YEAR OF THE BMW ISETTA 600 - MAN MüSSTE! - MOTORISIERT SEIN

at night you came and tucked me in/ the linen smelled of four kinds of lavender/ in the morning, on a plate/ you had prepared several [✚]/ and poured a glass of [✠✠✠]/ in school, all through the day/ we studied boredom and escape/ fantasied heightened states of boredom/ drowsy apparitions dressed in pastel aprons throwing many-colored confetti into a pond with great detachment/ we closed our eyes and listened to cars/ we named everything, karla, michael, günther, haus, bahn/ in the afternoons we hurried home to dinners and green jello/ naming every house on the way [♜]/ later in the evening we would sit around the open window/ and wait for the meteor to happen/ wait for mum to open the umbrella indoors so that the singing would begin/ the little hint of a moon being created/ just before the day ended/ in [✈✈✈]/ and the metal twisting the little babies to sleep/

READ THE INSIDE OF MY LIPS

i have been expecting a letter for three years. that a telephone would ring, or that someone would break down the door. explain what has transpired. today, on the hottest day of the year, a card arrives: "seasonal greetings to you and your family, merry christmas and a happy new year!" it is the first of october. my heart tastes of marzipan. the swans let go of their buds, all at once. i watch them trickle uselessly towards a depression in the middle of the floor. towards the stalls. in line, like black or dark berries on a straw. the postman approaches the jukebox a third time. picking songs exclusively at a very high decibel level. whole lotta rosie is played twice. it is impossible to determine whether or not he is improvising or actually knows the lyrics to the different songs. singing swans. bull frogs skipping the counter.  mermaids. eye lids like juicy scrolls. a tattoo reads: "carpe noctem". it's christmas time again. i am close to finding you. 

HUMMINGBIRDS AND WOLVES

watching "under the volcano" in 2012/ is supposedly different than delving into it in 1984/ or 1947/ or all the same/ depending on what lurks under the volcano/ depending on in what street you encounter the corpse of albert finney/ then malcolm lowry/ grasping at an enclosed letter at the end of a service line/ deliriously going at the last drops of tequila before the mezcal/ wanting a love able to forgive the love that went away/ then a glimpse of Cain in an alleyway commiting suicide before laying hands on his brother/ then the tired explorer intrepidly darting into a newly opened void to catch the last flicker of light before its totality/ like the vulcanologist at Mt. St. Helens would delight in a cup of coffee an early morning of May, 1980/ just before the landscape was changed forever/ a flame that would treat everything like tinders/ ruthlessly go at it until total turmoil/ lay everything out as new/ waiting to be renamed/ forcing the question: if a white horse leaps in the night and no one is around to see it/ how can you learn how to ride/ 

NDRSTNDNG NTHNGNSS AS BRDM


un-accidental/ bugs are self-injecting poisonous retorts/ leaving their shells to dry in the sun/ self-hypnotised/ then hoovered into space/ by the single breath of a stealth god/ bug god/ trying to exit itself too/ by re-entering a surprising entity/ causing a stir/ by mere apparition/ then blaming other forces, saying:/ i burn without guilt/ oh yes, the first movement was mine/ but when we danced you insisted on taking the lead/

  first through worship/

  then through dependency/

and now you turn away/ and want to condemn me/ for having drawn my breath a single time/

  the paradise boys are peeping through the shutters/

  the paradise girls are glancing into a made up distance/

who shall care as i grow older/ guide me down the stairs in the midst of night/ ease my worries as i draw towards an end/ as the light that is my own/ becomes a dampened glow in a municipal corridor/ in a house undiscovered/ who shall dare to remain/ and recite elegies to celebrate my originality/ and selflessness/ honor my memory with select words to accompany the cries/ as my coffin, if it will exist/ is lowered into the dirt, if it will exist/ to be covered with more dirt - undeniably non-existenst -/ as the sorrow, if it can exist/ springs out like a flower/ near a tombstone that is my own, if it can exist/ still warm inside an icecube of used-to-be/ who shall tell me of gods/ sacrifice and piety/ and forgiveness/

  my body/

  my body/

  the hot sands/

  the paradise boys are doubting their second chance/

  the paradise girls are moving out/

DNMRK ENDLOS

in Denmark

tanks are driving

backwards

over the plains of history

21 year old corporals

and field lieutenants

enter unpatented time machines

with wanton hopes

of love and promotion

only to dry up years earlier

in a pool of sperm

somewhere in Schleswig-Holstein

that would never make it

ONLY CENTURIES AWAY:

shall we not continue then/ is it not up to us/ to stake out a course/ and define the territory/

shall we not navigate and find our way then/ on and through and by way of each other/ by what we know/ and accept/ from that which we blindly trust/ to that which we fully love/

