I know birds and bees
And magnificent trees
I have seen them on TV

I have climbed mountains
Despite my fear of heights
And have also mastered digital tides

There is nothing I don’t know
And nowhere I can’t go
There is nothing I need
Besides my 24/7 live feed

I have met some women
The greatest ones I’ve ever seen
Sitting inside my computer screen

And my conversations are special
Intelligent and profound
Now that I don’t need to make a sound

There is nothing left to lose
And everything left to gain
There is nothing left untold
In my digital utopian world

I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons

That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had

At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin

But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality

Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench

I guess I’ve been searching
For the meaning of life
In all the wrong ways
And in the wrong place

I delved into the deep secrets
Of lottery tickets
Hoping that a circle or three
Would reveal life’s mystery

Next up was a casino
Where I went straight for roulette
And found luck almost upon me
Yet the little  ball changed to forty-three

Then I soon discovered
That despite my hopes and prayers
That after my game of Blackjack
About life I still knew jack

So now I’ve come to realize
That life may be a lottery
But that doesn’t mean a gambling spree
Will reveal life’s meaning or mystery

When money dictates morals
Politicians try to pacify poverty
By keeping the poor passive

When money dictates morals
Politicians try to pacify the rich
By reducing politics to a puppet theatre

Silently the social media hero strikes again
The swift and ruthless keyboard warrior
Crushing political correctness
Debunking liberal drivel
Overpowering the opinions of the obsolete

He grows and grows
With every post
And tweets make him feel
Like the torrent of thoroughness
Raging through a landscape
That needs to be cleansed

Outside lies a hostile world
With prying, judging eyes
Online, a world of possibilities
Where virtual battle cries
Are the prelude of a rally
Between the devoid and the deluded

But through his own gaze
Focused on the reflection
On the computer screen
A social media hero rises
While outside, the world passes him by

I spy with my little eye
Everyone and all
The faintest smile
The subtlest sign
Everything strange and worrying
And all that is normal
Perhaps too normal

And don’t feel scared
It’s in your best interest
That wicked smiles
And dangerous signs
And everything strange and worrying
Is brought under attention
Of people you can trust

And don’t ask yourself
Who is watching the watchmen
With wicked ways
And subtle methods
It’s better to sit and relax
And act normal
But not too normal

Strangers looking in my direction
Because I am strange to them
Their hawkish hostility
Meets with my awkward awareness

I clutch on to my pride
One of the few possessions I have left
My dignity is long gone
I feel bare on the road to nowhere

My feelings of hope
Have been pushed aside by hunger
The never ending guilt
And the gloomy sense of senselessness

We used to be alike
United in our pursuit of happiness
Once a human being, now a beggar
Bound to be a burden

From citizen to refugee
I washed up on these shores
Once a human being, now a stranger
To my hawkish, hostile hosts

In the long run, we are all dead
She said
So we decided to make
Tonight’s passionate embrace
About the acceptance of mortality
The celebration of fatality
The moral neutralisation of infidelity
All the more reason
To get it on
And whether wrong or right
To use this night
To be entangled
You and I

Quacking ducks
Dung throwers
Degenerate, opinionate

No plea for serenity
No chance for reverence
Only less politeness

Survival of the fittest
Hegemony of the crudest
Twitter for the *****

I’ve always been intimidated
By the man in the mirror
With his cocky face and his self-assured grin

I’ve always been imitated
By the man in the mirror
With his worried sigh and his eyes full of doubt

People took pictures of each other
Just to prove that they loved one another
Just to prove that they really existed

People take pictures of themselves
Just to prove that they’re happy with themselves
Just to prove that they’re really existing

So they filter their faults, like their Instagram photos
And they summarize all that is good in a sentence or two
And they practice their smiles as if it is worthwhile
To try to like life just to get a few likes

And the only thing that is left to be real
Are the things that are real and that people feel
They shouldn’t be sharing, thinking it’s scary
To actually share what they feel is too real

It might not be the thing
You’ve come to associate me with
This elegant display
As I steadily move forward
Do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
I take my time for things I like
As I enjoy the things that slowly pass by
Life’s too short and too fast alike
And I’m just a helpless little pawn
But do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
As you come to see me
As someone who values life
And takes things as they come
Slowly and gently
Like the turtle’s steps

I didn’t vote, because I didn’t care
And it didn’t matter anyway
A pawn I was, a silly ant
My vote was mine to throw away

