Death in slow voices

1

New moon, face-down, drowning
or crescent: an arthritic knotted finger, furiously wagging
or full: a scream for the sun’s remote fire , Munch’s envy in limbo.2
in the dead of the night I wake in a nightmare
feeling chased by shapeless terror
up and down an unending staircase of an Escher print,
down up down up down up
in the house I was born.

3

A native Indian smoking, looking over the prairie, grave of the buffaloes,
Manitou, Great Spirit, where are you now?
"I am tired of fighting from where the sun now stands, I will fight no more."
Death will call always out of season.

4

Way out of the door,
an exit, not always an entrance.
Walk in the church yard among the tombstones,
here lives white-shrouded Harry, his wedding band still on his bony fingers
and pretty Julia killed by a car crash,
and tiny Amy, who entered the world for no more than two hours.
A coffin is a memory box holding what has been given,
a body and a past
or a wide open eye that has closed its lid.

5

My young father resides
on top of many others in the cold Russian earth, his beautiful eyes closed a long time ago, November 1943. He never stopped whispering,
still speaks to me
and listens.
My mother is looking for him forever in her dreams.
Where is my Dad, Mum?" I ask
"wherever we go."
Tell her: Death is not always an exit but an entrance.

6

Maybe the moon is a slow tune
carried throughout time
by the green-winged Quetzal bird -
What else ages when not tended to:
memory, the Amazon forest,
ozone, a marriage,
the night
in which my young daughter suffered a stroke
papers of my grandfather’s death and burial,
the call of the nursing home to say that my grandmother had just "passed away".
For over half a century , my grandfather’s bones waited for his widow, waited
in a plot of earth underneath a willow tree and an ivy covered cross
for those papers to authorise my grandmother’s request, while she adjusted
her new hearing aid. Down by her cold feet, he’s still the man
she tries to hear.

The Future of Monopoly

As a child I’d play monopoly for weeks,
I monopolised the whole family, sent them to eat out,
while the dining table billowed under the paraphernalia
of the game. We played in the bath, the tree house.
I kept hotels and houses hidden in my socks and underwear,
so no one else could build them. Not keen on the cheaper places,
I snubbed stations, only Park Lane would do. Money laundering
was a virtue, not a crime. Encouraged by success
I grew rich in paper money and business acumen.

That man in the Thirties, who crafted the first game
would get high, knowing what I know now,
as no one wanted his game then, but later two hundred
million bought it, a few paying dear for gold and silver
houses, even a chocolate version fed the greedy.
Spies would use it, smuggle maps, compasses and files,
slipped real money for escapees into the packs.
Pity . Castro did not fancy the joy of capitalism
destroying all Monopoly sets; the Russians, far better,
made off with the samples at an exhibition.

Times are changing, we now play an electronic version ,
my new charge card asks me to take out a second mortgage
to pay for school fees. Waterworks are owned
by a fat Saudi boy and the utilities operated out of Berlin.
My early experience has paid dividends. Since I drive
around in London in a Monopoly cab fitted with GPS,
I won a million in prize many, my rent paid for years.
A lot has changed since the early days. Parking
is replaced by a congestion charging zone
stretching all the way from old Kent Road to Mayfair.
But nobody sends me to jail without passing go,
as it is overcrowded now and the easy-get-out tags are free.

Forced Dreams

Outside my window falls the night,
runs rain, an owl cries from the treetops,
stops, again a cry across the muddy lawn
and more than eighty dead in Lebanon.
Beirut in flame, below its cedar trees,
and like a game the fight goes on. More die
than people are aware in Washington or London.

I think of them between a war and words
and their continuous dying. They reach out
with broken hands, their bloodless eyes
are terrified; we’ve been left out, here,
in the cold rain, left out to avoid the bombs
and shells. We’re left in shame.
Where is our home? Where houses stood,
is dust and rubble now.
Do not forget us.

Think. This just happens. Sit back. Mix memory
with discovery and find your own garden
full of the dead, who are like you,
still out for food, a bed. The old and young
with babies, and lovers who just yesterday
were strolling arm in arm, now with torn faces
pressed against your screens. You think.
The rain will wash them out. It won’t, it can’t.
It is not meant to. You sit, your face pressed
against theirs. Life against death. You have no choice.

