In the parish garden behind my house
they have stacked up the benches now
from dead sunday,
then easter.
The last of the soft light
of an april day
gently grazing the young grass.
Ashes falling from a balcony,
settling on the ground in a whisper,
as if the world has unanimously decided
on stillness for today.

green cotton threads
have you switched professions?
Heres that amlodipine you asked for -
grazing my fingers,
you can explain it better than me.
Where do I end up
if I keep writing about every single one
of our encounters?

I think
I fell in love
under criss cross
red striped
skies
color against black
It wasn't cold, that night,
I was still freezing.
You didn't keep me warm,
it doesn't matter.
I can't remember what you felt like
or looked like
or how you're always right.
My head was spinning
as I fell through the shifting light
And now all day long I've been feeling sick
and nervous and
fine
and I cannot sleep thonight.

Above golden ceilings

the clouds barely touch the ground

gravel leads up to my palace now

heavy silk and marble hands

around my neck, enviably alive

in empty graves and dusty mirrors

I pretend to see myself

cinnamon and myrrh

in the suffocating loneliness

of emeralds and brass-colored bones

little shards of glass in the green of your eyes

your skin is made of sea foam

you’ve stolen from belgium’s coast

and your bed’s the only warm one

in our very empty room

in glistening steel blades,
the juices trickling
clear and sticky.
The sickness settling in -
marauderie on the cells
in collapsing,
shards of sugar and
black wine
running from
the coronary arteries
into the depths
of your lagoon soul

You are a beautiful, tragic thing,
made to be broken, made to feel weak,
your skin like pergament,
time settling under your nails like dust
on a photograph.

Our little film set

has been abandoned months ago

but we are still here

stopped acting for cameras

that won’t record anymore

the light around us turned white

and everything blurred

when the dust started setting

on our film reel

laying forgotten in the backroom

of the shut down cinema

with it’s steel roof glistening

in the late afternoon’s sun

we will never be found

encaged in our very own reality

the smallest part of heaven

we were ever granted

the days when I cannot see you stretch out like gum,
wrap themselves around me,
engulf me
in a strange and dark trance.  
when you finally come to me
on hushed friday nights
when the stillness of the city
lies thick on top of it
like a blanket,
it feels like waking up.
you take my hand
in the harsh white light of the tram,
but you will not look at me.
instead, you look down
on our intertwined fingers,
stroking my thumb with yours.
we talk about how things might be,
soon. soon.
in the dark, we kiss
until you can fall asleep.

This is the only poem I'll ever write about you.
I thought there wasn't enough time, but then it was so quick to do.
Three t-shirts. One pair of pants.
That waffle iron that you left here once, and always meant to take home -
but you never did, because who knows when the craving might hit us.

Your love is a kaleidoscope
and my head is getting dizzy
my eyes begin to water
drowning in the swirling of
emotions,
yours and mine
in a big mess of blood,
turquoise, needles,
shards of hope and pain
all intertwining
to create the vision of some
beautiful, fragile thing,
a shake of the hand away
from being broken.

in light yellow summer air

your love lies and

in it it deceases

drowns in pink

sugar-coated dawns and dew

and the heavy sighs of evening primrose

unfolding

in blue cicada nights,

hand-painted.

Blue sand beer bottled vertigo
white gauze in humid air
relentlessly, burning your throat
and your feet
all to be washed away
by the warm juice of young coconuts
and the hungry lapping of the waves
taking, taking, taking,
until there is nothing left
but a heavy heart,
and a distinct longing,
an ache that it is better to bury.

Last night you made a tentative wish
Upon a shooting star I caught for you
You closed your eyes and I
Saw sorrow shimmering in your face
Later, when we softly talked,
our voices intermingling
With the sound of falling orbs,
You told me that your wish
made you sad
Because it was not even yours to make
And you don't believe
in miracles anyway.

give me
platin bones
and
sapphire eyes
a brand new me
made out of lies

This is to you,
may you rest,
graciously
in between the dirt and the soil
and the locked windows in our ward -
did you hear me, did it help you?
Far from anyone you've loved,
a century in sea water and ashes.
Fingerprints, canulas,
I hope you're watching arabian roses bloom.
thank you for reassuring me like you did,
thank you for saying goodbye.

delicate flowers
grey on black
growing in his lungs
like sakura blossoms
in spring
ashes to ashes
a beginning to an end

You can lay in this bed,
crawl into the sunrise
between the soft rays of golden light.
You do not need to worry -
just leave your scrubs on my floor,
I'll help you pick up the pieces later.
Settle underneath my fingertips,
as you are,
with your tainted heart
and helpless dedication.
I'll watch over your dreams
so all the *****, infectious things
won't reach you.