by way of non-descript star systems on white breasts/ watery beads on a spring day/ dripping into oblivion/ or condensating into hot air/ into hot universes/ observed for milliseconds only/ by an astronomer's gaze as he peers out of the bushes/ time enough for a few constellations to be bashfully known/ but not enough for any to be named/

to mark a trajectory on a sleeping belly/ strewn with foxes hair/ masquerading the advance of miraculously light fingers/ tangentially tippity-toeing along the untended barricades/ into the midst of the den/

and on a freckled summer's day/ draw a line from above-closed-eyes forehead/ to the soft valley of a venetian landscape/ where trying fingers thread the waters like inexperienced gondoliers/

shall we not continue to pursue each other then/ under light paper blankets of summer/ under crisp duvets of autumn time/ under furry skins of mammoth and bison in winter/ and rustle with anticipation in a squirrel's nut shell in spring/

shall we not ignite with promises/ on the longest day of the year/ by seas or lakes/ wiping crawfish juice and tears of joy from chins with soggy napkins/ watching seals, seagulls and ducks/ and wide varieties of made-up creatures/ contemplate somersaults/ in the sparkling, watery distance/

shall our unbridled self-involvement not lead us then/ to forget about SCUD rockets and covert operations/ drone attacks/ and UN forces forever standing idly by/

shall we not be so wonderfully selfish then/ as to carve a diamond cave in an unchartered territory/ to settle down there/ and incubate and cultivate tiny wonders privately/

shall we not sit by the hot stone in winter/ and count the numbers of wonders and apparitions since having first met/

shall we not count the hours of peace before nightfall/

shall we not draw a line from the end of one tiny nose/ to the end of another tiny nose/ making it impossible not to fixate/ to have gazes locked on above-nasal area/ the concentrated superhighway of lust and desire/

should our world not stay congested then/ so that it would always have to be blasted wide open/ always had to be sprung out/ like an italian mobster in a much too tiny cell/ if for nothing else/ so that there may be an open space/ where the laundry can be hung out to dry/  

KILL THE BODY THE HEAD WILL DIE

1.

end game

right at the beginning

the rejection of progress

i have only crossed the atlantic once

but i have invented lightning bolts

a presidential chess board

with chiefs of staff

constantly pushing for 1 e4

we have met in parking lots

and pawn shops

got arrested on the 4th of july

slept in tiger skin

and worried about our hair

bill clinton has a time machine

and plays another remis

tomorrow's papers was written a long time ago

2.

you want cities to exist

that have never existed

filled with people

never moving

out of houses unbuilt

on streets ungridded

spassky standing on a plain

surrounded by four volcanoes

where something scientological has just happened

3.

what is levitation

what is beyond the curtain

when does the performance end

4.

(questions to bobby fischer, age 15)

can you make a move

that will take you somewhere

you can not anticipate

is it possible

to stay one step

ahead of yourself

5.

i live in a house shaped as a rook

all my games are real 

mother

Ω  ≤  †

and delilah stands on the corner/ thinking/ "should i"/ "should i not"/ tattoo/ "born to rave"/ over my chest/ in wingdings/


throwing her hair/ so that it blankets her cold breasts/ she rests a worn leather purse on her surrendered hips/


it is mannheim by speed of light/ and time is taking a taxi home/ playing tracks 1-12/ from "verschiedene hits"/ on a broken reel to reel dome/

HALFWAY THERE POEM


i searched again/ half-remembering for what/ half-searching for what i half-remembered/ not knowing if i half-knew where i was/ or if that other part of remembrance/ that is not half-forgotten/ can be half-remembered too/ i know little more/ than the little i have known all along/ that whatever i search for/ will only be half-known too/ a lifespan was spent on this/ strutting a rubber chest/ being half-tickled by half-loving fingers/ half sent to sleep by touches half sleep inducing/ most often a face behind the touch/ and a mouth/ opening, spitting and gargling/ in bathrooms long since darkened/ celebratory gestures then perhaps/ performed by a group of dismembered beings/ proud stubs performing tricks/ maybe not for want of pennies/ but more so for being more than half-remembered/ most often some parting favors in the halls/ phantom limbs to hold and hit/ phantom shouts and phantom spit/

halves of halves/ and phantoms lacking phantom grace/

a room then, later/ half-different or entirely forgotten/ with someone/ who out of respect for a semi-conducted itinerary/ sits half-arranged by a desk/ half-reading or at least half-pretending to/ in a book no more than half-important/ when something looking fully remembered/ erupts and runs the crest of a wave of an incoming frown/ mustering a look of surprise on cue/ until the curtains fall over half of a half-invented mind/ heckled he thinks/ by trained monkeys half left behind/ 

