BODYCOUNT DRACULA

what comes after the bodies have looked at the bodies/ and decided that the bodies just look like bodies/ one body says to another; hey that's my body/ all the bodies turn to respond; go figure/ where will we pile up/ and why will we pile up/ i spent 84 years building a powerhouse body/ secured against company/ and disintegration/ why must it then be thrown on top of the others/ and what about my shyness/ and what about their fear/ 

RE-QUIT ALL

why fishermen would even use gondolas/ is not the first thing that makes you apprehensive/ nor that they keep dragging up half-decomposed bodies/ squirting out colors as if trying out/ for a francis bacon painting/ or that the gondolas are adrift on a sea

not noticeable as a sea/ unless you find it appropriate to keep calling a sea/ with no water in it, a sea/ but as it becomes clear that you are watching this/ not from underneath the jagged loggias/ with a sandwich in your hand/ but from the bottom of the sea/ it becomes hard to suppress your incredulity/or the ground then/ if you still contest that a sea with no water in it, can be called a sea/ you see the dry ripples/ where they throw their lines in/ hooks with no bait/ plunging and wavering like feathers towards you/ irresistible metal bits/ waltzing slowly to and fro/ landing with weighted certainty in your mouth/ so you think/ can i think/ and formulate resistance, spit/ but you already answer/ before you ask/ and can hear your question take place/ before the utterance is yours you bite, and you think/ can i still resist/ if i think/ can i remove this reality by thinking/ if i let this sea be my mind / the millions of bodies bleeding colors/ ideas/as in, i drift upwards to wake up/ into the air, if the sea is not a sea and so forth/ and think, i do not find myself puzzled/ as your legs and arms drop off/ and let out streams of paint and oily residues/ where does it go/ and what will the gondoliers do with all the bodies

EVERYTHING COUNTS IN LARGE AMOUNTS

so we remember never having faked it

talking at length about our hearts

lungs, kidneys and pelvic bones

the drawers full of clothes we had yet to smell

monogamy, we said, begins with the obliteration

of the other

you asked, what book are you reading

i asked, what book are you reading

the flight attendants all took turns

tightening the parachutes

the brothers karamasov, i lied

moby dick, you swallowed

where are we supposed to do it then

the blast doors spring open

we can do it in my fantasy

it is like breakfast and lunch in one

you said

STRIP SLIT CHAFE

the triplets the atonal [bastards]

the gun the

the moral of the story is

boredom kills

when life won't

the proud poet the p

the skilled conjurer of any

the slightest avoidance of deadness

the immortality imbedded in a thousand lovers

the strand the strands

the chaos that got cleaned up

STALLATS

my hands those limbs all stopped

mid action stretching there

vastness of furrows in window soot

drawn by cold dead sun inside

CARAMBOLAGE DES CRITTERS

no one will accuse you

of being one that never

accuses others

of never accusing you

a ladder

runs from your eye

onto a sullen precipice

from which the four-legged creatures

that go there

shout out wonders

that get lost in your fantasies

and end up telling you nothing

(engine revving)

do not ask me to summarise all the signs/ that emanate from the trivial and transitory/ proposing to leap from the trivial and transitory/ into the industrious and frantically mystical/ at two o clock in the morning in Tbilisi International Airport/ let me just quickly mention the perturbing sight of two men/ eyes closed/ spinning heaps of luggage into cling film coccoons/ with a gusto that can only find its roots in teosophic scriptures concerning oriental dance/ coccoons/ that later will fill the gap between check-in desk 21 and 23/ and then disappear on electric carpets into a dusty pit / only to return as disagreeable moths/ that will be forever drawn to the ecstatic light gushing out of your love scar/ towards the hole that is filled with a kiss/

or the other way round/ towards the kiss that is filled with a hole/ 

CORDONS

for a short amount of time, it might be the succession of just a few seconds, or a few seconds in no succession at all, shards of time spread out over an inarticulate plain, banana peels slipping in and out of slapstick contexts, hot oil leaping out of a frying pan to turn your neck into a writhing miracle, - you know what i mean - what i am talking about; all the tiny jolts that lets you know you are about to be possessed by an other, or letting you know that an other is about to possess you. you find yourself somewhere in the kitchen, working hard to resist the impulse of calling it god. resisting the urge to further abstract the already abstract, and please don't mind me writing that you would say it like this: 

          "he was extrapolating dearly on something quite singular"

the already unfathomable chasm of nothingness smiles back at your pretense to plaster a smile upon its nothingness. now, and here it shows; the puny hand of an entity completely devoid of being bodily succinct, touching you to let you know that it is not fully out of reach, that there is an element of warmth that can yet be perceived. you are touched by embers, and wanting to remember, you name the embers and insert your experience of the glow on a neat scale. you say:

