A door half-way up
the stairs is kicked in
two men come across me
they greet and pass by

There is police
sand on the carpet
next to a flower-pot at its side
the staff strolls with a cup of coffee

Someone is taking pictures
another is counting boxes
and everywhere there are sheets
Please Do Not Touch

Underwater under pressure
from mama, I have a constrictor
around my neck, I'm in danger
of dying without a life
I'm a born heroine

Under chairs under the table
I am saving the whole world
with the utmost courage
every day. Just wait
until I'm grown up, a heroine

Under warm sheep's wool
under stars and clouds
I awake bleeding, defenceless
like a lamb, I sink
into my fleece, like a heroine

I only would cry
if I did watch and listen
on terraces, the ferry, the news
the places where it doesn't make sense
to disagree with people

The world divided into opinions
Truths aren't searched for
you have yours or you can do without
without seeing the facts
Immaculate, ingenuous, innocent

And if you think you know better
you toughly shout how mighty they are:
your great man and the heroes
of your nation, your nation
inside the fences

of no-man's-land

In Holland culture
always was low
above the weak soil

Barring and collecting water
living alternately

on land and in sea

raising mounds, digging
islands, building pile-ware-
and-dwelling-houses

Living and letting
live for the high art
of trade

There is as much
as you can count
with borrowed money

shops smelling
of distant shores
where we don't arrive

with soldiers, but
with nice stories
and heavy purses

Lying and cheating do start somewhere
in beauty, making something more beautiful
than it is, just take a look
at yourself

everyone and everything that is offered
to make money, even ruins
are more with a little fantasy, so
buy a ticket, look, hear and shiver

near the pet crocodiles in living rooms
clearing their throats inside chests

at a boy between the hunebeds
drowning anxiously under white veils

from the delayed boom after the whizz
of the widow's dropping blade

at the eternal whining of the sailors
in the captain's gin bottles

with the jubilant angels over the baby
in the manger, and smell the dung

drink the romance of
imagination in power
with the hard facts as a decoration
for those interested

Sometimes, I have heard something back
from a sister or neighbour, something
from the past that makes me special, well

I'm no longer being driven around
the districts, behind dad
in a litter on the cycle rack

with barbs in my skin
which reflect the light
with royal allure

no, I am not colourless
although I don't have a fringe-tail
and no public, I drink

a beer with you
in The King's Hut café
and that is the king here

The captain will have been informed
because he says nothing about the situation
and that can mean anything

There are reports of peace
and cleared blockades
I must make choices

while I have a good life here
with my family that arose by itself
in the house that was assigned to me

So I just go to bed now
and before I sleep I travel
beyond the known

Left alone, I move on
     accompanied by echoes of familiar laughing voices
     that conceal the truth from me

     the voice of the guide who prefers to stay at home
     of the soldier in his worn-out uniform
     one of the three of the garrison

     who could be on duty
     who fills the cups and drinks on me
     on the health of all people

     around the tower of Belém and everyone
     at the long table with the empty seats
     from the time they were here with many

Along on foot, over a mountain
path, through a dense forest
I'm running out of food

Through the forests, over mountains
and seas we travel, the roads
are free

What is special, we take
along the way, in long caravans
Along the markets

along coasts and ravines
through steppes, through storms
and robbers

What is good for the neighbours
is even better for us
It is prosperity

Free passage, free trade
are worth wars to us
We laugh

at power and land, which are
expensive to defend and yet
get lost

We still pretend

we have it well arranged
with parliaments, judges and
a constitution of our ideals
but the farmers have stayed

and we are their servants
who grow capital, harvest
and squeeze it to many zeros
in the backyard of the slaughter

We want full barns
for the winter, but we have to
pay dearly for it to the farmers
who write the plans

with rings of self-confidence
on their clean hands
in the high state-rooms
of the front building on the avenue

It was great
to be king
but I don't have the power

to hold up the end
They undress me completely
and smear me with grease

with pipes, they blow dust gold
on me, they cover me
with years of envy

The procession leads me
to the throne on the raft
it is a ruthless play

Shining in the light
of my father, the sun
I float across the lake

to lurking eyes
on the other side
that would come to skin me

if I didn't have a wash
and hastily gave the sun
to the greedy water

Why the news is too big
for a screen, too big
for a number?

Why the ruins are too small
for the damage, too small
for the dead?

