I was watching TV
and the topic on the Geriatrics Show
was Life Support Systems -
you know, about how people are kept
on pipes and machines and tubes and liquid
and I hollered to my wife in the kitchen:
“Darling, if ever I become life-dependent
on liquids and machines, just get rid of ‘em
and free me…”

“Sure thing,” my faithful wife said
and she turned off the TV
and my cell phone and my laptop
and she emptied my bottles of wine and whisky
and then she turned to me and she said:
*“I just freed you.”

Long after, long after:
creeper retreating into
the darkness,
to the corners, after
the shadows repair,

I wake up: veiled face, now
tears into the silence, the
late swan's song of despair;

Silver, shines the tower
earring,
in the stray light
moon-streaming by;

Silken though, after
saker heaves and sighs nigh,
hanging by a thread,
we are, night-
threads spread bare.

What language does the sky speak?

On late afternoons,
is she weeping for joy,
or mourning in the wet winds?

Deep in the night, I find her
blinking at me  in a hundred stars -

is she shivering in the
inconsolable cold of some ancient loss?

What language does the teardrop speak,

rushing down
past your dimpled cheeks?

Droplets on a leaf: sometimes,
on the shelf, sometimes, on your brow:

startled creeper in the shadows at night,
what language do these teardrops speak?

When the whip cracks
bare on the back,
the earth scorches tired feet,
and shoulders cannot
carry the burden anymore,

In that moment
when the world merely
watches on silent,

and those you loved
are too bound my oaths
or wallowing in doubt
or too weak to do a thing,

In that moment
when blood mingles with sweat

you know you truly have no one
here, but for Him the Lord,
who shines in the heart.

In adoration, an army
can be drowned pursuing you.

In love, an unfathomable
well is given away
to bleed to death.

There's this doll you know:
got delivered to my home today,
it's all part of a disturbing game
and I found a key in its mouth:
it starts by sending
what we lack  most in our lives.

Broken illumination
as the fan flits;

Two naked girls started it all:
except for bikini bottoms,
knitted in national flags,

waving down a truck
on a bridge across the Dnieper.

Roll over the tanks!
nobody wants war:

Except our masked friends,
my maidan hero
your naked Fascist,
self-defending Lebensraum?

Gas them, gas them,
coz, we don't want war.

Got some butterflies to catch;
Tryin' to catch them since
the good ol' hippie days.

It's them naked girls
that started it all:
Havana girls,
there's pipe loads of gas
that's at stake,
drill drill off Alaska, Palin!

I will walk away tonight,
to the far beyond:
beyond shadowy corners,
and beyond the clouds where
gods gather, witness;

In the shadow of the oak,
where we play, my sister and I:

catching a butterfly, now,
digging into the smelly earth,
it's a worm then curling up my finger
that I go chasing after her.

Laughter breaks into a kite
severed, and flows away
into the distance.

Gods come alive in clay,
that we gather after rains
and give form to and
colour as we like.  Disregarding
where tusks should
and shouldn't lie.

Wild fires were not fun.
Not least for those twins
******* as embers crackle in the rain.
Did the pups die?
Who will answer to their
mum, weeping through the nights?

The sun set fire to the entire
horizon every lonely night
before retiring.

As we gather into our blankets
hearing tear drops dripping in pots
and crickets dance.

Far beyond the skies
beyond the heart of darkness,

I will walk away tonight,
beyond shadowy corners;
beyond the clouds where
gods gather witness;

It used to live on the hilltop
where a lone bell tolled
by the temple:
but the Deity is long gone
and the bell mourns
in the valley wind on empty
afternoons, now.

I went searching for it:
in late summer, the koel
would sunder open the vaults
of heaven and bring
some down for us mortals
haunted by death.
The koels are long gone now.

Peace,
peace.

Lady siting silent in the evening
staring vacant into the sky,
after a day of labour:
can you give some to me?

I thought it was in education.
But that is stored now, in
almirahs where moths
eat way what humidity cannot.

I thought it was in a position.
But they don't matter, now
a ladder ascending
to nowhere,
vanishing mid-air.

Old man, smiling past hope
that has broken like
your lost teeth:
can you give some to me?

I asked the urchin
playing in the ditch after the rains,

he said: 'follow me, I know where
it lives', and he led me to
a ***** pond lined with plastic
and all our civilization's refuse,
and jumped in.

I returned, disgusted.