Your look from afar

A safe desire

Behind a veil of wanting

you don’t see, you imagine

me, not as me

but as a part of yourself

I have to leave

before you come closer

Break the spell

and I’ll turn real

There’s sadness in that step
and fear in that breath
but this smile is fixed
over clenched teeth, containing
rusted rumination.

Hold this hand
to stop that tread
which crosses the road
with haste, chasing
the edge of the pavement.

a pat seeks the head
like a hammer the nail
and a hug holds more death
than a coffin in February
and a song plays, over and over
and the space between keys
echoes the voice
of an immortal death

It’s the season of sickness.
The ruminant roars,
disarms me with hunger,
Feeds me

poison, contagious
violence; ****** of my
Control, spiller of
my Secret:

‘I am gross.’
Bathroom lights stare at me,
Toilet flushes betray my ears.
Only Courage,

Hanging on
the edge of a lash, leaking
with every pause of breath,
can save me.

Hologram (translated)

    Wary and full of hunger, we lie
    the rumor of Love
    with such haste
    for physicality,
    the urgency to embrace
    blurs our faces

    Reluctantly, we find
   there is truth in tenderness.
    But like former convicts
    unpracticed in honesty,
    we let it slip between the bars
    of doubt

    We’re not living we just
    flutter
    and hope to touch something real.

Hologram (origineel)

Vol van leegte liegen we
het gerucht van liefde
met zo’n smacht
naar tastbaarheid,
gezichten vervaagd
door de haast
om te omhelzen

Doch aarzelend wanneer
dichtbij, de tederheid
glipt voorbij
aan deze voormalige gevangenen,
ongeoefend in eerlijkheid
tussen tralies van twijfel

Wij leven niet, wij zweven
en hopen
iets echts aan te raken

Grab a seat, don’t take your coat off
    in your own house, I’m not staying,
    only until it clears up; if I go out now
    I will sink into the ground, You say
    as you sink into a chair - a creaking noise,
    to remind you.

    You survive on the short sugar rush
    of a Proustian coffee; the past is a gentle
    unfaithful lover
    I’ll call them. Put on your nicest voice,
    sing yourself to them.
    But you push in so many words;
    they can’’t understand.

 Fall asleep, don’t take off your coat
    in your own bed, I’m not sleeping,
    so when they ring, my phone or door,
    I can open up. I can go home, You say,
    but the blinds have been down so long
    you can’t see when it stops raining

    It hurts to see you try.

grief, a melody I composed
out of the trill in your lips
and in mine, regretting
not having kissed you alive
when you came to me, a corpse in disguise,
a costume
wearing a hero beyond saving
and I knew by the season in your eyes
and the chill in your finger tips:
through doors you thought you closed
winter came in

your encore ends
with a last arpeggio, mine

Prophets in suits spell your name across the rails

in black-and-white pictures, hung up like wet laundry

Afraid of drying, the words in your last breath climb

towards the approaching train lights.

At sunrise, I hurry to pick up the vowels, but they bite my hands,

cursing me for hoping you’ll burn

slowly, for attempting to steal your voice

so you wouldn’t die screaming

To be young with you,

(to hug with rusty elbows, screeching
beneath damp spring attire
from a hundred and seven seasons ago
to untangle the wrinkles of regret
that distorted our smiles
and rearrange our faces into hymns
for the lives we didn’t live
In the midst of it all: the comfort
of rediscovering
the shyness behind your ears)

To be young with you.

You come home on this day
and I taste the moist
of this afternoon’s snow, dying
in your hands
I won’t ask you if the cold
pressed your throat
till you breathed out
the ghosts you hid
Because I know:
you grew scales on your shoulder blades
but winter still nested
its crystals, cradling in your eyebrows
Even so, there are carols
in the shimmer between
your lashes

You are the most beautiful
when you sing

Our eyes met,
radiating – tying our mouths into
grins, full of secrets
being silently shared, like adults
like children; We are only young
when we remember how to get drunk
on the joy
of each other’s chins, spilled
from the youth
in stretching our cheeks too hard,
We are only young
when we remember we are.

He said
You talk with
roofs on our shoulders,
I know, you forgot
that brick houses
have doors.
there’s a crack,
somewhere,
but you’ve glued it with
mascara
There’s no point in roofs
if your house is already filled with water
He asked
Are you scared
if you allow it to flow
your house will turn out to be
empty?
Didn’t you know
you’re already raining all the time,,

When she breaks you
into
shards
on your skin
wrap yourself in me
I will house you
for the cold
she leaves behind
And when your arms heal
into wings
that drift back on spring wind
I will sleep
till next winter.

Waiting for a train
of life
or

Deafening steel rattling by;
sighing life into
my seasonless skirt
“Take me with you”
it seems to say
as it lingers
Yet it always returns
to cover the gravity
that tightens my calves,
that ties my heels
to the ground of the empty station

Waiting for a train
of life
or

Hugging until our bodies
break
like your voice
as it stops speaking
anything but
me

When Fear glued my hand to your sleeve,
you put us in your pocket.
We’re about to blow out that pocket-sized happiness
until we run out of breath
and our fingers turn cold

Our eyes were always
untying each other’s seatbelts
knowing the loneliness
of driving on different roads

They set fire to our houses
so we looked for the sea
to ease our burns

we jump towards

togetherness