Because contracts are haunting
the captains do not sail, but hunt
and storms are tearing the sails apart

Because the requirements change
and shortcomings always elude
reason

Because you never know who
can be trusted when
That's why

Gently writing circles and signs
on each other's backs
until we are rosy and satisfied:
peace together can be that simple

     Father ahead of us in the afternoon
     with his trumpet in the woods
     finding him next to a bag of candy
     with jokes and small animals everywhere

          Lying together, being read
          moths around the flashlight
          the smells from outside
          with a low moo

               On free days without time
               chatting for hours with a friend
               and organizing a party
               for ourselves and the neighbourhood

               Yellow and green, a cloth
               set with fish and fresh bread
               we, around the large table:
               peace together can be that simple

Go go, I'm going crazy
seeing everything at once

an overall picture from here
and there and from above and the side

the world, my room
the field full of sunflowers

in a vase and another vase
everything patched together

to fictional points of view
that blend into one another

like my brain does
with everything

that the nerves mercilessly
shoot in from my eyes

a collage like a painting
by Vincent van Gogh

The hermit in the web really lives
very sober when I look
at the camera images
(twenty-four hours a day)

He smiles at the people
who visit him, curious
about this man and this place
without secrets

A ten minutes' walk away from him
the inn is doing good business
There are trees to sit on
(the bark is rough)

In the annex resides the civil servant
who can get you married
In good weather, you may eat among the birds
outside in the forest, around open fires

It is a day out
Everyone takes pictures
and private are only the toilets
(where small waterfalls are running)

Nudity and intimacies are prohibited
in this spiritual domain
The whole world is watching and whispers
what to do and not to do

Cooks in the kitchen, kids in the garden
it's a party in the country house
eating together and talking

at a long table, that's how
it should always be
we are grateful

to life, the sun, and the rain
the soft bed of a sweet body
beauty around us

Only with Uncle Gloom and Auntie
Fusspot frustrations break loose
about the reality of work

and failure, the stinking
ingratitude of the world
the harshness of existence

But the men tell
tall tales, laughing
at the truth and toasting

high on the paradise days
that Gloom and Fusspot
cannot bear

We don't build walls around
our party, peace on earth
wants to go everywhere

I am rich, I can choose:
send a storm that throws them away
as the waste they are

I can give everyone all the gory
details, how bad they stink
under their oh so fancy clothes

I can withdraw, entrench myself
and not give them the least
because they deserve nothing at all

for their actions, day and night
I can let grey rains drench
the whole world in sadness

drop everything out of my hands
and damn grab my things
or on the contrary a bag

with comfort and care to help
them mercifully, I can repent
take a step back and make it right

because who am I in the end
to think I know better, anyway
urgently, I want to do something

and I can choose, I choose
to be wise, because no
I'm not insane

There's a new boy on our street
Clumsy at hopscotch and marbles
he has to borrow

Today he has something, a blood marble
According to him, it is real blood
but not human

The marble rolls in his hand
It's heavy blood, he says
you know, like heavy water

There are mutated animals
that survive better with heavy blood
In Nagasaki

We want to play against him
He hesitates, Joris makes a proposal:
they form a team and share the profit

It's ten milk against a flame
ten flames against one blood
and air bubbles do not count

I had the most marbles
kept them in a bucket in the attic
Whoppers in all metallic colours
and rare marble ones
Nobody liked to lose from me
so I just played alone

A classmate had an ivory marble
but ivory is forbidden, and I obey
the rules, that's the best game

People have no idea
how it works and what they waste
They say that I'm parsimonious
even with the foreign cents
which I cannot spend, the truth
is I work hard

and lead a sober life, the good example
that would benefit them more
than the inflation of a luxury life

How many quarrels unthinkable
relationships much happier
and laws superfluous, if
vices did not exist?

No avarice on the throne
in our heads, made up
with pride and pretense
no greedy dissatisfaction
and hedonism in our bellies
no more anxious blood
pumped through our hearts

if everyone answers honestly
to themselves: what do you want
to do if money is not an issue
and you don't have to be afraid?

Do you think this question is too
ambitious or not asked often enough?

School boards choose
education on a scale
from craft to treadwheel

With your diploma, you look
from time to time for a place
that fits exactly you

This goes on and on
because everything has to run
on fewer and fewer people

The computers calculate
with virtual attention
how it can be done

Artisans have become volunteers
in museums of entertainment
for everyone who wants something other

than the treadwheels
in which you must run faster and faster
to stay upright

between the grinding mouths
the pounding legs and
the lashing tails

I have
fishing nets over my field and
a guard with biting dogs
since there is windmucus

in my tulips, my gold
worth half a canal house
or fifteen years of wages
per bulb

oh if only I could
cut off the thieves' hands
and display their balls
in formaldehyde

in the flaming colours
of the stolen mucus
of which only the wind knows
no, nobody

nobody knows
what the tulip disease is called

People stare at me
on the rare days
when I dress differently

Someone special
cannot be it for a long time
before people throng

around, chasing
away whoever is in the way
whoever lives or works there

neighbours are replaced
by guests and
they comment

on your role in the performance
that is your own life
and is it no more

if you are not ordinary
boring and showing
no one that you exist

only special
in the mirror
and the eyes of your loved one

I dance, festively, the band blows
in a parade of children and carts
full of loads and hitchhikers, the long legs
of majorettes above everything else

