Sometimes

Sometimes
at 1am
when you lie in a bed
somewhere
the cars on the highway
sound like
frogs
desperately trying
to mate
sending their desolate
hysterical messages
out
into the cold
into the blue flame of the
night.

The rich are right:
good help is hard to find -

in life
and in sleep
when you curl up in bed
like a hand
cupped
to receive
a few cents
the spittle of gods
or the small handshake
of a long lost
opportunity.

You can see the
spots where
the trees are
missing
while storey high
scaffolds
are swung down from construction sites
by cranes
and the world is
clogged
by fat agitative women
hissing
"Only the Lord!"
at unsuspecting
passersby on
campuses.
"Only the Lord!"
they hiss
waving
greasy books about Christ.

I thought
that was rather
"Only the lonely" ?

Summing up the good things of the Polish Baltic Sea...

Bukowski,
I would have liked you with us
on the beach.

I should have invited you
to come
and sit at a nice desk
in the dunes facing the sea
with a box full of ice
and beer
at your side
watching us running
in amazed slowed down motion
up and down the beach.

Bukowski,
I think you would have liked
this.
finally
there were people
not hurting each other
celebrating
everything they see
and a good deal of things
that can't be seen
at all
as well.

Slowly getting drunk
you
would have joined us
in our childlike
laughter
wishing for less people
some hilarious dog
promenading past us
like an eight-legged
caravan
of ridiculous and festive
beastiality.

You
could have written down
all that our brains
preoccupied
with roaring carnevals
elaborate simplicity
failed to pour into
comprehensive words and sentences.

While we were
tripping
the universe was pinched
just for a few moments
of orchestral
silence
and a giant rock in
space
rolled over in
plangent cheerfulness
dragging
heaps of oceanic
clouds
burning
across a
sky full of mirrors.

Written a day after the concert of the magnificent Dota und die Stadtpiraten.

Dota says
she lives on the upper floor
of that building
and so
the rain reaches her
first.

I have just walked through
the rain
down in the streets
and I must say
it hardly
makes a difference.

There are two kinds of
good poetry
though.
That which
shows you fundamental
things in life.
and that which
shows you all
the little differences.
between the worlds
of hardly
possibly
almost
and
quite so.

Written in between sittings of reading Buk in Golm.

the back of my mind

the back of my mind
should be a garden
to sit
and read
and play ball in.

but it isn't.

my grandmother
should have lived
life
when she still could.

but times were not
like that
and it seems
she
was not like that.

she bade farewell
to
many many
things two or three
decades ago
and now
she thinks
I am a visitor
when I'm at home
having
coffee
and
icecream
with her.

soon
she won't be able
to bid farewell
to anything

because she forgets to.

the back of my mind
should be a garden.

Assignment on the poem of the same name by Gottfried Benn a few years back in a creative writing course.

Notturno

Er hat sich, - oder besser: ist, hingelagert. Quasi quer über zwei Sessel, die Flasche Bier in der ruhenden Hand, das Hemd leicht geöffnet, das Jackett zerknüllt irgendwo unter ihm. Das begann er zu spüren, doch leicht nur. Kein Grund zur Beunruhigung.

Im Nebenzimmer klapperten die Würfel auf den Holztisch, und dann: benachbart, ein Paar im Ansaugestadium. „Ach die ...“ entfuhr es ihm blubbernd in einer Mischung aus Rezitation, Trunkenheit, Erinnerung und Zufriedenheit mit seiner Position, da wo er lag mit geschlossenen Augen, den Kopf im Nacken.

Dieser Ort war geradezu gemacht für ihn und überhaupt. Diese ganze Farbe, die Geräusche sprachen ihn an, dieses ganze gemächliche Gewurschtel und Atmen um ihn herum. Nicht zu viel, nicht zu wenig. Etwas Grün, ein Kastanienast, auf dem Klavier, an dem ein Kerl der angeheuert war irgendwas zu spielen, irgendwas.