The children howl. The babies, with their wounds
still bleeding red show transparent eyelids
over their dead eyeballs! Wind-blown, rain-drenched,
stuck to the glass, their lips are now dead leaves.
Offer them sweets, a featherbed, warm milk!
Their faces have the angel look, the garden
is awash in begging angels. Nothing
could deny them dying. Their eyes insist:
here we are, more real than your trees, your pond,
your trampled rosebushes.

And I say silly things like: you are forced dreams
of my imagination. And they agree.
They do apologise for frightening the dog
and they are leaving now. The dollar falls,
religions boast their creed. And petrol
goes extinct. And still they run their faces,
visceral, as they are, deep down into my eyes.
That is tonight. I see them hold their hands up,
yet again, to keep their skin from falling off the bone.
It is not time yet, but I ask: Who of you said,
is innocent? We all give up. We all.

Death of a walnut tree

underwater

Magic forest

Being is change

Being is change. We are but a return
drawn to the source, on loan,
with rooted feelings,
yet bemoan the ever floating self.
We burn

all bridges to the past, a past that dies,
as we advance, grow high
and long for skies.
Grasping to fly
leads to eternal quest.
We search for heaven,
struggling alone to reach the stars,
Are they but stone?

Preserve and save as trees
that fiercely guard their sap
sending it up in vigorous dreams,
branched out, forever rising
in green wide worlds.
Yet down below,
they strongly know the earth.
They hold it dear, by rooting underground,
their place of birth.

When storms unleash,
all dreams are blown apart.
A gust of wind, a desperate beating heart,
extinguished light, we all foresee the fall.
A brought down tree, the silence after all…

Yet deep below the new world germinates,
though still concealed and only to be guessed.
Being is change, it does not terminate
forgotten faces, flames that have blown out.

The stricken tree keeps growing heavenwards,
the heart aims for the stars,
to lighten what is stone.

Prayers for Peace

A Native American Prayer for Peace

O Great Spirit of our Ancestors...
Give us the wisdom to teach our children to love,
to respect, and to be kind toeach other
so that they may grow with peace in mind.
Let us learn to share all the good things
that you providefor us on this Earth.


A Christian Prayer for Peace

But I say to you that hear, love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.


A Muslim Prayer for Peace

In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful.
Praise be to the Lord of the Universe
who has created us and made us into tribes and nations
that we may know each other,
not that we may despise each other.


A Jewish Prayer for Peace

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
that we may walk the paths of the Most High.
And we shall be a tour swords into plow shares,
and our spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.
Neither shall they learn war anymore.
And none shall be afraid.



A Buddhist Prayer for Peace

May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings
of body and mind quickly be freed from their illness.
May those frightened cease to be afraid,
and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power,
and may people think of befriending one another.



A Hindu Prayer for Peace

O God, lead us from the unreal to the real.
O God, lead us from darkness to light.
O God, lead us from death to immortality.
Shanti, Shanti,Shanti unto all.



A Jainist Prayer for Peace

Do not injure any living being.
This is the eternal, perennial, and unalterable way of spiritual life.
Forgive do I all creatures, and let all creatures forgive me.
Unto all have I amity, and unto none enmity.


A Baha'i Prayer for Peace

Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity,...
be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness
and a home to the stranger.
Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light
unto the feet of the erring.
Be a breath of life to the body of humankind,
a dew to the soil of the human heart,
and a fruit upon the tree of humility.


A Sikh Prayer for Peace

We attain God when we love,
and only that victory endures in consequences
of which no one is defeated.


A Zoroastrian Prayer for Peace

We pray to God to eradicate all the misery in the world:
that understanding triumph over ignorance,
that generosity triumph over indifference,
that trust triumph over contempt,
and that truth triumph over falsehood.


A Shinto Prayer for Peace

Although all living across the ocean surrounding us,
I believe all are our brothers and sisters.
Why are there constant troubles in this world?
Why do winds and waves rise in the oceans surrounding us?
I only earnestly wish that the wind will soon puff away
all the clouds which are hanging over the tops of mountains.

