A poet is sitting by the riverside
As he stares blankly into the water
He sees a copycat staring back at him
A poor man’s poet of the people

Once there was the promise of bravura and muster
Now his company is mind-numbing and lackluster

And there’s only one poet to blame
One man who deserves the centerpiece
In this game of shame
For a battologist he has always been

He never cared to forbear
The tedious yet sumptuous curse
Of repeating and echoing
And echoing and repeating

So the poet sits by the riverside
His glazy eyes fixed on a man in the water
Who would like to be a swan
But is doomed to be a vulture
The disciple of an inferior culture

I’ve always needed the city more than it needed me
Wandering its prominent streets
Being nothing more than an anonymous ant,
Crawling past the lines of mechanized zombies
With equally anonymous ants driving them

More than once have I bathed in its street lights
Hoping that it would find my personality shining through
Or hunted down my reflection in its windows
Expecting that visibility would lead to the end of my anonymity
I’ve always needed the city more than it needed me

But now my point of view has finally shifted
As I wandered the streets of the city I hold so dear
Finding that my need to be needed has changed

Finally I have discovered that the invisible man is happy
He is never told to go away
He keeps on wandering, amongst his fellow ants
Under the city’s street lights, reflected by its windows
Not feeling the need to be needed
Not feeling the need
Not feeling

I was walking in the landscape
Of my crowded mind
Surrounded by noisiness
And poisonous commotion

Until I found a place
And peace of mind
A sphere of silence
Like a dome inside my head

But to hear nothing
And to see nothing
Is to be left alone
With anything the mind conjures up

With brooding thoughts
And troubling doubts
Surrounded by clouds
And self-inflicted commotion

The sound of silence
Is the best thing around
Until it becomes too loud

And when it becomes too loud
There is no doubt
That I begin to long for sound
Again

At the hapless poetry event
I thought I’d have a splendid time
But as a poet I should know
That life has the habit of being cruel
So immensely cruel

So I had to avoid the debris
Of classical poetry
And suffer from the boundaries
Put upon my creativity
My poor creativity

And I felt useless, since it turned out to be punless
They didn’t see the point of puns
And I felt pointless, for I could not rhyme
No, I would not rhyme
Such a horrid time

And people dressed in ironic ways
Tried to evoke the nineteenth century
Pretending that complexity
Makes for better poetry
Oh, my poor, simple poetry

So I stood there, with my glass of wine
And my pun-filled collection of wit
No rhymes to hide behind
And no gravity to my humble words
Oh, poor, humble man

And a lady in red, with blue hair
Awkwardly grabbing me by the arm
Asked me if I had suffered enough
And if I ever wanted to **** myself
God, how I wanted to **** myself

But the irony always wins
As words poured in my mind
With puns in abundance
So finally suffering inspired me
At the hapless poetry event

Do you like charisma?
Do you like stamina?
Perhaps with a certain degree of integrity
And a bit of leadership
If you find these qualities to be evident
Then I could very well become your next president

I know how to balance
From center-left to center-right
From radicalism to conventionalism
How to be the best non-established established candidate
I’d put your money to good use
As I use gilded words in golden speeches

I won’t lose my head
While dominating the headlines
And keep on smiling while
Barnstorming amidst the blunt and the bigots
Debating with the decadents and the destructive
I can easily pretend
So I could very well become the next president

So primarily, I need to win this primary
I’ll put my money where my mouth is
If you put your money in a SuperPAC
Donate to liberate this country!
Vote to promote the road of progress!
And in time, America will be mine

I tend to mix up do’s and don’ts
Not out of recklessness
Malice or even stupidity
It’s more a second nature
To walk into precarious situations
Ignoring well-meant advice
Setting off alarms
And wreak havoc
And instigate confusion
And set of ***** traps
To see what might happen
And I am well aware
That curiosity killed the cat
But as long as I’m still standing
I’ll do what I shouldn’t
Because life’s for the living
And living is all about mucking about
Without do’s and don’ts
And with enough curiosity
To make a grown man cheer

Dear audience
You have been quite disappointing of late
Quiet and inanimate
Unappreciative and overrated

Gone are the days of praise
Of recommendation
Inspiration
And adoration

An abrupt end to the expansion
Of people who read my creations
And charmingly approve
Of a poet of such wit and groove

