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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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’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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 *****

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

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

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

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

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

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