And thus ended election day
With the grave result for all to see
By throwing away my precious vote
I too instigated the second-rate democracy

It’s contagious
And outrageous  
Not very courteous
And quite ferocious
It is ridiculous
To call me pretentious
And  it’s very conspicuous  
That I am, au contraire, extraordinaire

What happened to the dandies
Those gentlemen of the grandest Culture
Destroyers of dreaded boundaries
Mockers of meaningless morality
Inquisitors of a profound lack of imagination
Guardians of good taste
Messengers of modernity

What happened to those 19th century hipsters
Who so gracefully dissected Society
And whose wit and wisdom
Shook the foundations
Of mainstream hypocrisy
Of inept intellectualism
And lamentable lies

We are in dire need of retrieving
The lost art of being a dandy
To shake the foundations once more
And to revoke the righteous rage
Of the cultural creed
To set society aflame
With wit and wisdom

All things considered
I’m not too unhappy
With this underdog life
Watching from the shadows
How other people
Who consider themselves
To be happier
**** up
Time after time

It took me 1 year to make it happen
To utter the words inside my head
And present myself as a must to be read

It took me 12 months to get my act together
To turn potential into evidence
Of my poetic competence

It took me 52 weeks to have and to hold
To give myself to the rhythmical art
And become a master of the heart

It took me 365 days to tame the passions
And use them however I please
To cure heartache with lyrical remedies

It took me 8760 hours to go up and down
And invite feelings of hesitation
To thwart my blooming resignation

It took me 525.6000 minutes to realise
That admiration will never suffice
As long as I ignore my own advice

That it might take 31.536.000 seconds to make a big change
But that sometimes all it takes is a second or five
To make a difference in someone’s life

For the sake of art or the sake of it
I went back to the seaside
With seagulls screaming in my ears
And a cocktail of cold water and sticky sand
Clutching between my toes
And a boulevard filled with joy
Ecstatic children revisiting the magic
Of blue sea and blue skies

And the beaches are full of women
Hoping the tan will convince their men
To rekindle the spark
Of what was once, and how and when
Holidays like these meant everything to them
While ships pass by like silent witnesses
As time slides and slips away
Sometimes it is truly better on holiday

Most say that Narcissus
Was punished by the Gods
The moment he fell in love
With the man in the water
Yet I don’t feel pity
But gnawing jealousy
Knowing that he
Can control the subject of his love

As I’m standing in the spotlight
I see look-alikes swiftly passing by
But none of them pull off
That red dress like you do

And I follow very thorough
Each and every one in my mind
But all roads lead to home
Where rooms are filled with memories

You’ve always had me caught
Between the fire and your vicious sensuality
Playful debauchery
I’d never would have thought
That everything would end up in this way

As you take me by the hand
And lead me down memory lane
A love in black and white
With hints of perfume in the air

You hold on to the leading role
Despite the fact that you’re long gone
But no-one would be able
To replace this femme fatale anyway

With passion and despair
You always lured me into petty ambiguity
Mental disparity
If only I had said
That life would stop being the same

Golden sun on golden hair
The kind of girl you can follow
By the trail of broken hearts
And promises of passion
Fashionable fury
Magnificent monster
Devouring life
Devoted to lust
Desiring love

In my head I saw the cohort
Of lovers, past, present and future
Walking meekly by
Cherishing the whole lot
From first eye contact
To first touch
And even the crush
The smack on the head
That useless feeling of feeling useless

It’s hard not to make the same mistake
Even in a place so mundane
As you set a place like this
Ferociously on fire
Burning and battering
Heat and heart
Mesmerizing mess
Deviously destructing

The girl at the bus station
Promising a journey you’ll regret
And a morning after to forget
Sentimental slur
Like only a fool could feel
Heading in heart first
Ending up endangered
Feelings rearranged
Promises kept

The girl at the bus station
You know she’ll break your heart
And still you get aboard
Because life’s too short
Not to give in to sin
Sensual sacrificing
Dare to wear your heart
On a sleeve
Only to have it thrown away

So she transformed
From the girl at the bus station
Into the girl from that one memory
Of that horrible movie
And that passionate play
Hoping that it all
Proves to be a prequel
Of the story of a lifetime
About a girl at the bus station
And a fool who came to stay

