You know you are old
when your late-in-life children become adults
and you no longer draw the curtains
like the swords your forefathers drew
in all the new—for them, at least—lands.
Now you can simply find some well-deserved rest
in the inherited armchair
or tomb.
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Romantic love is the desire for copulation,
embellished with the timid glances of a sonnet,
unless you are a eunuch who settles for lyricism
out of barren necessity.
Is that why I would rather have an empty bed
than empty shelves?
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To sit at your desk in a cheerful disposition
is quite the illegitimate thought
when you pose as a harbinger of sorrow.
You are in the business of authenticity, after all.
And once your words leave the printing press,
you have to be even more careful—
a stain on a page never sells well,
whether it’s a bleeding nose
or heart.
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There are nights,
restless, leaden hours
of dripping thoughts
when words miss the mark,
a metaphor doesn’t land well,
the trash bin overflows,
yet you keep scribbling,
revising the revised
as a habitual alternative
to sheep-counting.
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‘War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’
Carl von Clausewitz, On War
We need children after war—
lots of them—
and so we need mothers and fathers.
…mothers and fathers…
Who would have thought: war—
a dating app,
available on all platforms.
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I don’t like weddings;
I much prefer funerals, if anything.
But I guess that’s the result of being born—
everyone carries at least one curse
in the end. That’s mine.
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I lost sight of my neighbours
as their nest drowned in the linden leaves—
which is nothing unexpected with spring in full swing—
so for now I have to find some other source of entertainment,
or better yet, draw the curtains
so that I don’t become the target of snoopers:
all those flies bouncing off my window.
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Faith is a perishable good with a somewhat intimidating scent
of respectability, a late symbol of our exalted humilitude—
as if café au lait wasn’t enough—and it makes me think
of the last day of the Inquisition and of clerks burning old paperwork
and auctioning off no longer needed instruments of torture
to be repurposed as it fits.
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My object-free life
sometimes needs something more
tangible yet obtuse, so it wouldn’t hurt
when it touches the fettle
that comes with a myriad of attempts,
like all that prying used to:
‘Where are you off to?’
I guess I still need time.
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hidden pilcrow 