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Last Arpeggios Jan 2015
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.
Last Arpeggios Jul 2022
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
Last Arpeggios Oct 2016
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.
written October 2016
Last Arpeggios May 2017
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.
anxiety
Last Arpeggios Oct 2016
Leave then,
but leave them behind

You say,
Wrapping your arms around
the waste, protecting
a pile of photographs

The weight would
break my body

I say,
Turning my back to
this Burden you’ve built
on the floor of our house

You’re hoarding memories,
but you do not ask Me

To stay,
Searching through the pile
for a shadow. The floor creaks.

If you move it may crumble.

(Can you still breathe?
)
written August 2016
Last Arpeggios Jan 2015
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
Last Arpeggios Oct 2014
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
Last Arpeggios May 2014
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
Last Arpeggios Apr 2013
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
Last Arpeggios Apr 2014
These days,

streets are slippery ­­– ­sleet pushes people into shanties

always after midnight; the alarm

sets itself,

conditioned to the sound of the door

closing, while ticking off the leaves

on the doorstep.

(Seems like autumn begged their boots to stay.)

The floor groans

under the weight of winter

in their breath

As if caterpillars in lands without spring

came in, hoping

to be pinned to the walls
Last Arpeggios Apr 2013
She kills the wolves
mutilating their howls
into silent smiles

but they always leave claw marks
on her wrists
Last Arpeggios Oct 2013
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.
Last Arpeggios Mar 2017
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
Last Arpeggios Mar 2015
You evolve and
meteorites crush
to dust on her hip,
sweep, before
she can make chalk
and spell In Memoriam

Every move you rip
a little further
dispose of her child’s body
break out of her shell
as something alien
(for her survival)
Last Arpeggios Jan 2014
Sleeping
in the lap of a *****
where wind promises
threats of silence,
kindly attracting my hair
to the steep
abyss:
A life-long longing
to fall into
a basin of nothing.

My feet blister, bragging
wounds of having walked
-liars.
they’re just grazes
from the bricks in my boots,
sculpting my body on the edge.
Without wind
I could climb bare-feet
but I’m out of breath
and the corners of my eyes
are already falling
down
Last Arpeggios Mar 2014
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.
Last Arpeggios Jul 2022
Born from silence
a primordial motif
in my chest,
dragged heartbeats
evolving
into slow burning noise.
I’d like to give you
This sound wave
dragging my heart
without pause,
ever growing
unless contained in your hands
Last Arpeggios Apr 2013
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
Last Arpeggios Dec 2014
I hesitate past windows,
their luminance wakes up latent memories
of dim-lit rooms and sweet fragrances
dripping off people’s mouths, the decadence of being
logically happy; these silhouettes that I breathe warmly
fade in the relentless cold.
The lack of compassion, a strange comfort
from the World in a black robe,
She is the Widow at a mass funeral;
To die would simply be
to accept
her annual invitation to self-pity
Last Arpeggios Apr 2013
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.
Last Arpeggios Jun 2014
Dislocated fingers

mold figures in the dust

on old photographs, discolored

by setting suns

Their edges melt; dripping memories

that burn your knuckles

until you open your fists

and he slips from your hands.

like a film, unwinding

into fragmentary pictures

in your mind,

the only place he still exists
Last Arpeggios Dec 2013
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
Last Arpeggios Aug 2013
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,,

— The End —