I go about things the English way
With careful consideration
And euphoric euphemisms
Ever so polite on the outside
While internal I’m feeling infernal
And the only reason why I can
Is because I’m a ****** English gentleman

Solitary man
Always in good company
Of wonderful women
And Gainsbourgian groove
C’est bon chic bon genre
And rudimental rock at the same time
Crude cool
Love’s fool

Passion and percussion
Lust and lavish beats
Charming chansons
And seductive songs
Melody’s magnetic melodies
Du Jane B & Initials BB
A celebration of beauty

Monsieur Gainsbourg
T’es magnifique
Authentique
Flegmatique
Channeling what it means
To be obscenely genial
Fericiously cordial
What it means to live life
As If there’s only one day left
Toujours
Monsieur Gainsbourg

The first time I visited the freak show
I nearly burst into tears
It wasn’t because of the cruelty of it all
It wasn’t because of their cruel deformities
It wasn’t even guilt, not even a bit
It wasn’t about the greed from the stupid ***
Who ran the freak show

I burst into tears because I immediately understood
That the roles were reversed
And that we were the freaks
We, the cowards, who hide our deformities
And denounce our guilt as useless morality
And clutch onto greed and a hunger for entertainment
While every day we ourselves star in the freak’s parade

And the freaks themselves they are not moved
By my dreaded revelations
For them the truth was always pure and simple
Bonded by their deformities
They understand kinship and compassion
As they clutch on to each other
And the parade of freaks moves past them once more

I know a man
Who loves to hear himself roar
Because he believes a man becomes a Man
Not through subtlety but through force
That a man becomes interesting
When he’s seen and heard
So he moves heaven and earth
To be seen and to be heard

The importance of being important
Is the core value in his life
The pillar of his existence
The creed that defines his strive
The struggle of man to become Man
And to be the center of the earth
A life defined by importance
To be seen and to be heard

To perpetually please the vanity of a has-been
They’ve invented the ministry of leftover ideas
With leftover civil servants
Writing leftover policies
Based on leftover ideas
Ideals from the past
Become today’s secondhand *******
Presented as pillars
Of a bright and better future
When what we really get
Is the obsolete creating the obnoxious
A shady cabinet
With the allure of a shadow cabinet
With invisible MP’s
Serving an irritating Prime Minister
A tax-avoiding ****
Who enthusiastically supports
The ideas of last century
Bombarding every ministry
Into the ministry of leftover ideas

Last night
I thought I met a sincere politician
But it turned out to be an actor
Inspired by Jimmy Stewart

Today
I thought I met a wonderful actor
But it turned out to be a politician
Pretending to be a politician

Last night I closed my eyes
And walked through the abandoned city
Where people hide behind the windows
With closed eyes
Imagining someone’s walking by

Like moths I’m drawn
To man-made moons
To bathe in its artificial light
While the rain pours down
And the world runs down the drain

And in the end I end up
As a lonely, dancing ghost
Blinded by the fake moon
A worthy spotlight
For a would-be Gene Kelly

When autumn comes
Trees become exhibitionists
Shaking off their clothes
Standing proud in the rain
The increasing cold
Matched by an increasing nakedness

While humans plunder wardrobes
Nature strips itself off
Back to the essence
Of what autumn means
That Fall is the fall
Of the empire of pretense

So I cannot pretend
And clutch on summer’s façade
And hide under the foliage
Of warmth and joy
I must let the rain
Wash away my pretense
And I’ll humbly lay myself bare
Amidst nature’s nakedness

I used to think that fish
In little bowls and aquariums
Were pitiful prisoners of men
Deprived of freedom
Defined by frontiers
Hindered by limits

But now I know that fish
Might be happy in their prisons
Able to explore all there is to see
While humans keep on getting lost
In their prison of infinite possibilities

As the sun creeps behind the water
The sea gently caresses my feet
Passionately surrounding me
As if I was a creature of the sea
And although I’d like that to be true
I cannot escape that moment
When the sun is gone, and so is the sea
And there’s only the moon, the sand and me

We are all lying in the gutter
But some of us are looking at the stars
And wait patiently
Getting rid of the fear
Until clouds disappear
Because we know
That once more
The stars will glow

Have a look at the parade of clowns
Copycats
Copying emptiness
Copying lazy sentiments
Copying spiteful opinions
Tantrum after tantrum
Rant after rant
Idiot after idiot
This is what the world has become
Mainstream muckiness
Dreams of something special
Broken by modern day mentality
Minimal input, maximal output
All aboard the hype train
All behind the laptop
Digital drama democratized
As avant-garde lags behind