Faces hide behind honks
that spew burp up views of bile
and fire into everyone's ears
forcing the bellies to continue

dancing along the places where
life is raging or has stopped
We dance a big elastic and
watch it stretch and hurt

when it snaps back to the news
and on set anniversaries we dance
on the spot, to reflect on the bad things
we shouldn't have done

and to know again what we want:
to commemorate the commemoration –
to think once more, think anew, think
differently, and to dance the way we think

we should

The funnels are converted
into this year's mouths:
pink, violet and apple green
with some pale yellow in advance
for the fashion that will come

Controllers push all colours
- deaf for their protests -
through to the right
of the outside world
and the bosses

Sometimes it seems to make sense
but usually They dictate
new filters over the fickle-
ness of employees
citizens and tinsel

I myself like being orange
from which some pink is extracted
and a scrap of purple is exaggerated
for the rest I am not counted
in the statistics

Not living for later
but together, social
and respected

The king loathes it
He takes palaces and farmsteads
His taxation breaks

the compliance, cold
causes hunger
Threat of war

Propaganda points the way:
there is a saviour, a Father
of the Nation, he protects

the refugees from Antwerp
and the trade, he will
drive out tyranny

that beheads dukes and puts
believers at the stake, that makes
the country pay for the oppression

Follow the walls
touch the curtains
slide between the doors

feel the textures
the coarse and the soft
patterns and colours

stroke the structures
of cabinets and window-frames
smell the rich scents

kiss the wallpaper
caress it with your cheek
and taste pasted love

Pyjama days of being ill
with closed curtains
thinking of being free
with closed curtains
enjoying each other

Being ill is an ardent desire
for sparkling energy
sunlit rooms
never sleep again
sing, laugh, feed

one another tirelessly
and suffer at the most
from the desire
to be immortal
with friends

Eyes pass me with a greeting
eyes hang still in the streets
and shopping lanes, eyes fly

around the earth
eyes are watching
around important bodies

alert eyes
that protect, willing
to restrict others

I defend myself
and ward them off
with the hand on my heart

an eye for an eye
beware, I look back
even when I'm not looking

I keep on looking around the living room –
on just one floor-plan you can do a lot
So, if I put the dinnertable over here
without carpets on the parquet

the lounge suite may stand there if that fits
I'll put the plant and the book shelves
on the other side of the window then
with the armchair next to them

and for the atmosphere a new armature
Right, ready it is, but what a pity now
I forgot the television, too bad
Although, it can be missed I guess

In the open field, there is more to see
than you like, poo and pimples

nothing private, trust no good
for anything, shame everywhere

because it's not a secret
in which you deviate, what you eat

which fears and diseases you suffer
how you wash and experience sex, when

you menstruate, have a miscarriage, cry
quarrel, are greedy, mean and unreasonable

or sweet, everything that is wrong with you:
someone who can be missed very well

or needs to learn a lesson – out of mercy
there are mirror places for that

This palace of mirrors looks quite
common because it refracts everything

into googol beings and objects and even
more tissues, and so on, and so on

No one can see the whole
Only with closed eyes

it is possible to think a whole
out of loose people and see

that they do not exist separately
but live and move in all

mirror pieces, we too -
only blindly I can see

if I dare, that I can
only care well for myself by

Leave home in the morning
be in thought on the way
arrive and turn around the axis
in the bulge of the glass

Produce procedures in a glass house
grinding possibilities in circles
hidden openly in public

rules, mix and weave them
thread by thread to an advice –
inevitable, strong strands

of policy, that's how
I want to run a mill
of thoughts in my head
showing it to everyone

We make the best of it, now and then
we just laugh at the boss with a bit of zen

In discussions, we camouflage our protest
any unwanted things we keep suppressed

When sometimes someone silently mutters
one of us will simply close the shutters

The figures of the old year are tiny
far too small and way too heavy

for the estimated castles in the air
yet the management is playing there

So we're smuddling about, aren't we?
on polished shoes as they should be

Blockages at work
outages and oxygen deficiency
waste in the blood

The management focuses
on the future and closes
doors and windows against
mosquitoes and moths

Bypasses and bitter pills
do not help, so just one more
reorganization

We have meetings, hear each other
cackle, we croak our croak
play for time and hope and celebrate
the colleagues who say goodbye

I don't postpone it anymore
I will make my own way
create my own failure

My hands are still cleaning up
but my head is already absent
and I make beds in my heart
for those who are dear to me

As we work we talk
that's how it goes

about what needs to be done
differently according to the boss:

more with less
the other way around would be nonsense:

creativity is our strength
that's what it is about:

we have to show it
it is sink or swim

whether the financiers believe in us
We do it together

extra commitment is deciding
only the best remain

That's it, as long as it takes
to change everything

even if it takes longer than expected
And beware of the gaps

work around them creatively
or we'll fall into them