When we see we are growing old

It is there, in the strong light, when we see
we are growing old.

Loneliness is a glance over a darkening lake.
Let's play kiss chase.

I send my looks deep into the willow tree.
Grope me there. I am your Snow-white.

Break my cold lips into tiny sunsets
cups of pale moonlight, silent waterbirds.

Give me a second chance. I will ride
your swan, its feathers the fluff of dreams.

I am naturally lonely. I cannot stop
fondle you in the darkness.

Draw me a water lily in the misty water,
a shell between my lips, pearls in my eyes.

Fly away I say,
when everything turns white.

We, the settlers

We, the settlers, trekking behind
the covered wagons of time, rattle the hours
in pockets of loose moments.

that can hold only so much in a day. We want more
for next week, next year, always in search
of the wild land of permanence.

Wheels rock, moods swing in the bandwagons
to success. Hands accelerate
to build faster, sooner, just in time
at the speed of the ticking clock.

Years, stubborn as mules, stand firm
against time-wasters. None can afford losing days.
Dawn chases the light down to dusk.

We lie with the horses who race the sun
but sink to their knees in the darkness.

At night, moribund in our cardboard homes,
we guess another existence, where we move
to a different light, sense contrary feelings,
thrive on unheard language.

My Daughters

One leaves early in the morning,

with the clickety-clack sound
of her stilettos, size seven,
the other stays in bed, next to
her glass of water, mars bars
and world music cd’s. I hear
but hardly see them. Their lives
are evident by signs they pass:
food gone from the fridge, a briefly
switched on tv, a phone ringing,
A brush with a door, a rush of wind,
remove their traces, but not
the heady vanilla-jasmine scent,

the crumbs of burnt toast,
scattered letters from the dole office.

Leda

From an undying swan
you come to the blush
of her flesh. The carmine throw
that spreads through dark space
is what is left of stillness.
Passion hangs open in air
winging towards white breasts
still silence struck
by mute lips

The Native American

Silent runes run
through his face,
the latitudes
and longitudes of history,

shed oblique shades
at limitations between East and West.

Opaque, guilt-ridden lines
redeem the fools and innocents
of Aztec gold,

remind the sacrifice
of ancient temples.

Old Navajo Games

Spider Woman taught string games
to keep thoughts in order, yet
only in winter, when spiders sleep,
or else will she tie your eyes shut.

You will learn about the night sky,
concentrate on star clusters, find planets
in your weaving patterns:
the earth is your mother, the sky your father.

Star pinching the pattern to follow:
Female Arrowhead,Big Snake, Lightning, Cloud.
Weave in the sacred four colours:
white for dawn, blue for the day,
yellow for twilight, black for the night.

Weave on child, weave the universe in motion,
play your string games, your sand games
in perpetual regeneration.

Breathe child, breathe
the sacred act of breathing!
The Holy Wind is in all the living,
nothing exists in isolation.
You long for he good and the evil,
the natural and supernatural in balance,
connectivity to all living things.

Followthe stars’ constellations,
Scorpio, Cassiopeia, The Pleiades,
Aldebaran, Canis Major, Ursa Major,
Sword of Orionthey all touch your body,
each one its part assigned,
filling the space of your transitory nature.

Learn them, chant them, weave them
into your memory!They will remind you
how to live your life,
not the emotionally overpowering,
the materially oriented,
the spiritually depleted.

Seek your escape
from the fast paced world!
Walk in beauty, not the outward appearance
but order, pleasantness, everything that lifts you.
Reach an old age
by livingin harmony with the universe.

Breathe, child, breathe
the holy act of breathing! On breathing,
the powerful wind will enter.
Fingerprints and toe prints are its signals.
The whorls at the tips of your toes
hold you to the Earth.
Those on your fingertips
hold you to the Sky. This wind carries thought
at conception.
When it ceases to blow inside you,
you become speechless.

Draw your string figures, child,
move and complete them
until Spider Woman will help to dissolve all.

Silly poem

I wish you were a phosphorous fish
alight for me and shining
with sparkles, slightly feverish
of reddish hue. While dining

on you, I’ll only taste the softer part
and leave the bones declining
to eat you whole, only your heart
I‘ll keep for redesigning.