A ****** latex glove.
The rhythmic breathing of a room full of machines
and the dim light glowing on white paper.

Is he your patient?
Well, I guess. But night shift is coming in soon.

We step out into the bright corridor.
You look at me – really look at me -
something grave in your eyes, a great expectation.

Thank you-
I interupt. Merry Christmas.
And something rising and falling and blooming and crumbling between us,
like his chest in that dim light.
A promise.

Show me everything.
For weeks I've been trying to get the words across my lips,
trying to break your clenched-teeth silence,
the stillness in us, orbiting in astral planes -
but I do try, standing in empty stairwells,
open doors and vacant rooms. If you try, I do not know.

Show me everything.
Show me that scar below your navel where they cut you open,
laid to rest these hands that take their own turn cutting. Where breathing is machinery and living is a mess of tangled lines, where stealing away is not permitted for god help us if it makes anyone feel bad. So me and you carry the pain instead.

Show me everything -
a future I can hold protected, a light in the window across the street while I stand, in darkness, surrounded by expensive plastic things. Sometimes, for a fraction of time, I see that light in your eyes, a whisper of something tiny and sacred. A promise with a living, beating heart. I try to speak, but no words will come, and when they do, time has passed us by again, alone in a stairwell, in a dark supply room, in a room of machinery and robotic breaths.

Have a good shift, then.

How can it be so painful
to never have had someone
and my eyes have been so blind
my heart so misled
that I must have seen something
in every look and every gesture
so awfully stupid
and all the while
you don´t even properly know my name.

Time has left stains
on all the things I love.
sepia,
crumpled in some dark corner
of an old cardboard box,
burdened heavy
by a smell,
familiar, sad.
consumed
like the tiny perfume bottles
on the edge
of my Oma's bathtub.
along,
vague,
a whisper of shame.

Sometimes it feels like
our love
is a sterile field
that you cannot touch,
afraid of contamination
and connection,
but I will you to,
I want you to reach out
your fingers,
graze the edges of my soul
with your ****** latex gloves,
for I'm not afraid
of the parts of you that are human,
and the parts of you that aren't safe.

your name
breaking
seams of my skull
crawl
dragging
out of my mind
my bones
itching
pulling inside out
peeling layers of skin
acid
dissolving
red to blue
hair singed
patient
patience
disease
you

I can forgive.
If that is what you want me to do -
if that is what you need.
I'm full of forgiveness for you already,
full of a gentle compassion,
of knowing we are both stuck,
and haven't been ready,
and maybe still aren't.

I loved you at the first of dawns,
the first of lights,
when in damp, green darkness
a first of seeds cracked open
by the incredidle warmth of -

I loved you at the first of noises,
when, fallen from the sky,
something pure was ripped open
and forever spoilt.
a scream the birth of pain,

and when, in the night you came alive
blood started flowing through your veins like
the waters licking the earth
hungrily.

I love you now,
it's crooked limbs
stretched eternally onward like gum,
a hummingbird's golden lustre in stasis.

When I silently love you tomorrow,
and all of the embers
have turned brittle like bone dust,
between the falling stars
into the great sea,
in a constellation will whisper
the lovers and the sun.

They way your spine curves under my fingertips,
the change of tone in your voice when you're joking,
an invisible smile
mirroring in your eyes,
floating,
like fog over water at dawn.

Walking in Flanders is
paper poppies against grey
rabbit and cherries
dancing elephants
a cold long room.
People that are not, anymore.
Your green eyes on mine
but always
in a grand display of platonism,
if only for ourselves.