I entered the display case
of people educators
subsidizing snobs
the multirich and companies

among tourists and inhabitants
who want to be seen
in the museum café and
with sophisticated pastry lard
the conversation with careless clauses

they quote from an authority
whom nobody has to understand
to get the intention
of the praised artists

The shop was crowded
Spotlights on show-pieces
fancy coffee table books
and chic presents
for the season and the next holidays

Especially the past
is on sale, postcards
of the attractions
and sights of the city

interchangeable
like the collections
which graduated stylists
cast in international moulds
to magnets for visitors

Oh Venus, you most beautiful
why didn't you dare
to lie politely –
what everyone would see-through?

Had let Mother win
who after all lives in the heart –
mothers deserve love
and honour more than anyone

Had let Reason win
waking in the head, or sleeping –
it definitely is the highest
possession a person owns

You, who keep bellies awake
with desires and satisfies them
with insatiable pleasure –
were you afraid to be forgotten?

You have nothing to lose and yet
you bribed the prince with promises
and you warn people
to avoid beauty

to hide it under clothes
and behind closed doors
where time creeps in their skin
weakening their flesh and eating it

As long as the paint is wet
my finger writes
my diary
in colourful blends

Unspoken questions
dipped hue after hue
and curl in curl on the tip
of my finger, layer on layer

a gobstopper of memories
which I slowly lick off, every time
I want to taste their flavours
and reread my life

Life has to last
because the great things happen
in your youth and it takes years

to process them
and then you'll want to redo
this or that

with later knowledge
or experience it anew
because too often

it can be done better
With more attention you could
have enjoyed it more

could have been living like now
but would you be young then
or an old soul in disguise

in a restless body
on expedition
to great events

that will matter
a lifetime?

Ballast or log, significance
or waste, all of me
that I have kept

because I don't know what I want
to save, every day I am busy
living and I just let it rest

I've put all my stuff out of the way
the books I'll never read again
the old pictures, the crayons

a chair and beautiful puzzles
all of me that's passed
neatly stowed away

in labeled boxes
but without any importance
whether they contain anything

My diary is too honest
to keep, what's the sense

in reading myself unhappy
and puzzling my head off
over covered terms, peering

what yet can be seen
through the frosted glass, shadows
which I trace with clear lines

of later. It easily looks
like real, a few lines are enough
for a snowy landscape

that I can make thaw
by continuing to draw:
another page, another day

written to my life
blossoms written
on my path full of thorns

in the ghost house
of my body

My diary is too honest
for your eyes, what's the sense

in reading yourself unhappy
when I'm not there anymore
You may comfort yourself

with my serial of love
and connection, the odours
of the colourful life

I want to extend with might
and main, but you also know
that there's a sword beside me

that I go crazy because of the witches
in my body and the ghosts
in my head writing clauses

in the margins and notches
in your speechless soul
in our eternal love

in who we are

In the middle of the night
tapped invisibly
played and stirred
by a heavenly hand
swings the woman

who I watch, who I am
I feel my feet free
of my weight, relaxed
are also my buttocks, all of me
is free to be seen

Dresses hanging down:
my sisters
upwards by the ankles
arms and hair gracefully
loose, swaying

on the heavenly hand
and pulled away
on meat hooks
our screaming
flown away

Walking past the signs Former
Red Light District I know I'm dreaming
of a better future

I can imagine it much more easily
than what it is like
to be a man

who buys the use of a body
without any notion what's wrong
I must arm myself against him

Walls? Dullness? Claws?
And company, then I can
laugh at jealous eyes

and the greedy ones
looking away from me
to someone else - no one

will I greet as my master
everyone welcomes me, Servus
where there was once war

Captured from wide and far
around, now pinned up
to prevent them from disappearing:
trophies from the past

stone signs on stakes
saved as a description
of the daily history
that nobody remembers

shards of time

from the ground on which we live
the hereafter of our ancestors'
blood, their sweat and tears
a living foundation

for our prosperity and the rest
the impotence and the gentle love
of caring, is too flaccid
and too volatile, in our souls

just a knowing

You can only glue what is dead
I master that art, the chemistry
that will last

But before that, I kneel
in the field, my knees crack

cautiously I root up
the past, a simple scoop

easily breaks more than I would like
I collect what would disappear

under prosperity, I dig it out
for a new parking garage

and find pieces not to be
forgotten, to know history
broadviously

This very night
you stroked a cow
in India
and I was there
while you ate cake
on Judith's birthday

With other arms you swam
to me on the little island
hidden in the reeds

I did see you
on the bench in the orchard
of grandma and grandad, telling
a family secret to your sister
She was wearing the dress with ruffles
and she was not interested

Over the trees you reached
her your sixth or seventh hand
to pick heath berries

Your heaviest arm was on me
and has woken me up
if I am awake now
with your arms everywhere
in life, in time, in me
dreaming this night

Things are going very well for more and
more people like me, they are rich enough
and everywhere there is art in the making

No shortage, no subsidy
Professional artists are poor
because they didn't die young

in the sacred fire of their passion
Be silent, there's nothing to complain about
when you are with so many

The dépôts are full, but
we don't miss anything, life is good
for more and more people like me

and who would like to crowd together
in exclusive museums and theaters
if so much is already on hand?