Help the aged
But not too much
For they weigh heavily
On the goverment’s budget
And on our conscience
And make us face
Our own mortality

Help the poor
But not too much
For they might think
They deserve better than this
And make us see
That petty philanthropy
Is pure hypocrisy

Help thy neighbor
But not too much
For there is no society
Just you and me
A collection of people
Just ordinary people
Trapped in individuality

Help your country
Above anything else
For there is honour
And glory to be found
Make the world see
And let them gasp
at our Grandiosity

And do help me
Above anything else
Vote and applaud loudly
Make this country great again
And help the aged and the poor
But don’t expect
Too much sympathy

The winter of our discontent
Became the spring of fury
Only to end in the summer of docility
Because limits are bumped into
As easily as frustrations are forgotten
And as soon as the momentum has gone
The passive majority will claim to have won

The discontentment keeps on lingering
Against the background of potential change
But the status quo knows how to appease
And puts the revolution back at ease

The winter of our discontent
Held the promise of history
But ended, once more, in tame passivity

Like an actor about to enter his stage
The boy who would be king stood still
Motionless, with racing thoughts
And expectations to fulfill

For he knew that to be a king was to be loved
And love would turn to hate
And to be the lonely center of the crowd
That would be his fate

But the curtains fell as he put on his mask
And the doubts, they were pushed backwards
Set in motion, with smothered thoughts
The boy took his leap forward

And all were there to see him shine
And all were there to love him
And the boy, he cried and died inside
And the boy, he became king

On the outside there was joy and pride
As he paraded through the crowd
But there was dread and fury on the inside
And the noblest, purest form of doubt

He felt the fear get to him
And the nausea shook him to the core
But like an actor he should wear his mask
And like a lion he should roar

So the king, he put himself aside
And erased all that he had been
And erased all that he felt inside
And the boy was no longer to be seen

Fleeting thoughts frantically leave the realm of intuition
As the potential of the poem comes to fantastic fruition

Because I reckoned
That playing a game of chess
Against Death was a bit cliché
I decided to challenge him
For a bit of table tennis
Needless to say
With his boney build
And his empty sockets
I soon smashed
His will to live
To pieces
And I’m especially proud
Of my outstanding performance
In the seventh set

Everything is in the eye of the beholder
And nothing is what it seems
So I looked up and noticed
Her!
A red dot in a drab, grey mass
A sense of hope in a world
Where everything good
Is reduced to ashes
And everything bad
Becomes the base of who we are

We were kept apart
But kept on trying
To reach out to one another
And through imagination
And communication
One red dot brought forth a second
And we set our world on fire

We have banished the bad
The drab, grey mass
So that all is left
Is a house and another house
And two red dots
Clinging on to each other
Everything is in the eye of the beholder
So I will just keep my eyes on you.
Until we are reduced to ashes.

Saturday nights fill the void
Of weekday frustrations
And work’s condemnations
It ends the longing for something else
Or someone else
Or just someone, really
So all the cool, lonely people
Go to the heartbreak hotel
And dance and drink
And hope to find the thing
That they don’t even know
They are looking for

So we see through the eyes
Of hazy drunk people
Falling in love with the world
And themselves
And everyone else
Everyone who seems interesting enough
People made beautiful
By dancing and drinking
Hoping to find something or someone they lost
In the arms of a stranger

And I don’t mind
That you’re thinking about him
I’m used to being late
To the party anyway
And it has become a second nature
To come second
To substitute long gone ghosts
Marinaded in the melancholy
Of expensive drinks
And music I can’t relate to

But I keep on longing
for the Saturday Night Live experience
Because being lost
In a lost crowd
Has become so familiar
As it replaces
The horror of weekday frustrations
Of work’s condemnations
Of longing for something else
Or someone else
Or just someone

The yearning and that burning feeling
No romantic candlelight
But a forest fire
Setting its gaze on the horizon

The aching self-awareness  
Not a looking glass
But a microscope
Scrutinizing even the measliest of mistakes

The spectacular sensation
Not instigated by the gentlest of touch
But by the tormented teasing
Potential promises of the purest passion

Those dazzling daydreams
Not of the mysterious and the magnificent
But of the sensual and the sensational
As you crawl ever so carelessly into my mind

The things you do to me
Not one thought in my mind
Is not reminding me
That you and I are meant to be

