Domestic Violence

Today, I hit you on the head again.
Without warning, just like that.
Just because you reminded me
as I had asked you.
But I didn't like the message
and you just wouldn't shut up.

I didn't even look at you.
I took a swing and hit you.
Like I didn't care
like you couldn't feel pain.
And your little hands
you held up in defense
didn't help at all.

This was not the first time, I know.
And I know apologies won't help
because every time it happens
you don't listen anymore
you just fall into silent reproach.

Maybe it's your fault, too.
There need to be two for this:
One to hit and one to be hit.
But you just take it, every time.
And one day, you'll break
and I will need to get a new
alarm clock.

The Bullock

Since food is a major topic these days, a gentle reminder of one of life's most vaulable lessons:

Once upon a time there lived a bullock at a farmer’s farm. The bullock suffered for the work he had to do was hard and many a day the bullock had not gotten anything to eat for refusing to work. The bullock lived in a huge barn and chained up he slept on old and misty straw and no one except for a few mice came and talked to him.

One day a hitherto unknown animal appeared in the barn and the mice were never seen again.

The animal was a small snake with colourful skin and sharp green eyes.

“Hullo,” the bullock said, “Who art thou, little fellow?”

“Have thou never heard of me before,” the snake replied astounded, “or are thy eyes that bad?” (And she couldn’t help but think about the meals of bullock meat she would have from soon on.)

“I can see thy face quite well, dear fellow. But may I humbly dare to ask for thy help?“ the bullock said.

“Mayhap, mayhap… but what could a rather small animal like me do for such a gigantic beast like thee?”

“Alas,” said the bullock and his eyes grew bigger in excitement, “I am held captive and I am punished by a fierce and vicious farmer living over there in the red building. I strongly suffer from his tyranny.”

“I understand thy misery, brother,” the snake hissed and her eyes grew bigger in excitement, “What shall I do?”

“I surely can see thy thin tongue darting in and out thy mouth and I can also see those sharp teeth of thee… And so, methinks, thou art quite apt at using thy sharp teeth on the farmer who hath been hitting me all my life long?”

“Sure I am,” said the snake and she quickly glided out of the barn and into the house and bit the farmer. Suffocating from the snake’s poison, the farmer dropped from his chair by the kitchen table and died.

When the snake was back in the barn, she proudly said, “I did what thou asked for, master. Have thou got any further instructions?”

“Ay,” said the bullock kindly. “I told thee about thy beautiful thin tongue that is darting in and out thy mouth. So, as a last service, wouldst thou be so kind to slid thy tongue into the padlock and open my iron chains?”

The snake skilfully used her tongue to open the padlock and slowly the gigantic bullock moved. When he had gotten up – just one second before the snake could bite into the bullock’s left leg, the bullock lifted one of his huge feet – and simply stamped the snake to death.

Moral: Thou shalt not play with thy food…

Becoming a Writer: Picture One

He was one of those experimental writers who have once been hit on the forehead by Hunter S. Thompson and constantly find themselves in the weirdest situations struggling to press at least the tiniest bit of prose from them ever since.

He needed to take a bath, a nap and a meal for about as long as a week but kept running from conferences to cinemas to zoos to schoolyards – always frantically waving his little notebook and pencil around. From time to time he stopped at the stationer’s to buy new pencils since he kept losing them during the course of his trip.

He could have been thirty but maintained himself on a steady 25-year-old-level, always on the safe side. He had wasted away two girlfriends. That was ten years ago. Today, his best friends were his collection of white shirts in his closet along with dark-blue jeans and brown leather shoes. Someone should have told him that brown shoes don’t make it but apparently hadn’t.

The door was open; the typical, boring, deafening music that was usually played at those cocktail-parties to keep people from exchanging too much information worthy to remember any fact of after waking up the next morning poured into the hallway. A drunk, freshly connected couple, giggling and spitting out obscene bits of language to each other rushed past him, stumbled, fell to the floor, crashed down the stairs to the first floor and then apparently started the giggling and spitting again, moving forward and out of the house.

He decided not to put that down. Too weird. Which was weird, as he was actually out to find the weird.

He moved into the flat, instantly trying out several types of grins and smiles, fumbling out the cigarettes he had bought on the other side of the street to hide his nervousness. He took a cocktail of undeterminable sort from a table still full of them and stepped to a bunch of people, who were chattering gaily and consuming large quantities of alcoholic drinks – none of them had a cocktail; it was all whisky, Tequila, and other stuff.