The past in depot:
warehouses full of treasures
air-conditioned
rarely viewed
waiting

for a story
that makes you curious
sheds new light
on the artist's life
or a drama or or

something under oppression
something that makes the strange familiar
in short, the waiting
for chemistry with later
through an appealing story

(sell pebbles from the Kidron Valley
  as cornerstones of the temple:
  God's nearness in your hand
  with the wisdom of Solomon
  and his wealth with it)

Custom-made
with a story
the past may be
worth something
to us

Your life still rustles
in me, in my mind

you think along with my questions
I hear remarks you once made

     Your life still rustles
     in me, in my feelings

     you move along with my blood
     I feel you flow through my heart

Your life still rustles
at home, as if you were present

the warmth of your body
somewhere tangibly close

     Sometimes your voice is there again
     in the movies that make me feel

     what it was like, but much further away
     than when we watched them together

Your life still rustles
in the scents of the woods

taking me by surprise in the seasons
familiar in unexpected places

The ancient duty
to take care of each other:
taxes came from it
so we had to learn to count

Great fun, we count
paving stones and marbles
the candles on the cake
and the money in our name

We understand the world
and classify everything properly
young and old, poor and rich
(stereotypes that grow with us)

until the numbers become too large
so many repetitions and memories
added up a rich life
that must be celebrated

Now no candles
but everyone is present
whether they want a piece of cake or not
and all children are there

If only I could hire an unemployed giant
for little money, to smash everything
and take it away (big chunks, quickly clean)

I lift buckets down
the hall of the old house
all rooms are as filthy

as the poo pit, to vomit, while
there is hardly anything in them
Out of poverty

the man sold what he could sell, tell
the neighbours disapprovingly
they have no compassion

The rest, I throw in the garden
and what's left after the fire
is debris for the extension:

shards and a pocket saint
worn like him, well
you never know what is true

She stands firm
please let me sleep
against her rough hair

which I brush
with my fingers
I should go home

I cannot stay here
shouldn't dirty my clothes
on the donkey and the stable

I cannot sing with the birds
on the land, like Francis did
my little Francis

I always carry him with me
let him slide in my hand
like my father used to do

When there's moving so much
inside me, my belly, my heart
and parallel in my head

chaos everywhere
how could I be quiet?

My muscles follow slowly
because of the small balance
wheel my whole body rotates

just as the earth spins around
its axis, through elementary particles
shooting around back and forth

I am in the middle
and I don't feel the speed
united with my own storm

just movement
It's called inertia
but I call it life

Mama said you are
doing this so well
and thus she taught me

to be good, and now
I teach my children
by not being strict

that they can accidentally
or deliberately do something
that is not allowed

I see them discover
who they are, who they think
they are and wish to be

and about myself I am
thinking: who am I and
what has remained?

What is the blend
of my identity, the I
in my brain?

The rust of decayed roses
in filthy vases, dust
on the table, once with love

been made from the bones
of a beech giant

next to the old letters
handwritten sketches
of two souls, forever

young without worries
no scratches in the gold

of the promised fidelity
no indefinite questions
or double doubts

that burrow and toss
between skin against skin

I've celebrated it
forty, fifty, sixty, the ten-
year steps of my life

have been preserved as memories
among the countless parties
of others, just like me

aging and remaining who they are
even though something starts
not to correspond in the mirror

When did that happen?
Was I present?
With my friends?

On forgotten in-between days?
When my hair thinned, my skin
weakened, and I became different

from how I feel – everywhere
where I touch myself
it is still familiar

I am ageless in life
with a deeply rooted pen
that wants to continue to enjoy

the taste of the deep
water, filtered through the earth
sunk from the present

Between the tangible past
I weigh what I can
put away, I weigh
what I can

All this familiar stuff
tiny things, a large suitcase
for a big trip, with a copy
of my passport from that time

Before I open the boxes, I turn
the superscription towards me
Yes, I remember
It's still there, dust-free

Kitschen equipment and crockery empty frames and some
parts, just in case
which has not yet occurred

I know the stories
that go with it and I feel
a time difference that does not exist
in my memory of those days

From times of which I have no idea
whether I unconsciously know about it
this block has been broken in Carrara

What kind of blood is running
through its veins? What is it calling for
in my head? A piece of stone

remaining itself, impervious
to everything I try
to attribute to it

It just remains what it is
while it forms form thoughts in me
which I cut free from myself with chisels

Look! Art. Mine. Do you see
me? Only I do it like that
Look, I exist!

The stone is still a stone
but I am only here now
in the contact, after the contact

The stone created
my creative thought
the stone created me

for a while, for those who know
a little, in time at most my name
but the stone keeps creating

More and more, we speak picture
language with digital icons of Home
Heart (in the colour of the moment)
Envelope, Clock, Arrow and Bin

but icons of paint and blood travel
with us in their world of gold leaf
as portraits of the life
we like to live

thoughtful and attentive
like a busty bird
showing its feathers

and not camouflaging itself
in the attire of its neighbours
colleagues or pictograms

There is a shortage of chairs
around my table, in the house
for the cousins who died

young, the old family
members and the friends from everywhere
who stayed to live here

in absent presence
letting me experience
warmth, cold and wind intensely

on the heartbeat of the Force
in my body, in my meetings
at my table in the house

of my awareness, my serious
adventure of giving and taking
they wished for me

and that I will wish for you:
that death is not the end
that life goes on