Er war nicht betrunken. Ach, gottbewahre! Wenn es ihm nur darum gegangen wäre! Wer trinkt schon Bier hier in diesem Milieu wenn er besoffen sein will! Besoffen ist man, wenn man es nicht mehr ertragen kann. Und manchmal muss man sich auch besaufen, ja, eben nicht trinken, besaufen. Aber hier? Nein, das wäre dann eben nicht mehr zu ertragen gewesen. Aber er war ja gerade hier um es zu ertragen, es erträglich zu finden. Nicht unerträglich, das war etwas ganz anderes, nein nein, aber endlich Daseinsschwund und Seelenausglanz; geht alles unter in Nebulosem und eben auch etwas Alkohol. Da versinken allmählich die Denkprozesse. Und der Brechreiz, der ihn tagsüber wie Seekrank durch die Stunden schlingern lässt.

Das ist kein Feierabend. Das ist sein Bad in der Menge, sein davonschippern in die Nebelbänke. Und es war gut.

Eingehüllt in den Pelz kalter Gedanken über Klavierspieler, Knutschereien und sein nächstes Bier – es würde das dritte sein – spürte er unvermittelt das Hinzutreten von etwas Neuem. Es war die Wärme eines Mannes der sich mit federndem Schritt seiner bequemen Position näherte. Er war gerade erst zur Tür hereingekommen und setzte sich nun in den verbleibenden dritten Sessel am Tisch auf dem allerlei Rauchzeugs ausgebreitet lag.

„Ach Du.“ Verpuffte seine Begrüßung im Salon. Er winkte ab. Das hätte auch er sagen können; wer war eigentlich egal, man merkte es weder, noch erinnerte man sich dessen. Es konnte auch sein, dass er immer schwieg und er immer Begrüßte. Oder umgekehrt.

Bier wurde geordert. Drei. Eins für ihn, zwei für jenen. Er war im Rückstand, zahlen musste er sowieso. Keiner rührte den Tabak an. Aber es war gut, ihn dort liegen zu haben. Man konnte nie wissen, wann man plötzlich rauchen wollte. Dann nicht zu können war müßig, ein Elend. Er schob den Haufen beiseite und lagerte leger seine Beine über den Tisch. Er drehte sich doch eine. Das Bier kam, man fuchtelte Symbolisch dem anderen zu, geschlossenen Auges, trank dann. Hing wieder.

Der Klavierspieler ging austreten. Die Stille fiel auf, man beäugte für einen Augenblick den Ast auf dem Klavier, den Schlüssel der daneben lag und mit dem gerade der Spieler den Tastendeckel abgeschlossen hatte. Das war Vorschrift.

Zurücksinken. Warten auf die Musik. Nippen, erneutes Zutrinken, Abaschen. Immer wieder Abaschen. Dann war sie wieder da, die Musik. Darauf hatte er gewartet.

„Du“ sprach er. Wer war egal - ihnen beiden.

„Mhm“ antwortete es erneut schluckend als Aufforderung, auf die er gewartet hatte.

„Glaubst Du, wir gehen unter?“ Er schwieg. Das gehörte dazu, irgendwie. Man brauchte Zeit sich zu besinnen darüber, was gesagt wurde. Auch vergaß man darüber nicht selten, wer gefragt hatte und antwortete selbst.

„Möglich. Möglich ist alles. Alles nur eine Zeitfrage.“

Ein kurzes Insichhieneinlächeln verband beide. War es das, weshalb sie gekommen waren?

Beide dachten sie das gleiche, das wussten sie. Daher diese wohlige Beliebigkeit. War einer zu faul zum reden, genügte des anderen Rede.

„Zeit? Angesichts von Ozeanen?“

In dem Moment war Ozean das wohl souveränste Wort, das auszudenken war.

Der gefragt hatte schalt sich der Frage wegen. Das hätte er wissen müssen, hatte es gewusst.

„Die waren doch vorher. Vor Bewusstsein und Empfängnis“ Er hatte das Bier zur Seite gestellt um besser mit den Armen gestikulieren zu können. So umsichtig war er.

„Da fischte noch keiner herum nach Ungeheuern. Oder litt tiefer als drei Meter.“

Erneut Getrinke, Geschlucke. Abaschen. Dann eine Pause. Rauchte. Rauchte, drückte die Zigarette aus, bestellte noch zwei Bier, jedem eins. Sagte:

„Und das ist wenig.“

Some assignment I had to do for a Creative Writing course a few years back.

Snow White

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…

Some homework I did a few years ago for a creative writing course. Not perfect, and not meant to be.

A character:

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 ya 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 were on him. These were definitely the wrong people to have conversation with.

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