I’ll use my many skills and, yup,
make sketches, stitch some lining,
create a circle, halfway up,
a face that is aligning

and when it’s ready and a whole
I call it ducky duckling.
I fluff it up and make it droll
and use it as my plaything...

Death loves his game

Death loves his game.
We play and bet with him.
When we are winning and his
chance seems dim,
he rolls the dice
and takes all in a whim.

Prelude

Sing me your own unique music
and play me the sounds
of silence,
that silence that must be deserved:
repetitive notes of intensity
in all the spheres
of being and becoming.
Change consciousness through
the inner nature of acoustics
unheard of.
Seduce my mind with your harmonies,
and I will be yours.
Easily I succumb to you
entering into the immanence
of your sound,
the touch of your spirit.
Seek out my soul just by listening
and I will be yours
forever.

Your picture

I paint you with the greenness of gardens
and the silent blue of skies,
mix in silver dew from the hedgerows,
put the sunrise in you eyes.

I keep you safe in my wardrobe
of never changing time
wrapped in white silken bedsheets
scented with lemon and lime.

I glaze you with moonlight and sparkle
from the stars above the town
and hang you up in my bedroom
for no one but me to own.

Monkey puzzle

So tired from his bars his eyes,
that nothing more can crowd into his mind.
He feels as though a hundred bars give rise
to many more to bar the world behind.

He paces up and down, his wrinkly face
stares haughty. On his nose two pinkish stripes
are painted expertly which gives him grace
not to deflect his manners, when he swipes

his hairy arms. His hands rattle the bars
and try to prise them open in a rage,
that lies within his eyes like hidden scars
and flares whenever he is taking stage

but quickly dies. He sits, inspects his thumb,
pees in the sand and shows his red behind.
He turns his back to all, up with his bum,
defiantly he slowly passes wind.



Behind Bars


He sent shudders out around them.
His face was wrinkled and thin.
His nose had a pink and white stripe
and his arms hit the bars with a swipe

to reach out of the gaps with his hands
that were hairy and long and he showed
a big yawn and his sharp yellow teeth
looked a threat to all those beneath

his tall cage, where he stood and peered down,
where he jumped and swung high from the ropes,
where he fell to the ground with a bang,
where he grinned with a glistening fang,

where he crouched and inspected his bum,
where he scratched it and peed through the bars,
where his rage lived and died and his mind
since long time had meekly resigned.

You need good eyes

You need good eyes
to say your good-byes
if you’ve loved someone
on a long summer’s day,
the image still sharp, will stay

even when things are done,
when the moment arrives,
when the dive of the light
hit’s the eye and you know
something is at its end and gone by

like a river floats past
and the wind howls over the land.
You need good eyes
to say your good-byes
to understand that an end
needs tears to close at last.

Sleeping with the Roots?

We see a flower, a leaf, and a fruit
that only shows the time but not the word.
From darkness rises morning like a bird
that sings a song that’s tainted by dispute

of people who are dead and strengthen earth.
What do we know of them and how they feel?
For long now they are used to it and seal
their secret message to their sandy berth.

The question is: are they content
or do they urge upwards to all the living
united in a scream to apprehend?

Are they the masters sleeping with the roots
and leave to us only what surplus is,
this in between the silence and a kiss?

Cloud Chase

I am plunged , head on, into the void
until only a wisp of the moon
remains.
Wrapped up to the chin in my duvet, I fly
except for one eye that I left
in a flurry. I lift

the other one towards the black. My ears
host the ethereal winds. Sky beasts
float past and come back. They boast
star-studded skins, wing their way up and wink .
At the blink of an eye they’re snapped up

by the moon who’s approaching face on,
now in at the chase, a lunatic to get me;
he hurls ice crystals down my neck.
I hold tight to my bed, take spirals,
cut bends, fluff up clouds,
the cirrus, the cumulus, the stratus.

My neck cricks and aches, my eye
scrunches and blinks when I follow
the leaps of the silver-lined lambs
pursued by an opaline moon.
How they huddle and hunch
on bright buttercup hills!