The things you do  to me
The menace and the moonlight
The sexuality and the safety
The unrest and the union
The doubts and the delicacy
The things you do to me
The thought that you and I are meant to be

I’ve been wandering
In the city of monuments
Where everything is grand
And old and new
And presents a promise
Of great deeds

I’ve been inspired
By the masters of old
Who dedicated their lives
To art and thought
And brought us closer
To a passionate force

I’ve been humbled
By the grandness of eternity
The beauty of tranquility
The artistic infinity
A stark contrast
With my own humility

Rome, my Utopia
Where God and man alike
Wander in awe
Dreaming of a time
Where time was relative
And dreams came true

Rome, my Utopia
Where I wandered in awe
Inspiration by my side
Admiration in my mind
Dedication in my heart
And Rome all around me

Every now and then
I need my dose of modesty
To have someone or something
Show me the relativity
Of human creativity

So I go and wander restlessly
Through majestic mountains
With snow-clad hats
And watery feet
And lots of nature in between

And I realise the things I’ve done
The petty man-made magic
Is static and dull and pathetic
Compared to nature’s frantic
Splendour and might

I keep on hoping
That one day I can say
That the artificial can compete
With nature’s regal feat

Though now I humbly admit
That the peaks and the crags
Crumble my effort and wit
And show me all that I lack

Since the longing never stops
I decided to prolong
The loathsome silence between us
And let love prolong this lockdown
Of heart and soul
Mind and matter
Fact and fiction

Since home is where the heart is
I decided to hide
From the harshness of our silence
And hide my hopelessness
From you
Just you
Always you

We shook hands, standing on the bridge
At the end of everything that was
You were looking at the water
A dark menace now looking wonderfully comforting
And surprisingly inviting
I was looking at you
Frailty and wonderful beauty combined
Yet shockingly cold

You went to one end, I to the other
At the end of everything that was
You were looking at the suburbs
The mess of the sprawl now looking comforting
And surprisingly inviting
I was looking at you
A dot disappearing into nothingness
Yet shockingly ever present

I’ve met too many
Manifestly two-faced people
Who’d stab you in the back
With the sincerest of smiles
To trust in the true dedication
Of man’s so called best friend

I don’t care about loyalty
Companionship bores me to death
And since I don’t need protection
I’ve solemnly decided that
The most truthful pet
Is my wicked, disinterested cat

I have the reputation
Of being of brutish disposition
But I am the kindest soul
Taking all things slow
Carefully I tread
As I enter the room
With all the vases
And the precious porcelain
I am not the careless elephant
Who tramples all he can
Because he has the advantage
That he cannot see what lies behind him
Broken and bent
Nor feels the damage he is doing
With or without intent
Instead I am a careful soul
All too aware
Of my potential power
Of the possibility of my machinery
The damage that I may cause
The rampage that I may commence
And the carnage that I may create
I may be of brutish disposition
But I am the gentle giant
Who, with heavy steps
Gently treads amidst the gentry
Vying viciously for the vulnerable
Battling bravely for the bruised
A persistent poet trying to mend
Step by step
Word by word
Poem by poem

As long as we have empathy
Love and unity
Forces louder than words
And louder than bombs

As long as there is moonlight
And music and love and romance
We’ll face the music and dance
And frustrate them with things they don’t know

And we will use our brains to think
And our mouths to speak instead of preach
And our hands to hold the ones we love
And our thoughts for all things constructive

The city of light will always glow
The city of love will never perish
And the only answer we ought to give
Is to celebrate love for and from Paris

The gaze that mesmerised me
And set a parallel universe on fire
Somewhere in between
The devil and the deep blue sea

What is is not what could have been
What could have been a whisper
But soon as the gaze was swept away
That parallel universe became unseen

Get out of my head
With your great expectations
Combined with cynical criticism
And self-righteous selective blindness
And let me get back inside my comfort zone
Where there’s not too much ado about anything

For old time’s sake
I read the book you gave me
I read it
And then read it again
Hoping I would find traces
Of what used to be

But all I saw were empty words
And empty memories
I read it
And then read it again
For God’s sake
I’m still trying to forget you

How I’d like to be a man of the people
To write poems that widely spread
To have the public sit up and notice
And nod to every little thing
That I, ever so poetically, care to share