“How’re doin’?” he shouted at them, exchanging his cigarette between mouth and left hand, right hand and mouth, dropping the cocktail, putting the cigarette back to his left hand and up to his – well, he was actually hitting his nose with it. Unfortunately, everybody had seen both the dropping and hitting. Nobody laughed. All eyes on him. These were definitely the wrong people to have a casual conversation with.

“Great. Who are you?” a 45 year old giant moustache asked.

Snow White

It's Christmas, I'm told, and so I remembered  that I had written a piece that at least had Snow in it somewhere. So here goes:

My name does not matter. Also, I will not give you any other names or telephone numbers. – Nah, stop! Stop it. Please shut down that camera. I don’t want that. OK. Now I can speak. What I have to tell you is going to be hard to believe, but it’s true. By god it is. Well, the girl you call “Snow White” was on H and Crack. Heavily. During the time she stayed with us in our house, she received her dose every day from a messenger, an old woman. Aw, those pushers are so ugly. I seen them when I had to go back to the house to fetch a lamp while my men were out to work. From the moment I saw that she bought drugs from that whore, I observed them every day. In the end, she nearly died from an overdose. She broke down, anorexic and white-skinned as she was, and fell into a coma. We all thought that she was dead, though. So we put her into that huge tupper-ware box we used to put our hunted animals in and carried it to the graveyard. One of us stumbled and so we crashed the whole thing onto the ground. Some pervert sprang from the bushes to get a glimpse at the corpse. But she wasn’t dead after all. She woke up and was dragged away by the pervert. Actually, it’s much nicer at home since that drug addict doesn’t sell all the furniture anymore…

An end of nothing

I took a walk through the furniture of boredom.

above a crow cried "harm!" as fog horns led us astray

and I know: it's all been so long.

(Ich gehe als heiliger Hund durch:

geh her

komm weg)

now I can sit meaningfully at the bottom of 

my urbanly confused heart:

this judgemental mammal speaking of infinites

but unable to talk to you.

This antediluvian geologist

This antediluvian geologist has left his circus tent
to seek companionship.
The Fellaheen of Cape Fear await him
to flash mob his distant past.

In the morning he awakens
and finds he has crossed a perilous bridge
and that he has shot his love
with love
and that this enemy
cannot be fought with cutlery
nor politics.

All he wanted was her
and since she was not available
he chose trouble.

O.

When your train pulled into the station
I should have known: you never intended to stop:

You break things you never wanted to buy
You threaten to look at me with unsure eyes
ready to accuse me of accusing you
but I couldn't wait to have my heart broken, could I?

You were the noise in the attic of my heart at night.
I thought there was something.

But there was nothing.

Ambient (rhythmical)

So there we are
late
meeting under large clocks
and having fun on staircases.

We learn a lot.
Like how old we are
and what we like
and that Craig Daniel shits standing up.

I didn't see your train coming
but I sure did hear you pull into the station.

As I looked up into the sky tonight

As I looked up into the sky tonight
I saw the moon falling
the stars ceased their eternal chatter
darkness choked with terror
and a plane that happened to fly near
stopped abruptly to exist.

Earth gave up orbiting the sun
it didn't matter anyway
the planets murmured shattered devastated weary
life was rendered meaningless
reason went bezerk
sense went mad, laughing at itself
meaning shot its head
what for, what's all that for?
when we stopped talking
silence
won.

Fundament

fundament

fleeing from future festivities
we're frequently fraught with fright,
should find fighting foolish.

forgive friends their follies,
for the flash of freedom
is not forever.

A shady vehicle

A shady vehicle

I found the perfect song
against the unknown monster.

It's a slow waltz out of focus
into different layers
with a different palette
and a firm but melancholic chorus
with brass and drums and tambourines
all blaring at once
to send the traveller off.

The unknown monster lies in its art
like the baby in its cradle,

but I'm sure
autumn shifts cloudy trees
just to let the sun shine on the lonely traveller.

Epiphanies

This hasn’t exactly been a very productive day. The time had been passing slowly and chewed off a fair bit of his will to live. I make it sound more horrible than it was, right? Right.

It’s just work. Now he’s home and has a beer, presumably. Or two, more likely. That’s the official dose to cope with things each day. Is that alcoholism? I suppose. When he left home this morning, things looked drabber than yesterday. Is that pessimism? I suppose.

