I have felt old today
the food squeezes my gut
and the words slip away
out of my torn nets

With some ifs and buts
I can still participate
calmly and comfortably
riding in a sidecar

without philosofolly
or showing the way
only a joke if it works
Inside, I am collapsing

I often go for a pee
but nothing comes out
of my head and my hands
I have a chat with the neighbours

For me, no thick enjoyment
between golden bars
or sitting between
fate-fellows, waiting

for attention and the future
of acquaintances and family
I'm just tired, so
you shouldn't want anything from me

From afar I have been
drifted, blown this way
like Sahara sand

rained down
on fertile soil
a grain of pollen

in the yellow border
around the puddle in the pothole
on this path

where you never go
and I walk to the café
every day

hoping for contact
in your language, but
only Jenny has time

to help shorten my
wait with hope
and sometimes someone

sits there, bored
drinking tea
next to me

It's Friday the thirteenth
again. I stay at home
due to circumstances:

a dragging wind
and storming sirens
The cameras break

taboos and peek
into windowless sleeping
rooms, front pieces

after the wind of roughskirts
who celebrate their gains
in stinking silence. I close

the curtains, my eyes and mouth
I'm not here, hello hello
don't you see I'm not here

and I can do nothing about it -
absent due to circumstances
which I can do nothing about

My friends live as neighbours
a second away from me
I can see whether they're at home

in the Wean Di
the blowing sand of drift
and fluctuating hope

the drama of our lives
as a game of skill:
I am I and I

is we, a world full
of bridges between kindred -
and the roads go into decline

Across the old, leak borders
we travel safely around
our filter of friendship

each with his own blowing nose
in self bought quiff and feathers
on the wings of We and I

I only have gathered a small pile
of recognition, as it happens
to everyone, but for all my effort

it is not right, I think, and even
there are people who don't understand that:
We love you, they say

What would we do without you!
But gratitude lasts short
and the wages are low

not to mention the talents
of mine, which no one wants
and the careless ease

with which what I do always
is just stored
before it's already cleared away

to keep it from getting dusty
Yes, thanks, thanks to me
building goes on!

A fan is running
in the room full of toys
on the floor and on the bed

in which he doesn't want to go to sleep
the rebellious child jumps
screaming with cymbals beating

His little brother threatens
daddy the policeman
with a drumstick

Men with arm thick branches
are droning through the streets
through light and through dark

Full is the beat
of their heavy shoes
The rhythm of the masters

is clouding the town
where the doors close
the pubs extinguish

and the mail is left
until after the misunderstood
obscuration

In the street people are weighed
down in the invisible coats
of other people's suspicions

Of course, someone shouts
They have a bad conscience
This is how we are trapped

my need to live
locked up in a cave
of my thoughts

with narrow eyes
desperately searching
for a way out

of the dense nets
knitted from misunderstandings
and finally floating away

from reality
Nowhere a place
to land

People disappear
in the round off of their group
shifted between deficit and surplus
when the brim is reached

and you still do exist, but all the same
do not count - nothing can be done about it
For others, my life and experiences are
interchangeable, yet unexchangeable with anyone

Only hypothetically am I famous
for the global impacts
of the anonymous flapping of my wings
amidst all butterflies

amidst all flowers
in the gardens of the world
and the vases here in the centre
of Amsterdam and my thoughts

I get food, if
I make myself big enough
otherwise I only figure
in the statistics of the problem

There's a light on in the office
that is never open
it echoes behind the door
which does not give way under my fists

It can't be an office
too hollow for compassion
a dead body
with a bulging eye

and I am the nobody
who cannot escape
A journalist runs by
doesn't ask for the plan

What is, what can be
what must be behind it?
Nobody picks it up
with a Big Grasper

Is that me?