The army of halfwits
Celebrating
Celebrating uniqueness
Celebrating false individualism
Celebrating blissful ignorance
Lie after lie
Mask after mask
Actor after actor
This is it
The world’s a stage
The play is badly cast
The words are meaningless
Uttered in vanity
All brain, no heart
All play, no work
All for nothing

But with the clowns to the left of me
And the halfwits to the right
I’m taking a stance against it
Against the copying
The celebration of nothingness
The false individuality
I  won’t utter my words
I won’t play my part
I will embrace the heart
I will take of my mask
And let everyone know
I won’t settle for this
I will come, see and conquer
And then lose it all
But I’ll pick sincere decline
Over false stagnation any day

I am not a mad man
Indeed, I’m not a man
I am the Fisher King
An enigmatic fraction
Of your frantic imagination
I come and go as I please
Mixing serene silence
With immaculate impotence
Who will help me
The King and his kinsmen
The King and his people
A barren madman
In a barren world
Living on hope alone
Hope and make-belief

Yet behind the façade
Of a harmless hermit
Lies greatness and goodness
And the promise of purity
The meaning of life
And the riddance of meanness
The secret of bliss
Without ignorance
The purest pleasure
For both body and soul
For the King and his kinsmen
The King and his people
The barren madman
Changing the barren world
Into a painting-like paradise

So forget about reason
And the rules they imply
And embrace the essence
Of my delusional ravings
Look out for the invisible
Listen to silent whispers
And expose hidden meanings
I’ll be here for a while
Resting on the riverside
For I am not a mad man
I am not a man
I am not mad
I am the Fisher King
A barren beacon
In a dark, dark world

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t that lonely beggar
Who hunts for food in garbage bins
And performs incoherent monologues
Because there’s nobody to listen

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t that social media hero
Who tries to gain some self-worth
By creating a superman persona
Because there’s nobody that really knows him

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t even that peculiar man
Who keeps on staring through the window
Imaging the people passing by are terrorists
Or at least bloodthirsty aliens

The saddest man I ever met
He’s actually quite happy
And ignorant of his ignorance
Blatantly he rips through lives
As if he’s the Next Big God’s Gift

I’ve been mistaken for a conquistador
When really I just break hearts by accident
There’s no evil in my deeds
And no wickedness in my words
I’m just looking for lovers who are lost

I’ve been trying to fix the unbroken
And all I do is break what can’t be fixed
There’s no cleverness in my words
And no thoroughness in my deeds
I’m just a lost soul looking for love

So you will know me by the trail of broken hearts
And the flower in my buttonhole
And that smug look on my face
And the searchlight in my mind
Aimed at nothing in particular

As the huntsman led her into these woods
Deeper and deeper they fared
He carefully whispered in her ear
That only of herself she should be scared

She agreed that once your path was chosen
And you were too far to doubt
It was better to convince yourself
There was nothing to worry about

So she followed him deeper and deeper
Convincing herself that she found the right way
Knowing perfectly well that the huntsman
Would become the wolf that would lead her astray

From within the safety of the train compartment
Memories, written in stone, glide by
There’s the Roman church
With the statue of the priest and his dog
And the enigmatic farm
Where llamas and ostriches stride
And that one funky albino kangaroo
And after that comes the castle
Which in my mind is inhabited
By an anachronistic loner
A degenerate nobleman
Who hides within his fortress
Hoping that the days of old come back
And after wasted grandeur comes earnest cosines
Carefree children playing football
While their grandfathers smoke
And discuss the Tour de France
And eat Boules de Berlin
Images that I have seen a hundred times before
But  the celebration of triviality
Has never been so precious to me
As these images, gliding by, through the window
Written inside my memory

A poet is sitting by the riverside
I can see him staring at me
A gaze full of pity and disdain
As if I am the one to blame

Once there was the promise of harmony and creativity
Now I am trapped in his lack of singularity

And there’s only one poet to blame
One man who deserves the centerpiece
In this game of shame
For I am just a battologist’s shade

I am unable to avoid
The faults in his eyes
The tedious and battering curse
Of wasting precious potential

So I see the man whose reflection I am
And the way his eyes are fixed on me
And I see the proudness
Being devoured by the sadness
And I’m glad that I’m just a reflection

They throw bombs like I throw parties
And it’s equally hit and miss
Often a mess, never a success
And still we throw and throw

They have Molotov cocktails,
While I serve the regular kind
They’ll bomb your mind to pieces
While I serve peace of mind.

