Attentively
humans have created
problems, throwing one after another
into the empty foreworld

They lacked norms, invented them
and were content with all the virtues
and vices to live from day to day
and also at night

They wanted to control everything
and created gods and leaders
with power, to be cruel
without strife in their hearts

The leaders organized it
with secret police and militia
with torture and contempt
and the people agreed to it

It became evening and morning
the morning of the fourth world
of the taboos and the dreams
of elusiveness and afterlife

Anyone and anything can be dangerous
be careful who and what you touch
also with roommates, neighbours, friends
dear colleagues and nice people

Better keep in touch virtually
just let the machines work together
because for us in the fifth world
it could be fatal

One horizon all

round the green sea, here and there --


a cow sailing by.

Also worlds that we don't have
and have not even experienced
we can cherish, skaters
on the canals of the eleven cities
and those of Amsterdam

We know it from photos and
paintings, fashion from grandma's time
pharaohs, Indians and dinosaurs
the splendour of microorganisms
and the blue ice of glaciers

where cows now graze, the love
on the faces of strangers
which I look at again and again
or a drawing of a little trip
with the three of us on a bicycle

We save it all
somewhere inside us, in the world
which we built ourselves and
where we feel more at home
than wherever

They say it doesn't mean a thing
Because we are just mirrors
who kindly greet in return

But still, the baker knows my name
and the postman is happy
that I'm home

for the parcels
for the neighbours
'Happy New Year'

Looking forward, we keep heart
with good tidings, even though
they say it doesn't mean a thing

that in the rest of the year
calamities will smoke again
crimes and fear, what is normal

will get out of sight
even though you witness it every day
and that we will amuse ourselves again

with the ambulant judge to reinforce
peace with the right, and that is all
it means, they say

Humanity is restless in its pursuit of
pure, and unbiased comprehension.

But we are as blind as the ants,
Who navigate a pheromone soaked
sensation scape.
Only able to perceive perfume
trails, and the colour they emit.
Like the warm, hazy lights
of a carousel river steam boat,
They pass each other like
perfect strangers in the night.
Amidst the dark and misty waters
Unafraid to surrender trust
to the twinkling of an eye,
the faint smell of musky cigars
on collared shirts, or the
Incandescent shades of a lip.

We have yet to leave our ancestral
cave homes, full of mad desperation to
capture, define, and preserve the
fleeting forms of nature and it’s denizens.
Sand and ochre kicked up and splashed
in deeply passioned abandon,
as fingers raced and traced the earthy canvas,
Etching, marking, tracing and screaming.
Until, in the end, the exertion itself
is impressed into the rock-face wall.

Other, similar endeavours may well include,
The many voyages and explorations of
Early settlers and tribe folk,
in attempts to map the sprawling land masses,
from the tips of snowy doom filled mountain tops
down to the last measly grains of sand on distant coastlines.
And even now in the modern era,
The sky itself and the cosmos in its enormity,
Probed forever deeper, but never reaching
Its absolute depth.

The creating, and dividing, of art into
it’s multiple facets of genre and subject,
Always pushing outwards in the need,
yes, the very drive to express anything,
everything, and nothing at all.
Emotion itself made captive to
Staves of rhythmic and melodic
progression and regression.
to plumb the very essence of a note
would reveal a beyond Planck length
Spectrum of wave and particle,
Eternally ringing out into
The collective consciousness of the universe.

This isn’t a poem, so much as it
is a personal meditation into
The finite infinity we experience
From one moment, to the next.
Much like meaning, we can only
assign so much burden to a word,
only place so much faith in diction.
But that’s perfectly alright,
Because without ambiguity in
the shapes and forms of metaphors and simile,
We lose a sense of the PROFOUND.
The innate desire to find meaning,
in the most personal sense, in anything.

And really,
isn’t that the most beautiful thing
Ever?

Flax blades
Howling birds
The tears of strangled mountains

Flip a coin
The land of the long white cloud
A sun so bright
The shadows are buried
7 feet below
Alongside those whose eyes
Were convinced
The coin only flipped one side

I don’t remember what it was that made me stop and think about the tendency of my thinking. But I remember how I felt when I had the epiphany that I had become, of all things, a hater. I realized, with a sinking feeling, that the things I hated far outnumbered the things I loved.  

Instead of saying that I loved the night, the moon and the stars, the placid silence, the comfort of solitude, and how some flowers smell better in the evening – I complained that I was not a morning person.  

I said I detested morning breath instead of saying that I loved running my tongue over my teeth after I had just brushed them. I moaned about hot weather more than the relief I found in the shade. So many pet peeves, so many inconsequential things marred my happiness.

I despised people who were quick to judge others. I was intolerant of intolerance. Unkind people irked me. I hated it when a friend came to me to speak ill of another friend. Why choose me? I did not want to be complicit in such duplicity. But I let it happen because I knew from experience that calling out problematic behaviour, especially with the people you know, serves no purpose other than souring your relationship. So, most of the times, I tried to simply extricate myself from the situation without engaging. But I fumed. I fumed about my powerlessness. And I hated the fact that despite loving them, I couldn’t like some people in my life.  

I used to joke about not knowing what I want in life but being sure about what I didn’t want. But I noticed too late that I kept adding to one list while ignoring the important one.

Now, I am trying to unlearn this rigid worldview as I grow. I am choosing gratitude for the good things in my life and not frustration at the things out of my control.