Hell exists,
said to me a shadowy figure on the street
at dusk
during my evening stroll
And what about Heaven then
There’s got to be one
if Hell exists,
I asked
Nobody answered
He was gone
The sky darkened and the stars seeded the sky
I wanted to find him and ask him something else
but my owner tugged gently at the leash and we went
in another direction.
The cosmic cogitations of canines. – mh clay
Rusty tea kettle,
tablecloth with birthmarks,
cockroach with tiny suitcases.
A dog that kicks in his sleep
and eats the falling snowflakes.
(His tail is tied in a knot.)
In the rocking chair there’s a heart
that no longer exists.
The old woman sprinkles hemlock in the cauldron
on the stove and whistles forbidden song.
Well, this is it my child,
all fairy-tales begin like this.
The sunset falls in the window.
Time squeaks and hides
inside itself.
When, once (if not twice) upon a time, the bread crumbs followed themselves. – mh clay
The soul, suspended in the dark wet sleeve
of the shirt on the clothesline, hides
from the sunset
The sky’s engine purrs like a cat,
coiling inside its grayness
Shadows grow and darken the house –
all the rooms bulge with obscurity
and gather around the flickering candle
The man in dirty overalls sits in the barn’s shade
and looks at the rope, hanging from the beam,
gently swaying in the wind.
Many doors to choose; only lead from here to there. – mh clay
In the framed picture
on the mantelpiece
sits a snapped moment
of an old woman
getting younger in
the past.
Light shifts from
east to west slowly
as a glacier.
Close your eyes with me,
it will not happen again.
Mortal amusement. – mh clay
You are waiting for a letter to arrive,
but who still writes letters these days anyway?
The trees on the street are deader than dead,
their branches stretch out like black skeletons,
strips of fading sunlight stream through
the yellow curtains and time pours in slower
than the air in an empty hourglass.
It gets dark, difficult to see through the window.
You are anxious and confused.
The street is empty.
Everything else is now and now.
And then the wind starts to blow violently
and opens your mailbox
without putting anything in it.
Leaves, unlike letters, turn and fall. Letters, unlike leaves, don’t turn at all. – mh clay
All I want from
the world is
this
your smile
in times of agony
bottle of
wine
one cigarette
in my left hand
matches
in the other
and your nipples
illuminating the room
while I am laughing
in our
bed
Yes, we can write our verses by that light. – mh
Writer’s Block
The mathematics of poetry
is lost into that deep space
As I try
something is eating my
xxxxxxxxxxxxwords
The tongue of my soul
xxxxxxis hanging
xxxxxxxxxo
xxxxxxxxxu
xxxxxxxxxt
If we could eat that “block” we wouldn’t be starving; tongues out, ever hungry, staring at an empty page… – mh
It has been seven years
and still
I cannot
walk upon your streets –
Belly full of butterflies
and yet I try sometimes,
past the pawnshop
and your rusty car,
parked in my brain.
These streets are veins –
and I remember your cut wrists.
Too hot outside:
to walk, to think,
to feel-
your advice on my Poetry –
Still trying, darling,
you see, even now,
my Teacher, my Friend,
be fearless!
I am getting better –
in what you practice now,
your finest Art.
The Poetry of Silence.
I am the collector of queerness and terminations,
the ones that, late in the night, fall down from the trees
and try to turn over on their souls again,
unwanted, forsaken and absorbed in stillness.
At some point you might say that I am weird!
But aren’t we all the strangest offspring of our dreams?
Do you need a two-headed, freak-show circus wrestler
walking and growling towards you to believe in it?
“History is written by the victors, but the great art
is made by the vanquished”, one of my teachers said.
And I know that the mistral is just a cold, northerly wind,
but I keep my tin box with the gun inside clean and prepared.
While I am writing this poem, I am scribbling
some notes for my next book.
They say that’s always the case, don’t they?
Also, they say that a broken clock is right twice
a day. I remember, a few years ago during one
night in the forest, I was chased by two shiny eyes.
I had no knife. I was armed with a rusty searchlight
and a bottle of brandy. But I will keep that story
for my next book. Now, I have something else on
my mind. While I am writing this down in my
shabby notebook, I look out the window. Outside,
the nightly silence is spreading, and above that,
the great mountain hangs over. Vultures and bats
are cutting the sky and sing songs unheard by
everyone but me. And it seems to me that today,
for the first time, I’ve heard within the long river
the true voice of the water. I saw on the clouds
in the sky what eternity really is. I understood
the everlasting secrets of the grass and the vines,
locked in the ground. I felt the meaning of
the days. Even the book on the table can’t give me
this wisdom – The Poems of Catullus? Very good!
But the seasons will change again — all books will
be written; the words will fade away, and speech
will turn sour. But what difference does it make
right now, when I am turning into one of the saddest
wonders of the world?
Cynical synergy celebrates the empty pocket and a suspicious world view. – mh