When the noise of the rain fills my ears,
brings me down with my bed in a crunch.
I open my eyes and synchronise them
to the wet.

Shatter the dark

Elaine cannot wait for the chance
with Bonnie, her dog, slipping out to the park
beyond where the daffodils grow,
flashing stars that shatter the dark.

Around the corner, a park bench.
Back home, in the foul-smelling kitchen, her mum.
On each page of her memory, the invisible scrawl
of screams, Daddy’s smacks, a shove and a slam.

In her mind still an echo, where misery spreads,
she sees him approaching, and how
he looks over his shoulder, pulls up beside her.
She says hi with her very best smile.

The dog is snarling at him.
He kicks Bonnie aside making puppy-dog-eyes at her.
He calls her, in whispers, my darling,
when he is stroking her arms, legs, her thighs.

Overwhelmed by the smell of her hair
he sits closer, his hand tight on her shoulder.
She tunes in to his honey-combed voice,
while his other hand’s getting bolder.

He’s swiftly unzipping his fly,
as he follows her eyes, how she’s shyly in wonder
at the startle of red, at the flower, he tells her,
that will grow just by looking at it.

"Just look," he says. "Keep on looking!"

Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Born from the ocean, out of foam she rose:
the loveliest face, her hair orange and lime,
as fragrant as the sea winds that expose
endless perfection at the source of time.

Whatever loved her, she loved back again,
she, whom the open sea would not contain.
It spilled her, rapt, onto the Cyprian shore
for her to be adored and to adore.

When we are living in the void of heaven

When we are living in the void of heaven,
all definitions will have changed and died.
There are no questions. What there once has been
is but a dream in an outlasting night.

We are the atoms gleaming throughout space
along with stars, the moons and racing planets.
There we belong without the need to place
gods on pedestals, or snatch worldly assets.

We float through strings of music in the ether,
the vibrant tunes that once had been ideas,
the quests and aims that held mankind together.
Those meanings have now wholly disappeared.

We are the sound before a voice has spoken,
a thought asleep before it has been woken

Fame

(I wrote two versions: one in English, one in German)

Fame

From constant longing rises
the real occurrence like fountains
timely and quivering falling.
But then in the deep lies the glitter,
our sprinkled and scattered feelings
dispersed in the dancing tears.

Throwing the coins of abandon
ruffles the water for moments
and circles fade out into smoothness.
Yet strong stays the value in coinage
of bargains, of cost and of waste,
a gloss in the depth of the hours,
a toss with the luck of an instant.


Ruhm

Aus endlosem Sehnen ersteigen
unsre Tage wie aus Fontaenen,
zeitig und zitternd zerfallend.
Aber dort in der Tiefe liegt Glanz;
unsre sonst so versteckten Gefuehle
verspruehen im Traenentanz.

Ein Wurf der gewerteten Muenzen
kraeuselt das Wasser nur wenig
und Kreise zerfallen in Glaette.
Doch hart bleibt die Waehrung bestehen
im Kaufen, in Preis und Verschwendung,
ein Schein in der Tiefe der Stunden,
Lotterie mit dem Glueck eines Moments.

Heaven knows purple:
colour between colour it moves
between reds and blues, blushes
a lover’s heart, tinges a cardinal’s robe,
lavishes emperor’s might
yet cries out in blood.

Heaven knows purple, Jesus wore it,
Tyrian Royal purple, God’s colour,
first found in sea creatures
from the Holy Land.

Before spring,
after the rise of the dog star,
shells were caught from the deep,
then boiled in a leaden vessel.
Wool drenched in its dyes
laid out after sunrise, soaked up
the slow sunbeams
changing the colour
from a light to deep green,
fading to sea green then blue
until a purple remained.

Heaven knows why
this colour purple plays on the mind.
It is the colour of burning smack
on silver foil. Rising like incense
it purples prose, passages and patches,
erodes the greenbelts of style.

High
in a haze, the purple moon
not to appear over the top
disguises in ivory.

The Ghosts who pined for kisses

From where I stand I see their silent-eyed
and ghost-like faces through the stained-glass panes
staring at me, a look that fades and wanes
by memory held, by reasoning denied.

