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?

Bridging thoughts of departure and arrival

Old Street

Somebody must have started it
a while back
like, a while of a few million years back
(or just a few thousand, depending on how much
you listen to your preacher).

One ape
or Adam
or Eve
must've taken his
or her
anger at somebody else
instead of swallowing that hate
or working on it or telling it to
some sympathetic mountain.

There must've been some deer
(or dinosaurs)
around
(depending on how much
you listen to your preacher).
But it had to be that other guy.

That started it.
That started it all.

You see
we've all got
our personal anger.
I don't need yours
you don't need mine.

Passing it on to somebody else
just means to multiply it.
To keep kicking over
one more of an
endless number of
dominos.

You yell at a stranger.
Another stranger will someday
spit in the face of your
mother.

I am no hippie.
Being nice to that one stranger
won't keep that other one
from spitting.

But it's odd.
Being nice to strangers
does feel alright.
(No matter what your preacher says.)

On the way to wonderland

On the way to wonderland

I don't understand
but the hunched over
homeless
lady in the wheelchair
on my train
surely tries
to solve the riddles
of why that
other woman
in the streets started to
cry
helplessly
just like that
and hasn't
stopped
yet.

She'll fail
probably;

Crying is too
complex.

(but then again
maybe
this one homeless
lady
knows it all.)

I think
in any case
she knows
of small dogs
barking
at smiling girls
who sell
charity newspapers.

I think
she knows
about this small
thing
inside of me
I like to call
brain.

I think she knows
that it fails
too,

and that meanwhile
punks
beatify
academics
with a swift
sleight
of hand

and the
crossword puzzle
in her shaky hands
is nearly
finished.

But
just why that
woman
in the streets
started to
cry
helplessly
and hasn't stopped
since
we'll never know.