With eyes like a deer,

so wide, the girl is hiding --


in stinging nettle.

With flags of freedom,

you will not occupy peace –


but you do resist.

With her husky voice

she reads to him, full of love –


in the twilight hours.

Within every

story new stories, that's how --


the universe works.

With insight into

human nature you also --


understand yourself.

The calm in your eyes
on me opens me
You lie in me
like a long l
of love

The light has licked you clean
it sings of you the glorious song
of our years, which bridge
everything that separates us
and clothes us in differences

For us, love is
still a thick word
of desire, the l
that erects
when I undress

With my fingertip

I sail deep underwater –


through the distant clouds.

With Nana to the big city
the translation tongues in our ear
'Mignoter et manger, pipi, ****

dodo', we understand everything
that tourists are doing here
'Plain easy, isn't it?'

she sighs, satisfied, licking
a rainbow ice-cream
Tiresome uneasy

I think, all those people
I don't belong to them
'Grandma don't you think so:

grown-ups are actually
quite the same
when you hear them talk

because they already know
everything and I do not and
I think that's a lot more fun'

Without ambition

he would have been a nameless --


happy animal.

Queen without a nation
no copper in my blood
no parade of swanky princes
competing for my hand

no one who dresses me
with someone else's money
I don't ask anything by decree
and my **** doesn't fix me

to an inherited bullybook
composed with suavity
and silky soft cords
of sticky oracle words

which way flag and pennant blow
and that it is still far, but
the nation the nation the nation
Hooray Hooray Hooray

I am a queen
without a nation

Without any tears,

her eyes are crying sorrow --


and love into me.

Without falling I get

ahead of my legs, it is --


quite an exercise!

We had tea without honey
The conversation dragged
What did you say? I asked
and he said it again

What could he mean? Searching
for clues, I prolonged the failure
of clear thoughts
by looking around

In the bar mirror, I saw a thread
of my scarf on my coat
It was like a scratch
There's no sense in talking

if you behave like this, I'll go
my friend said and he went
Fifteen minutes later I got up
The tea had become cold

My windless head
doesn't even care for music
we wander and kiss
through the same streets

eat half portions
of each other wish to
share everything
surrender completely

to eight stroking
dance with the birds
on the bar of sand
the cape of Ameland

drink up all the stars
and then we swim
in mirror water
into each other's skin

You don't have to say a thing
not even my name
we walk a bit

from embrace to embrace
securing all the preceding
deep in our belly

Maybe there is too much
to discuss, but soon
half words will be enough

and we will kiss each other
with poetic sentences
full of love in their gaps

like our whole life is
an agenda full of gaps
filled with friends

care and roses
experiences kept deep
in our belly without words

With power one has

much more authority than --


a scholar or saint.

With scraps of paper

I am lighting little lights --


in hearts of readers.

With the animals

we're breathing air in and out –


Then sometimes, it storms.

With their girl, tough men

melt, she is already soft --


she gets tough later.

With the scouts I build

a good cooking fire, that is --


having my hat on.

With the wedding ring

he promises his body --


to her, to serve her.

While I'm writing
I miss him in private
press him firmly and gently
against me
make him surrender

to my hands
to the blissful all
also feel him while I'm reading
and make him feel that
we are intimate friends

Words are nothing
if they don't touch
Contact is nothing
not intimacy
without a thought

Thoughts are channels
giving direction to our lives
and making us feel
what we feel, feel
that we are not alone

With wet feet, the storks

easily potter about --


amidst lots of food.

I wake up

in the bright light
of the judge's chair
to answer
who I've been

this last day and
what it was heading for and
which choices I made and
it does not matter

how pleased I was
with myself and the music
of compliments for my work
and it does not matter

what I got done
or how able I was
in arranging and resolving
my own mistakes

and other people's business
and always hearing the question
with which humans I was human –
the attentive listeners

take accurately note of everything
in calligraphic writing on handmade paper
let me sign it
and throw it away gracefully

into the everlasting fire
in which my omissions disappear forever
and the lack of my deeds is blackening
a brand in my soul

With wide eye shadows,

looking back at all the men:


my perky *******.