I knew about the sisters full of life
who all those years had lived here long ago,
whose parents sheltered them from pain and woe
and any man out there to find a wife.

No suitor was encouraged in pursuit
or enter gardens where the roses grew
in long straight rows, no men who ever knew
their inner garden with their secret fruit.

Still in old age they could be seen about
ripened , white-haired, with aching backs bent low,
their lives construed, and with a fading glow
their former beauty prone to peter out.

One day in May, they finally walked out
and side by side they left, as if one whole.
A tremor in the landscape of their soul
that, as they died, blew all the candles out.

So many nights in May I see them still
across the window, searching for the passion
they never found in life. I feel the chill
and shiver at their faces turning ashen.

I light a candle , pray for both their souls,
their sense of loss for what they had been missing:
the love of men, the laughter of a child,
the scent of passion in the thrall of kissing.

You in advance

You in advance, lost lover,
never arriving to all those songs
I rehearsed in the morning.
The days, I planned them for you, the great
swinging landscapes, breath-holding
forests in the lit-up dawn, unsuspected
turns in the road, sunsets over the garden wall.
No longer can I discern you.
I walk the garden alone,
where we once played, full of hope:
still the rose-entwined porch, a door ajar,
the path you had just walked
towards me. Why
is the pond still reeling from you?
It throws back, startled, my too-sudden image.
The green grass so soft to my feet,
oh how gentle the touch! Who knows
whether this same bird, alone,
this evening, has sung for us both?

If energy be the soul of love

If energy be the soul of love, give it to
our world. Why should the lovers seek, where
currents of the low and high waves go? Who
listens to their feelings, measures change of air?

How to breathe air to fill a heart with skies
intent on echoes of the cosmic rays?
Transparency tricks only human eyes,
a lack of words still messages conveys.

Meanwhile the planets and the stars above
evolve within the galaxies of space
in flux and change, as love changes from love,
as oceans alternate by tidal race.

Stones turn to fire melting in the blaze
like smiles will melt a dark and stony face.

Bluebell Wood

Moonstruck

Moon-struck


Green waters lapping in eternal sound
engulfed a bay of sunlit tranquil shore.
A soft warm wind scattered the scudding clouds
turned playfully and mockingly to hound
the sun, exposing Selene's body more and more
as sunlight it was all that Selene wore.

Her strong white hands were holding back the reins
to pull Poseidon's horses and restrain
the lashing tide, the flashing white of manes,
the galloping of waves in her domain.

And yet in crashing splendour they would die
and sigh as they retreat to sink beneath
receptive sands as smooth as velvet fleece
leaving a shimmering circle, like an eye.

The beauty and the wildness of the sphere
disturbs my thoughts, so calm before and clear;
when distances perturbed, and out of order
all seeps into my sleep, where on and on it seems
the waters break and crash against the border
of many shaken and disturbing dreams.

Selena was Moon Goddess and daughter of Hyperion and Theia. She is a favourite of many poets. A moonlight night brings mixed feelings, the sweetness and bitterness of romance. It is said that Selena’s moon rays fall upon sleeping mortals as her kisses fell upon her many lovers. She is also called LUNA. She was usually represented as a woman with a crescent moon on her head driving a two-horse chariot. As LUNA she had temples at Rome on the Aventine and Palatine hills

This pale Picture that was our House

Cnothing remains, nothing stays but in the memory until our eyes close)

Rain-washed, paint-brushed
so many times crimson ivy bloom through
the creases in autumn. Tough winds
of winter storms lashing its pebble-dashed
spiderweb-embroidered face
but then again copper-seared lustre
from long afternoons and later,
lamp-lit windows in the dark blue -

When the removal van came
we did not talk to the men who carried
our things, tied and packed
for a future in tatters.
What’s left is burnt.

Bonfires went for weeks, the smoke
upsetting our neighbours.
Now we stoop over, we unpick
the burnt knots of memory
to gnaw on in our weeping hunger.
A snatch of blue in the mind.
Eyes that still fill.

For when a Man is dead

For when a man is dead
the truth of him fades out
in time, in space.
A disappearing smoke
carries his face,
evaporates his dreams,
but for his lingering heart,
still earthbound here to stay
in aching lives,
within an mournful world,
within a net of time
of water, skies and rain.

