

 

In the end the day will break

our worlds in two again

the light, sometimes heavy, sometimes light,

the night behind, sometimes heavy, sometimes sight.

We get up to go on getting up.

Dawn

Dawn, I’ve just arrived and I need your guidance.

My face is now damp by your dew

and so my lips can move again.

Through my nostrils your air feels like a medicine

trying to reach my heart still sleeping.

Your light cuts houses and trees out of the sky,

sets me in between them, tells me to Go!

Dawn, I recognise you, we’ve been playing this game for years:

You wake me up, you kiss me, you tell me your name.

I won’t forget you Dawn, goodbye.