No bloodshed but ****** Mary,  
No barbarian, but Cosmopolitan
And my Irish Car Bombs and Kamikazes
Don’t bring death, but only fun

And the Paradise I’m aiming for
Contains gin instead of virgins
And Nixon doesn’t feed the flames
But keeps us frisky with its whiskey

So we’ll keep on throwing parties
And they’ll keep on throwing bombs
And we’ll keep on serving cocktails
Just to keep our conscience numb

and cockerels

One word is often enough
To make a crowd go wild
Like “Fire”
Or “Bomb”
Or even a vague “Danger”
Sometimes it takes two
“Behind you”
Or “Get out”
Or perhaps a simple “My god!”

Like hens and cockerels
We are often running scared
And running away
From the smallest whisper
The vaguest rumour
And the slightest possibility
Until it is clear that the fear
Was a product of imagination

Then we’ll act as if nothing happened
A collective silence
After a collective madness
And we’ll look down
And mix in the crowd
Hide the fact that we’re aware
That our scare was worthy
Of hens and cockerels

Grandiose curiosum
Tittle-tattle tralala
Association after association
What has been and could have been
And would have been and isn’t
The fourth rack wrecks
With rumours and whispers
And dishonest lies
But sell your soul for some sales
And you’ll end up in an endless devaluation
Of the moral
And the valuable
And decency and fact
Between a cold Sun and a dead Star
There is nothing worthy to Express

Most of us don’t even manage
To become a hero, just for one day
But the Starman came, he saw, he conquered
He blew our minds
A creative centipede
A shapeshifter
A kook
A man who sold his image to the world
And showed us that heroes still exist

In the land of the free
People look at an absent God
To lead them the way
To show them how to use their liberty

They trade their precious privacy
For the right to bear machinery
Second amendment über alles
Individualities despite casualties

They distrust DC ****
Consider them corrupt vultures
So in order to cure democracy
They bow down for authority

And Christian conservatives
Look at liberals in disdain
Inside strip clubs and *******
Where praying holds a different meaning

The United States of Absurdity
Shouldn’t take itself too seriously
The true leaders of an absurd world
The U.S. of Hurray

I cherish my madness
Nurture it gently
Pour more oil
So that the flames can grow
I cater to its wishes
Let havoc wreck
And chaos endure
I need it
I feed it
For my imagination’s sake
My creativity’s at stake
Without the madness
I’m nothing
So the thoughts they jump
And bump and bruise
And go from there
To there
And there
And back again
Until order comes from chaos
And poetry from madness
And the calm after the storm
Spurs me on and on

The pictures on my wall
They aren’t mine
Made in a previous life
By a man who used to exist
Pictures of places and faces
That shouldn’t mean anything
But glance by glance
They have replaced
The drab scenes of my own life
Familiar strangers stare at me
And I stare back
Jealous of the way
These black and white phantoms
Gracefully fill the room
While a colourful man like myself
Is doomed to play the second fiddle

Charity is a curiosity
To some it seems a worthy cause
Others find it spiteful
And despite intentions that are good
I think it should be understood
That charity brings fortune to a few
While others are left to rue
Charity is a lottery
However noble it may be

I am a riddle,
Wrapped in a mystery
Inside an enigma
And riddles is what I love

I am a master of crime
A bundle of vicious wit
Combined with callous creativity
Instead of petty violence

For brute strength
Is far from refined
Compared to this mastermind
I am one of a kind

So riddle me this,
Riddle me that
And get used to the fear
For the Riddler is here

All poetry, all the time
A 24/7 poetical heaven
Talking about simple things
Wrapped in complexity
And efficiently stripping the complex
Until even the simpletons understand

All sorts of shows
For all sorts of people
Celebrating all sorts of poems
Retrograding avant-garde
Mellow love and romance
Humour, wit and wariness
Rhyme and jive
And beatnik flick

Imagine radio poetry
All poetry, all the time
From the poet to the people
Linguistic loving listeners
Who attentively admire
The soft-spoken words of poets
Cordially confused
Trying to understand
Where all of a sudden
Those most welcome
Listeners came from