Yet heart is lifting
under a throbbing pain,
for time is not enough,
it longs for space
to erase sadness,
tends climbing like a rose,
star flower that outgrows
the last traces of absence.

Land, Sky and the red Moon

Land stretches out writhing in agony,
her valleys bent in pain, contracting rivers
swell into pallid seas, non ending shivers
bring down the sky onto his heavenly knees.

Does he cry out and sigh when falling hard
and heavily onto her naked hills? He moans
when entering her seas, with lover’s skill
he touches cities, smoothes painful graveyards.

From the horizon sky plucks the red moon
To lend a midwife’s hand and raise new hope.
The moon on his ascend wipes blood away
on his descend brings Land and Sky in tune.

Death of A Father

For years now he’d been telling me
it never was too late to do the things
that must be done before the silver fish
lay frozen between lake and sky,
in blue ice midway between past and future,
his wintry sorrow and defrosting spring.

To ease my loneliness I planted snowdrops
on my father’s grave. I gave him less:
not the confession that I heard him sing
in the last candle light I lit for him.
I knew the end and yet when it arrived
I pinched the flower heads as if to send
my future back and throw away my spring

through the years

Lost in the misty heavens

Lost in the misty heavens of my life
I stand in wonder: oh the stars, the moon,
the ebb and flow of tides, sun's rise
and its so sure descend! Soo soon
I will go on as well. Left only time
of silence where the swell
of void expands.The universe grows wider,
I've been told,
and fast and faster will black energy
push matter forth into the blackest hole.

Does the same order make the high and low
tide alternate within my darkblue soul?
My longing rises, falls, attunes
to its remotest waves. Whatever craves
smoothes out at shore and eases out
in sands of now and past
adrift through firmaments.

Out of Body
I sleep as the Egyptians died,
my hands abreast
and folded in a way
a mummy might have guessed
her soul to leave for afterlife.

But I don’t travel far, as life
still holds me back.
The thread a-stretch I rise
to where my floating self
can catch, while looking down, a glance.
I see my empty shape, advance
up in the room
where, as in trance, I swirl
and swoon, a flapping bird,
no longer navigating by the stars,
the moon.

I bear down like a stone, as if
my heart beats me
into submission, pulls
the strings of hard earned life
and takes me back, assuring
that sleep will drown and wipe
all airborne memory.

The absence of a female god...

The absence of a female God

The absence of a female god
in western religious beliefs
has harmed us. We are missing:

the soft arms
of a Mother holding us,
soothing us, protecting us.

the warmth of her smile,
when her hand is stroking the soul’s
white wings,

her voice lifting us beyond the cruel earth.
Nothing like her
to stem the flood of tears.

No Mary ever reached higher than the clouds.
Her son always shivers with loneliness.
His strict father on the throne
stares past him, leafing
absent-mindedly though the book
of judgement.

Egyptian Scarab

Hitherto the blue green beetle
lulled into sleep underground
brought out of the deep
from a lump
by the heat of the rolling sun.

Unheard sounds
in grave mode night and day
vanished in the flood
of aftermath light.

There in the City of Stones,
the magic amulets stuck to her chest,
she lay, winged-scarab-protected.
No locked door but royal seals
safeguarded the lump.

"O my heart which I received from my mother,
my heart of my different ages,
do not stand as a witness against me!"

Blue green heart-scarabs
clung to her breasts
in turquoise and alabaster,
glazed notes and echoes
weighing against the feather of truth
gleamed and smoothed her way
into the circleof rebirth and death.

Hitherto dreams became sheen
brought by the gods
from a lump.

Carnival

Carneval

Carnival

Carnival in Nice

Sea breeze and scent of flowers,
a mimosa tree was hacked to death
to pleasure people, branches flew
into the crowds from flower laden carriers
where beauties danced,
where sparkles rose to the night black sky,
where faces of gigantic dragons
airily flew by. And silver bands,
confetti filled the night.
While in the multicoloured light
melodies were enhanced and died.

Carnival in Nice

Carneval in Nice 2006

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