Of Faith

Signs are not divine

They are put up by the local municipal council.

Let that be  a lesson

To every believer.   

There is no certainity of heaven

or hell.

Only of democracy.

And sometimes, poetry.

Paris

Here, where only doors

Open and close

All is strange.

I hear through the walls

Sirens. For we are the children

Of science. We defy death

And live on our own.

Taunting laughter

Voices voices voices

Now loud, now soft

As someone makes love in the distance

I listen.

Meanwhile, doors open and close

Forever.

Among long corridors.

I see the street below

With its zebra stripes

And its elephant skin

And machines roaring

And chirping

Dreadul parrots.

Still the doors open and close

And latches click shut.

Soon it grows dark

The sun abandons us

Careless lover

Moving to other planets

Other bodies

While they only open doors

And shut them

As I listen.

Deprived of sight

By blinding light

I only smell

Fish and meat.

In this city of cannibals

I am no Tiresias.

More doors open and shut

And echo in the silence.

The day completes its loop

And I am locked out

Like always

Like I was there,

I am here too, a stranger.

Among a strange people.

And forever the doors open

And close.

And I hear.

Rituals

In the evening

The lights come on

As darkness appears

And we silently make our way home

For in the evening that is what one must do

That is what our fathers did

And before that the caveman that hunted in the forest.

That is what they said we must do

Because,

 because then everything remains normal

The T.V. blares on

While we make dinner

‘How was your day?’

Conversation

To fill the silence

While we pick at animals

With forks and knives

And pretend we’re civilized.

And eat neatly cut vegetables and leaves

Homo erectus in silk and cotton

These rituals

Are life.

Silence

I fill yellowed paper

With blackened silence.

There was a time

When I ejected words

Mass produced, industrialized and cheap.

In plastic. And well packaged

so that they wouldn’t break

An adolescent obsession

Don’t we all love to write

some poetry? Sign our name

On paper. So that we exist, at last.

Yes, there was a time

When I poured out meaningless words

With pleasure and pride.

With inspiration. And now

I fill

Yellowed paper

With a grim silence

Songs of Monsoon

This muddy water

The illegitimate child of rain

It flows in shameless rivulets

Twisty, tricky filaments

And finally a swirling pool of filth

Blinks at me.

The Dance of the Moon

Dance, O moon, in thy eerie light
Thou art the slayer and
The cadaver, languid and stout.
Trapped in celestial shadows,
Dance thy ritual dance!

Thou art a mere malnourished balloon
Sliding into a sickle, like a chameleon
Dancing itself to death
O virile goddess of the dark!
Dance thy ritual dance.

Regard thy silver blood
Droppings suspended in a vacuum
Mother to imperfection, in feminine frailty
O crooked pillow of the dark!
Dance thy ritual dance.


O double dealing moon
Promising salvation and immortal perdition
Like thy earthly brothers
O Sisyphus of the heavens
Dance thy ritual dance!

Huis Clos

I
Now the thunder strikes, now the lightning
And clouds waltz untamed
His quiet from drifts gaudily
His life still unclaimed.

His hair hangs limply in the stale air
His pupils, in constant motion
His fingers like stabbing knives
He smells of death and poison.

Now on a filthy mat he lies
His breath comes out in a groan
The last days dripping down
Death is not unknown.

Those shadows on the wall
Reeking of ancient scorn
Strange memories hang on nails
Plastic and paper he mourns.

Monstrous mirrors shine on him
Vulgar secrets lurk from behind
His wrinkled spirit flickers ahead
He lingers alone to the end.



II
The fantasies of the soul
Are lost in the mists of time
She looks back,
Searching beauty
Seeing only turmoil
A heart shattered, a mind wild
Eyes, made mild
Strangled memories haunt her now.

Eyes fading, life
Vanishing. Furrowed memories
Sleeping
Inside the ugly mouth.
The past laughs, mockingly
The future beckons, menacingly
The present rests, maliciously
There is no escape, cackle the dead.

Her egg shell heart, with its crack
Her soul, gaunt and hollow
The deep shadows beneath her eyes
Hands frail, quivering
Search for the cruel perpetrator
“Wake up!” they shriek to the world
Mere bitterness echoes
A grotesque silence.