THE BEAUTY TAPES: FIELD RECORDING

Reshape. Downscale. Upsize. Scrawn. Yawn. Selective cut-outs of random material. Cityscape. Commotion. Angels lifting off from central square historic statue, throwing up and shitting mid-air to fully cover an austere and generic general of some non-descript army completely. Vomit birds of paradise. Streets clad in afterbirth. Layers of blood turning grey in slow innercity exhaust coagulation. Pipe. Light. Bucket. Miss. Trickle down into obscurity in some underground sewer system. No raves this week. Inpromptu techno parties up ahead. Moog synthesizer bedding. The sorrowful leniency shown towards someone who tries to pass on a quote from "Mein Kampf" while not actually having read the book. The sad itinerary of a bum who has had his shopping cart stolen. The milky thigh of a underdressed teenager moments before she pees herself. Light-wing. Left behind-wing. Condolences. Regurgitation. Silences. Succulence. The narcissistic claim to violence upheld by the aristocracy. Impatience. Impotence. Government-supported governments. Endless. End. Less.   

MORNING BREAKS IN MEDIEVAL LIVERPOOL

Gas station. Man in long overcoat. Rotating advertisements. Candy wrappers taking the place of non-existent gas station tumbleweeds. A second man in long overcoat tries to enter through the now decommissioned sliding doors, remains immobile outside, not pacing. First man in overcoat turns, reveals an object, presumably a shotgun or a bouquet of flowers. «Schadenfreude.» They both speculate on this failing sense of recognition. The sausages grow cold. Wasn't there a woman? An attendant? Someone shouts from either inside or outside the gas station: «Tristan da Cunha!» One of the men turns around. One of the men turns turns around. There is the sound of a large bell. And water flushing. Traffic. Tornadoes. Just before opening hours.

STEP IN YOUR SPRING

Spring is an enforcement of well-being. Crude, unrefined wellness shoots out like clogged marbles from a high-powered water hose, spurting out in beautiful black and white only to crown it's trajectory with rude rainbows of crystalline colors. Houses, so happily lived in through winter, are abandoned to the grey interior of their plattenbauch, slowly turning cannibalistic with corroding(Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English < Middle French < Latin corrōdere, to gnaw to pieces, equivalent to cor- cor- + rōdere to gnaw; akin to rodent) slow-motion frenzy. Flowers are catapulted out of dog piss sanctuaries. Grass returns to cover it's own grave. Out of shame perhaps, trees slip into insect-ridden night gowns. The skies once more spread their legs onto the infinity of a universal black pussy.

Then people,

1918

how about that time, that other place

a time we didn't know

a time in which we wasted time we didn't have

on streets not yet invented

or named

after state leaders that had yet to die

that city, a book

see it while away on yellowing paper

untrained in the art of flaunting it's pages

to the flirtacious eyes of a reader

desperate

to be persuaded into an affair

the libraries go hungry

the same libraries

we trained in verse

they lend their arms to the sick

and desireless

against an annuity

consisting only of parts of their non-longing

lions without lion tamers

and no knowledge

of how to go wild

jennie, the vanishing elephant

resurfaces at the far end of sonnenallee

replacing a gasping audience in the hippodrome

with a complacent pack of eurotravelers

outside the estrel hotel

grasping a disparate selection of german beers

with one hand

and applying the second for applause

the diary entries from that day all read:

«dear diary, we won»

PHANTOM LIMBO

what to say, really, when you're thinking about what to say

as someone enters, forcing the question:

«what to say»

i say i am happy, but don't know that i am happy

i say i understand, but don't know if i understand

i say i am puzzled, and i know i am puzzled, because no one who is not puzzled would be able to write:

«i say i am puzzled»

there must be a dungeon in my body, or a dungeon in what i claim to be my body

i know little of my heart

I know little of the mythology to which it belongs, physical or metaphysical

from the hands of a ten year old with a crayon it looks a certain way

from the hands of a coroner, carefully placing it in a plastic container filled with ice, it looks a certain way

i have learned to accept both

my heart has two dimensions

my brain invariably looks the same

never sketched or aesthetically mutilated on the walls of a red bike shed, where some unclassifiable characters are ceaselessly drawing blood, kissing, or finding individual ways of accepting the torment of not being able to not be able to smoke cigarettes, correctly