Flight fantasies, vacation
Mind your step
Security procedures, waiting at the gate

I close my eyes
my thoughts take the autowalk
to destinations with a runway

The lock of the jetway fails
one meter before the cabin door
Mind your step

     Flight fantasies, security
     Tomorrow I'll get there
     Security procedures, waiting at the fence

     I close my eyes
     my thoughts take a high flight
     to a future on the other side

     I land in a camp again
     at a higher fence, a closed gate
     Tomorrow I'll get there

   Once more the teacher whispers it in my ear: breathe
   calmly, feel what is coming loose and let it go, a burden

   you won't miss, dare to forget it
   and stay in your body, no matter what

   gathering tears, self-pity
   or blazing anger, it's not a picnic

   to live and a cold comfort
   that it passes

But that's not what I come for
I just want peace in my life

I really need this retreat
I don't have enough time

I'm not allowed to discuss that right now, I don't
even want to think of it, I concentrate

on the painful back
I'm putting myself through

Strips along the road:
my dreams rose themselves to pieces
torn by their over-pressure

Fellow-sufferers hang in the water
rippled, on broken legs
skinny from waiting

too tired to go on
and not strong enough
to stand still

I only cry tears
that do not come
to relieve or redeem

The light of the lighthouse
swings brightly
but the eye is blind

1990: blemished
was our holy land
by half a million unbelievers
to teach the neighbours a lesson

2001: we wash ourselves
with the blood of fifteen
martyrs in the heavenly fire
high above their city

2019: it may never, ever
happen again, foreign soldiers
in our country, only their weapons
we want - here is the money

Again the bell rings
that nobody wants to hear
We are crossing our borders
and nobody can control us

High, and one more, more
Look, there, and over there
People, have a look, please
It must be seen, picked

saved and passed on
This balloon shows exactly
what you are going through
You are not alone

And if we forget
there will be new poets
throwing words into the wide world
high, and one more, more

The fortress: I roll out my mat
in the silence of sleeping cicadas
The wind is warm, time crawls
with the sun to Naples

It's all in my head
high above the noise of life

of crowded streets and shops
where the money never rolls far
looks are leery, kisses are fleeting
and hands are groping

It is not right
I start a storm
sweep chairs from the terraces
slam doors and blow dust

like night through the city
Guy-wires and bars rattle
a dog whines and a cat
glares at the perch

in the water of the harbour, wild
from my rebellious thoughts
that lie down after all
between the snails on my mat

Our large body has no face
no one sees it is us
it's kerosene

the Djinn who brings us everything
with an invisible trail
of destruction

footprints that trampled
indented and soured
all for us

I entrench myself in my house
full of old stuff, repaired with love
that does not eat animal suffering

Bye birds, bye flowers, bye children
from which hunger you will die
you cannot know

The echoes are a disease
a curse or both, more and more
people cannot speak

they only repeat
half the foresayers
who just shout something

about robots, hearing themselves
back, rebounded
until the ball goes out

and nobody knows
what he wants, whether he wants
what he wants or what he says

Where is it going
everyone in polonaise
to a crippled hornpipe?

Do I want him

to dive into my bed sometimes
sometimes not, like an angel --
his wings ready to go?

exactly as I wish
exactly like a man
an experienced lover

who doesn't have to breathe
because he is an angel --
he doesn't smell odours

Perhaps it works
with my new wand
to make a hatch

or folding doors in the sky
something that I can open myself
as a sign: Come! Go!

Or do I want him to stay
and be with me, sometimes as a friend
sometimes as a lover, sometimes as an angel?

Is it only safe
in a cloister of cloaking
clothes and within the walls
of kitchen and children's room?

Or will you risk
being a witch
according to frightened people
who will conspire against you?

A witch who fights off
and cannot be forced
by the pitifulness of a man
or the knife of robbers

The cuts hurt
the water is cold
and the night is dark
in the mud of the riverbank

I hoped for strong daughters
and sweet sons, sensible
and helpful, but
I will not have them

Everything flows, a coming
and going of opportunities
Flags blow everywhere
but I don't put poles
of certainty around me

My work and my relationships
are fluid, my fate
is not in my hands
not even in the lines
that fortune tellers read

Pleasure for myself
idealism for all
between the flippers and
the facades of the day and
the dreams of the night

The flippers of catastrophes
and consequences bang
on the bonces of power
the wheels of money and
the cannonballs of contempt

Out of my reach, mossy steps
excite my imagination
A king died here

forgotten, he didn't leave
a spirit, perhaps a treasure
but one should break

everything down to find out
Indeed it goes like that
slowly, root by root, blade

by blade, drop by drop, rain
sun and frost, life, and death
That too is temporary, even though

overgrown, it takes a lot
of seasons to fall apart
and flush away into a new life

It is the normal tickle
in the skin of mother earth -
too short, not worth

the effort to lift
a cosmic finger
for a scratch