My poems would be talk of the town
In fame and fortune I would bathe
And the public would subtly bow as I walk by
Wondering how I ever so clever
Show what the show’s all about

I would gracefully describe human nature
In a way that everyone would get
I’d share my universal wisdom
The essence of this life
And offer the promise of bliss

There would be nothing I would withhold
From the public I hold so dear
I’d help them cope with love and lust
With pain and loss and death
And all that’s bright and beautiful

But alas, I am no man of the people
And my limits are ever so clear
I myself am an isolated poet
And I fear it’s true what I hear:
That they don’t have a way with poetry, anyway

True friends stab you in the front
And look you in the eye
While carefully twisting the knife
Hurting you just enough

With a vindictive friendliness
And vicious compassion
The gentlest way to betray
That’s what true friends are for

I’m right in between
The man with the horse’s head
And the horse with the elephant’s skin
As kaleidoscope-eyed insects are crawling all around me

In the distance I see green valleys
A paradise regained
Where beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder
But there for all to see

But I’m stuck here in the inferno
Where ghouls are the least of my problems
My attention grabbed by the walking set of teeth
And the fire-breathing bird-like herd.

For in here the owls are not what they seem
And creatures near me are eerily freakish
While my eyes are set on the lush lands ahead
I’m stuck in the middle of the gruesome and the dead

In a world where time flies by so fast
And people slowly forget
How slow things used to be
It is a matter of time and logic
Until everyone in time
Is abiding the laws of brevity

A beautiful smile becomes a fierce grin
Spewing  a vicious set of insults
For all I’ve done
And all you care
My best of intentions
Your most effective kind of indifference
I’m sick and tired of your bored look
Yet still I revisit and revive
For old time’s sake
Hoping each and every time
Things will be turned around

Put aside your viciousness
And instead of taking everything for granted
Grant me a bit gratefulness
Hard-earned thankfulness
And a bit of earnestness
I’m sick and tired of your tired look
As if my efforts to revisit and revive
Is useless nostalgia
And my hope that things will be turned around
Desperate stupidity

Sunk into the sink again
With only a bottle to keep me company
Playing a game of poker with my shadow
While my mirror-image is trying to avoid me

I went over to the corner
As if somebody had told me to
But despite my wicked ways
I won’t take two-faced lessons from you

With every other ticking of the clock
Another heartbeat skips away
But I’m not the man to cry for all things gone
People they come and go anyway

It’s been six long days
Since you tried to get my attention
And despite my hand’s habit of giving in
My head is immensely immune to rising tension

So I swapped the happy holiday memories
Forever captured in a motionless scene
For movie heroes and nature’s splendour
I choose what never was over what has been

I do forgive you that you won’t forgive me
That is the natural order of things
But I must admit that I lack the rigour
Of fully clipping this pretty bird’s wings

So I choose the path of cowardice
And put you in a dusty box inside my head
It’s much more easier to forget you there
And clutch unto make-believe instead

It’s been six long days
Since you tried to fight your way back in
But all I need is the comfort of loneliness
The illusion of doing it right, mixed with a sip of gin

All I need is my invisible friend
Although I must say
That lately he has been absent
The favours he used to do
Like splitting seas
And sending plagues
And the occasional help
With burning desires
And itching sinfulness
It has decreased
Brought back to an absolute minimum
Making me wonder
If now is the time to move on
But He and I
We go back such a long time
From when I was a kid
And He a couple of thousand years old
So it’s hard to imagine
That it was just my imagination all along

When I look into the mirror
I see a skull smirking back at me
Dead end eyes
Infinite gaze
A handsome wreck

I seek the company of other skeletons
Set on fire by the moon
Morbid waltzes
Vivid sadness
A charming mess

I seek the company of mirrors
To end the sense of loneliness
The lesser evil
The greater good
The perfect company

The hum, the hum, the humdrum
Time after time after time
After time
Tedious tension
Rapturous repetition
Antics, Panic, Pandering

The con, the con, the conversation
Never ever, ever never
Never
Average ambitions
Wonderfully lukewarm
Everything, anything, something

It wasn’t going according to plan
Because the plan was non-existent
As I so wrongly thought
That stumbling unprepared
Was better than a thorough setup
Bound to make one care
Knowing that it never could
Or would go anywhere