The people on the tube had minded their own business. That’s where it starts. We look at people who read shitty newspapers, play Sudoku, listen to music. And we already phrase all that as being ‘business.’ That’s right in a way, though. It’s not, presumably, what they’d do if they weren’t headed for work. They’d sit in their homes, read another shitty newspaper, have their grey breakfasts and have the telly running at the same time, instead. Then they’d do the dishes, or have their children do them after winning the argument over that again. Then, they’d clean the garage or do the laundry. Or both. Then they’d yell at their children some more. Or at their neighbours.

Mhm. Sounds like business to me, too. Maybe going to work and be yelled at by their bosses is what keeps them sane. Relatively.

Or not. How am I supposed to know? I’m just a shitty newspaper.

Tried this 5min writing/5min editing thing. Came up with some pretty dark lines on alcoholism and work. Not sure why. I've had better ideas on the loo than this in front of my laptop. Maybe I should write on the loo.

PS: changed the 5min/5min rule to writing while listening to Pole - Lurch (amphibian) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmaZQNLwRzs) and editing while listening to Pole - Moos (moss) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es8R-180Eq4)

I have a ticket but still no answers

I have a ticket but still no answers

Summer was like
wearing brown sunglasses and
squinting into the sun
to the quiet sound of goodbye's and hello's

It left just yesterday
and I was so vulnerable before it
that part of me went with it

Summer's deliciousness won't return, I know
and coming home,
I feel an entire season has gone
like returning from the rest room
you find your date has left

Still there is this voice from somewhere
claiming
that the stars lie within reason

but most of the time we
just can't be bothered

On a decision

On a decision

We cling to the silly details in life
and stand in wonder waiting for the airplanes
to dry: the airport is closed because
the planes needed to be washed.

We cling to the silly details in life
and shiver, breathlessly
as we but slowly realise that the signs
were right: there are no hard shoulders along
this road right to the end.

We cling to the silly details in life
and so you ask me blatantly
do I want my stuff sent
and thus never see you again
or meet up and talk.

Apparently, there is no difference
between life and tea.

It's either black or white.

The emotion that almost startles, as if happiness had failed

The emotion that almost startles, as if happiness had failed

This southern gentleman in a yellow suit

passes me by in Westminster

mumbling “njenjenjenjenje” and looking me directly

in the eye.

People do that.

I think he’s an idiot

playing a different kind of idiot

and I really think it doesn’t

take one to know one.

Meanwhile, the child’s kite flies

as it skips rope down the street

and I laugh

into the pillow of my unbelievable luck.

Holding a Door

Holding a Door

Sometimes you actually see the ripples and waves
but most of the time you just feel them like
some slurry handwriting or
a language you've not yet fully figured out.

But you

you walked in a straight line
until you hit the shadows
and I guess you've just dropped by to
deceive me.

- Well then, we may just as well go and
eat molluscs.

Circled by bums in the park reading
quality newspapers, drinking the magnetism of words

my fake casio watch tells the hours as
we arrive.

But the galleries are empty
selling their cold expensive gaze into
the empty face of the past
and it's hard to tell exactly what's the merit in all of this.

But we all know
the sky's full of stars
even when the sun is shining.

A way of thinking

A way of thinking

I met earth-faring people
and even though their dragon wouldn't fly
they reminded me to take my trade elsewhere.
And so I did.

I like to think
that we're all having a ball
considering that there are so many of them
floating down the River Thames.

And I guess life
it sometimes really is this
sudden fish of light
too friendly to really go against the currents.

But that's only one way of thinking about it.

Whistlejacket, or A Step Onto the Green

True story...

Whistlejacket, or A Step Onto the Green

One day the shyer decided to take to the roads.

And it walked through the streets,
smiled upon by a buddhist monk,
like a middle aged man
with thin hair under
placards selling hair transplants
its mind moving like a beggar
in the garden of St. Paul's
or an orthodox Jew
climbing through the windows
of one tube waggon
to another
finding nothing
but small
paper planes,
ready to fly
but not
able to.

Reaching the river
its bones looked human,
but who could truly tell,
and its teeth gently
scattered over the beach next to
a glove it would never put to use

And half talking to itself
and half to the artist
sitting nearby in a wheelchair
it stood and mused:

I should take up meditation.
Otherwise
I will always stay a fresh
and complicated fool.