With you on the heath,

little birches in the mist –


a volatile scent.

You look so sweet at me
I don't have to dream about it
that you love me

but the romantic heart
in my head is afraid and
wants the best, lifelong

happiness, the greatest imaginable
in short, love, the eternal
always praised love

that you don't see around you
because, you know, people in love
can hardly live

without each other in their minds
but I want to be mature and
restart our relationship

after every crisis, or not
and always cherish what we have
experienced, what nobody else has

taken part in

The loveliest caress you know
is my radiance on your skin
You cannot be more beautiful
than that feeling

I am your dearest mistress
You take me with the name you give
me: Mistress of Sunlight, brightness
of your life

Your pride makes me
human, knowing
that I'm too light, too hot
to be intimate with you

You can only dream of that
Sometimes you boast
that you brought me to safety
conquered city and country for me

and are living happily ever after with me
sometimes that you have renounced me
and have me murdered in Rhodes
but I'm alive

My grave is not a grave
but a memorial stone
even if your bones lie next to it
as if I have been yours

Women being watched

when they enter, nervously --


cling to their handbags.

Women ****** men,

that's a fact, it is the way –


they are, made of girls.

Wonderful, no sound,

the carpet is thick, I walk --


back and forth again.

Words are distracting,

so close your mouth and open –


your eyes and your hands.

Words are for the word-

people, she says, you are free --


to just do your job.

Words are only words,

until we start colouring –


them with our actions.

Words do sometimes fit

with someone's situation --


as a deep insight.

Wouldn't you feel sorry

for normal people who cling --


to being normal?

Would religion be

a mistake that people pass --


on to their children?

Would the alehoof and

creeping-flower wish to flee?


From my weeding hand?

Would the apple seeds

inside my belly sprout and --


start to take root there?

I don't know you at home
Old-fashioned, a full case
with books that I also read
There must be some affinity

that I have not noticed
in your body, your breath
and glance, yet would I
like to embrace you

put you close to me
and kiss you, not French
but just
put you close to me

let my hands
stroke your back
and pull up your shirt
in one movement

continue skin to skin
and automatically find the way
no matter where it goes?
Would you do the same?

Would you lose weight if

there's a deposit of your --


full year's salary?

Would you undress me,

if you couldn't hear me, just read –


my words on my skin?

Mama never asks, she just glances
at my tummy, she knows

I don't want a life like hers
Angrily I run through the suburbs

breaking the rules of the families
that live here, I will not bow

Yet I follow
you, wishing

you were following me as well
and your strength was serving me

My happiness next to yours
My pleasure equal to yours

It is not a big difference, even then
I would let you take me

and wrap me up in feelings
of surrender and satisfaction

even then I would run and even then
people would stare at me

The worse it is, the less I
bother others with my illness
I do want to

be connected, but I don't know how
to catch my chaos into friendship
I'm trying my best

there is no secret
there are no forbidden
thoughts, I like to see you

embrace you if possible
under the flowering trees
but please wait

till I'm better, well, good
enough not to be ashamed
and to enjoy the buzzing spring

without seeing threatening clouds
so be sweet and write me sweeter sweetest
write me that I love you

Writers do not write

to live, they write in the hope --


of learning to die.

Writing about the

past, you reflect on yourself --


in terms of that time.

Writing from the heart

is tricky, spontaneous --


words can be faulty.

I have fought, still
there are barbarians if you dare
to look behind the mirror

and to step through it
into the real world
of expensively bought wrongprovements

Victories are forgotten
while people celebrate them
over and over again

they will have to be won
till eternity amen
I sign for it

a tick after my name
I have 'seen' life
let's dance

till the music drops

Again the night, again the morning
of a new day for dancers
and the other people
      
crawling out
of the seemingly identical
surprise egg, time is water
      
in a river that drowns itself
in the world ocean and I flow
with it, I can let myself float
      
I don't have to be busy
because that wouldn't make sense
but instead of lazing around
      
I train myself
to watch the sun
the smells in the wind
      
and the driftwood
next to me and among it
the right moment
      
to redirect me a bit
to who I want
to be

Yawn, being sleepy,

I drowse my waking days like --


sleepless, dreamless nights.