A poet and a poet meet in a café
Striking up a conversation
About everything and nothing
About love and lost love
About the dark side of the moon
And the nurturing side of childhood memories
About that one time they were both at a hapless poetry event
And about mirrors and magic and moonlight
And mice and men, terrible men
And about women, gentle, dangerous creatures
Who broke their hearts in many pieces
And how they turn innocent boys
Into almighty, all-knowing poets
They talk about their ego
An ego that has become huge
Despite the fact they are not read
And don’t make any money
They talk and talk and banter
And slander and meander
Verbally that is
Until they’re lost for words
And the secret code of life is cracked

With one eye fixed on the new year
The other on the crazy cat standing near
I smile and find
That hope is on my mind

I
Do
Not
Hope

Silly
People,
Frantic
Paranoid
Trembling

Shameful­ly
Deceitfully
Precariously
Adversatively
Contemptuously
Unaesthe­tically

Unreasonableness
Melodramatisation
Interchangeability
Ps­eudophilosophical
Overpresumptuousness

Life is a choice
Between the standstill and the maelstrom
Between faceless coincidence and fearful fate
Between settling for this life
Or gambling on paradise
Between wondering why life went by so fast
And wondering why we were merely pawns
Life is a choice
And the loser takes it all

Words and associations
Forming in the darkest corners of my mind
Unstoppable processes
Result in lakes of shameless insanity
Society would frown
Like it frowns upon everything
That isn’t boring status quo
Or harmless harmony

Everything means anything
And everyone is no one at all
Identities are interchangeable
Changes are identical
My thoughts are vessels
Crashing into icebergs
My words are thoughts
Aiming for the heart

Like a spider’s web
My meaning is all over the place
Towards eternity and back
And equally as easily broken
When everything is connected
It takes one thorough aim
To make everything crumble
To make nothing at all

The problem with children
Is that they are too easily pleased
The monochrome boredom of everyday life
Turns swiftly into a colourful extravaganza  
As the mind-numbing and the mundane
Become the mind-blowing and the magnificent

Children have the gift of fantasy
Of carelessness and of hope
They add the extra to the ordinary
With long lost magic by their side.

The problem with adults
Is that they are never easily pleased
The monochrome and monotone
Become an excessive focus
As the mind-numbing and the mundane
Blow away the mind-blowing and the magnificent

Adults sacrificed the gift of fantasy
And seek the companionship of reality
Of money and of responsibility
With long lost magic on their minds.

Once upon a time
There was aspiration
And inspiration to achieve
Things of greatness
And great hope
That hopefulness would matter
But as a matter of fact
Fact tamed fiction
And aspiration became what has become

I used to think that I used to think
That you could not be forgotten
But all it takes to make one humble
Is yesterday’s ghost
To shatter the illusions we hold dear

For the past is a vicious beast
Always looking for a fight
To end the peace of present day
To end the promise of the future

To proclaim its hegemony over what once was
What now is and what might be
As it mercilessly sends the deadliest of assassins
Memories of what once was good

I used to think that I used to think
That you could not be forgotten
But all it takes to make me humble
Is yesterday’s love
To shatter the illusion that I hadn’t lost

She was utterly convinced
That I was a vindictive fiend
Then came the cheating spree
Which kind of made me agree

Another day to procrastinate
Another day to stray
Another day to think about
Another day to wait
Another day for marvelous strategies
Another day to think
Another day to plan ahead
Another day for lifeless effigies
Another day for a poem to come my way
Another day for a line
Another day for a question mark
Another day for another day

Our ability
To detect stupidity
Solely aimed at others

A man once told me
That I was full of myself
So arrogant and deviant

What  was I thinking?
Writing down that I’m a poet
That wants to be read

So dear audience, skip me
And do leave me be
Alone, with my profound humility

The last time I took a stroll in someone else’s mind
I collected as many thoughts as I could
And nurtured them until they made sense
And gave meaning to the mean masquerading
Of the malicious and the morbid

When there’s nothing left to hide
The truth becomes a vile enemy
And ignorance the purest form of bliss
For once the stroll has come to pass
The shades of darkness remain all too clear

What use for the thoughts of a madman
Paintings of images made up by someone else
Uncanny, alien words that rattle and shake
Their true meaning resonating inside my head
Wondering if I was looking in the mirror all along