Two hundred meters away from a beautiful life

Two hundred meters away from a beautiful life

This modern temple of worship
these masses of viscid fluttering
gawking at dead aegyptians
laying on display.

Neatly assembled
hordes of female semi-fainting
standing in doorways
undecided which door to
block next.

Hives of asians and french
these dances in flocks
around the most prominent
artifacts yelling
yelling yelling yelling
always this yelling
a synchronised concerto of dissonance.

(And you just want to
yell "stop yelling!" but
that would probably
kill the irony budget
for a year.)

All taking pictures
with screaming flashes
and silly handclap sounds
so as to blind and deafen
the past and the living.

I flee to Picasso...
the people are calm
the flashes turned off
the paths are open
and so it seems
even in the face of
Picasso, Goya, Rembrandt
for many:

the corpses win.

A couple at the national gallery

A couple at the national gallery

There is a couple actually
      fighting
in the national gallery

     she hits him
     he hits her
in play
     she hits him
     he hits her
a little less in play

     so she hits him
in earnest
and he gets up
and leaves
and looks at
     art.

The Interior of the Buurkerk at Utrecht

Upon learning of the common practice of adding figures and details to other people's paintings. (If someone should try this, however, today and think, perhaps, that this Titian needs another apple in the corner or another branch on that shrubbery, it is likely he or she would be taken down in a second, no matter how well his or her command of the subject...)


The Interior of the Buurkerk at Utrecht

This is the center of time
or maybe just
a
center.
Or maybe just

time

throwing ripples of paint and air
in front of our very eyes.
Frozen that it is we
hurry past it
as we always do.

Thousands of years apart
apes, really
found paintings of each other
in torchlit caves
after slaying the tigers and bears
at the entrance.

And they take their torches and continue
what others have started
thousands of years ago
scratching buffalos next to antilopes
long extinct.

We don't slay tigers
nor bears
to get to see these. We
get to see these
for free

and so we hurry past
the mortal sights
created hundreds of years ago
by apes, really
some hundred years apart.

We're apes,
really.

The Peace of Tea (slight nod southwards)

There was actual sunshine today - if only until the time I was leaving work again towards where I stay... I wonder why the immortal umbrella hasn't been accepted to the British ranks of national insignia by now... Glasses have some time in the late 20th century entered the realms of hip Prêt-à-porter catalogs of the western world - the last 50 years seem unthinkable without everybody's face being hidden by Ray-Bans... It's a mystery why the united hipsters of London haven't established the umbrella as an iconic must-have of even sunny days. Maybe that'd be too close to the not-so-hip sickly panache of Gothics...
Speaking of which... Having tea with a British MP in the atrium of Portcullis House (opposite of Big Ben - hence the impudent segue) is at the same time very entertaining, peaceful (as he's paying), surrealistic, and challenging (as he's not speaking very slowly, is he...). So, what seems to be a walk in the park (with some police with automatic rifles added to the mix) was also a high-speed dance (you don't know the music and the steps to) with an electrically charged Tory who constantly throws kitchen sinks at you.
I shall now take to some Brown Ale and let the evening run its course - after all: having repaired the fixture of the shower, what could go wrong?

Bullshit

Reading the Guardian today... The Archbishop of soandso is not convinced if women should be allowed to become bishops...(Meanwhile the pope sues a German satirical magazine for depicting him with a yellow stain on his robe with the headline "the leaky spot's been found"...)

I'm being told, the women complain about not being allowed the same status and audience to tell bullshit to. It has come to this. And only to this. They don't stand up and demand an end to all bullshit, or at least an end to some parts of bullshit. Bullshit for all. Bullshit for all ethnicities, for every age, bullshit in all languages and on all continents. This brand of bullshit is unstoppable. The Giant's Causeway: Created a few thousand years ago. So they tell you in the local museum. Cos that is what enough people believe. Apparently, that's all what's needed to produce official bullshit. Enough people who know not but believe something and retain the right to spread it everywhere they go. This may sound like arrogant assholery. That may be a technical part of it. But I'm not roaming the streets yelling at strangers to not believe bullshit - whether it's announced by male, female, black, white, rich or television people. I just retain the right to say it's bullshit. What a nice word that is. Bullshit. We've all got it, but some have a special copyright on it. And you know how copyrights are... Some people will always try to break into them and others will hysterically wave their arms and scream that they're the only ones allowed to spread that special kind of bullshit. In any case, it's just that: bullshit. Should make you think. But that's another kind of copyright, right?