          "this is happening now"

when in fact you know that it is more likely that it never happened/ or will never happen at all. you say:

          "i can feel the body of christ"

when in fact you know that it is more likely that there doesn't exist/ will never be a transcaction of intimacy at all. you are sitting alone in the kitchen. rather; you are standing alone in the kitchen, pondering how a multitude of artefacts could come together to perform a dull symphony. you want me to write:

          "it will be as if nothing ever happened"

but we both wish to avoid lying. soon you will be fed, and the notion of otherness will gradually leave your body and give way to a particular sense of loss. your belly will remind you of your mother, and for a while, not long, you will attribute all unplanned occurences to an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia. the kind of melancholy that makes you pick up a phone, dial a number you know by heart and then hang up just after the first ring. but it is not true. something did not not-happen; you went into a room to pick something up. you forgot what it was you wanted to pick up. you stood in a room trying to trace the inner workings of your desires. you wanted me to write:

          "time went by in an unsolicited manner"

instead i listened, as you grew silent with expectance, and wrote:

          "he went back into the kitchen, thinking that nothing had happened. a cigarette. he looked at the phone. it seemed brand new. the frying pan was left unused"

then the phone rang, and none of us answered. 

"At times it really does seem to me as if the whole of society were still in the Cairo opera house to celebrate the inexorable advance of Progress. Christmas Eve, 1871. For the first time the strains of the Aida overture are heard. With every bar, the incline of the stalls become a fraction steeper. The first ship glides through the Suez Canal. On the bridge stands a motionless figure in the white uniform of an admiral, observing the desert through a telescope. You will see the forests again, is Amanoroso's promise. Did you also know that in Scipio's day it was still possible to travel from Egypt to Morocco under the shade of trees? The shade of trees! And now, fire breaks out in the opera house. A crackling conflagration. With a crash the seats in the stalls, together with all their occupants, vanish into the orchestra pit. Through the swathes of smoke beneath the ceiling an unfamiliar figure comes floating down. Di morte l'angelo a noi s'appressa."

                                           - W.G.Sebald, from Vertigo (cheers Neil)

"Mummy, will there be shopping centers in heaven?"

"No love, of course not. Although, heaven being the first rate gated community that heaven is, there will be a wide selection of high end boutiques and parlors." 

∞

pay close attention, this message will only be broadcasted once:

saps of the world, unite. your number is up, and believe me, you will be left at the departure gates, while the chosen ones head off to new worlds of menial splendor. do not, i repeat, do not let this be your chosen moment to rise up, in some moment of gravely mis-forged valor, and do nothing. there is no creed for you to answer to in this way, do not take action yet. have faith.

there is a higher calling you have yet to answer to, and we will be needing every single of you,

every last nitwit of the world, to rise up together and do something, to act and give yourself up for a cause. the time is nigh, just be ready, it is all we ask.

end of broadcast.

a glimmer of hope, but for whom? what colorless and anemic entity could possibly hearken to this unwarranted calling? what gutless gathering of sad sycophants could find hope, and better yet; purpose, in such a decree? what vile and corruptible being or beings would want to unify with such a prosaic personnage of pinheads? to what end? what purpose can it serve to congregate such a jumbled body of blubberheads to beligerently battle the inevitable coming of their butterscotched destinies?

it's normally so tidy in here.

in my mind i spell the word "panasonic" three times over. the tape recorder sits on the table, devoid of audible activity. before i can either force it or stop it, like it was always there to be uttered, i think, i formulate the question:

why did it begin?

∞

the sun is awake before me     the sun is awake before me

the sun is awake before me

                                                      but my sleep is real

my sleep is real

↯

the streets = commuters = still

the houses = advertising = cheap

the heavens = fly paper = busy

↯

d

LEVEL III EXPERIENCE
AT BREAK OF DAWN:

doing something beautiful for someone you hate

NOT GORDIAN

TO THINK that the mouth opens every time and never stops being a hole constantly filled with paralysed didactics and soft and hard objects going in or out/ but insists/ that the process of opening up in itself is a valuable historicism worthy of mention not as self-regard though as the flow of objects often begins with a limp blow that is almost exclusively external/ and begins and ends/ in itself like before before the conclusion also starts hinting towards stretching and bending into unremarked territories and start again as before as an unimportant action thought insignificant merely due to its natural design/ like all those catastrophes that never took place/ or the swapping of tropes just before midnight in somebody's deserted book/

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»