«now i smoke cigarettes correctly»

can i say that

you make me think of a time when i knew i was beautiful, like flowers are beautiful, and also handsome, but not like flowers are handsome

i want to write you something beautiful, but i barely know you

how can you write something beautiful to someone you barely know

should i base it on how i feel

i write

«i feel heavenly»

does that make you feel beautiful

the way i want you to feel beautiful

does my effort in making you feel beautiful, make me beautiful, like handsome men are beautiful, before they turn into flowers by their own design, corporeal confusion wrapped in delicate paper

would you say

«you are beautiful»

the same way i would say

«you are beautiful»

and, it being said, will we turn beautiful, as in

«we are beautiful»

the pair of us, wondering what to say next, thinking we must already have said it

all

not being able, or willing, to bring it outside this immanent vortex of brilliantly timeless unification

we proceed to write on ourselves, with rainbow-colored fingertips, writing multitudes of stories, newly ancient scrolls that go splendidly unnoticed

only later observed as typhoonic shots of joy on an amazingly changing sky

within each freckle, tales of dynasties

south of a scar, the intimacy of a hundred years of togetherness

then drawing

carefully crafted lines with paleolithic efficency, cumbersome, yet classy curves, filling every single unoccupied stretch of skin with spellbinding marvels, proudly showcasing the improbability of a lover and a lover, and their love, looking something like a tablet found on a holy mountain

over and over

and surprisingly

on the wall of an inhabited or uninhabited cave

us then

depicted as two buffalos asleep on a hot stone

DON'T BE LONG

we make our way home

after the storm

and talk to our families

on a multitude of singing cell phones

explain

how late we are

and how many hours we spent waiting

at the railroad stations in Skövde

or Hallsberg

for the trains to run as normal

we talk about the power outage on boxing day

how many hours it lasted

and how much fun we had

looking for matches and candles

and how we then chatted for hours

until our flickering faces made us drowsy

and that there was something there

tugging at us

pulling at someone in us

we didn't remember or recognise

someone rising east of a non-descript childhood

into a calendar year

marked with sticky crayons

on a chequered almanac

we miss you so much we say

and elaborate on how wonderful it will be

to be home again

that we didn't fully realise before

but get it now

and that we are coming to be with you

for forever

we think

in the conversational pauses

where we look out the windows

on trees speeding past in snowless greens

with the sun skipping bravely

over all the low branches

in the pauses

where the childs laughter fill the carriage

from having successfully drawn a turtle

GOD BLESS GOD

i target / tar got/ and forget / something i have already forgot/

missile strikes / in paramilitary suicide cells/

missile strikes / at BAE systems / london, england

mirages in an age of mirrors/

reflections in the air / air in the reflections/ breath of fresh /

artists wanting manifestos / and not the opposite /

folded hands and beggars caps / entering the poet's office/

and not the opposite / the next dada king / or anything /

but never again boring / again / wintering /

out of season / the poet speaks and murmurs both /

murmurs more than speak a lot / witness comme finesse /

and claim success / refined distress / sing your praise /

with a prayer of songs / applicate and reproduce /

replicate and reduce / kiss the frog and frolic /

god bless / bless god /

lest she forget / what she has already forgot /

THE LEOPARD AND THE GOAT

to let you know

that i think you are perfect

i call you up late one night

when i know you are sleeping

and talk at length

about your imperfections

as i listen to you listen

as i talk

i know

how glad you must be right now

that we never have to pretend differently

again

that your faults and your inability

of pertaining static properties

is really the root

of us

ever changing into someone

we will not be afraid to lose

into someone we never have to be again

as i listen to you listen

as i accentuate the force

of our agreeable non-agreement

by telling parables of how a bicycle

can never retain the same wheels once

they are changed

or how a government can never reconstitute

the vigor of the ideas it was originally founded upon

once it is in decline

you decide to prove your love to me

some 5-10 minutes ago

by having already

quietly hung up the phone

LET´S Go

when history grows stupendous/

we shall climb into her/ this other

history/ like a celebratory

infestation/

with no movements/

or actions/

a cluster of arms/

holding on to a cluster of bodies/

ourobourically dissolving each other/

in an endless series/ of final

embraces/

nothing to annihilate/ but annihilation/

a new skin will cover our fingers/ legs/

chest/ head/ until all is coccoonified/

when we burst/ our new skin/ will travel/

down every branch of the family tree/

and erect a statue at the roots/ free

of commands/

my new skin/ i see it as a sail/ is strung

between the unfinished framework/ of two

neighboring buildings/ where

i inhabit the one/ and soon

the other

ATTACK OF THE PACT

having finally finished my reading of Deleuze/ I sat down

on a patch of exterminated cockroaches/ and waited for Deleuze

to finish his reading of me

I LOVE DUST

we are taking turns

getting rid of me

I am nothing

solar flares

extinguished

on a cold forehead

twenty days or so

before

one of the Kennedys are assassinated

history doesn´t approve of redundancy

yet

so many of it´s followers

will never be remembered

just can't get no satisfraction

i turned baroque

in the middle of a sentence

where you

were supposed to cut me off

so now

i'm reading up on

literary time periods

and later

when i find your number

i will call you

from a poem about a telephone

written by john donne

RE(pro)DUCTION

dive into the blue light

borrow my dreams

let's get stuck together

and chuckle

at our human upholstery