I didn’t know I have a soul,
that wants to speak, that’s looking for a way out.
I didn’t know there was something that had no name,
Until you say it yourself,
That floods you, and it comes flooding in
And won’t let you think or plan,
It’s vague, it’s powerful, it’s uncertain.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it,
Till you can put it into words
Till you know it’s a need
To speak, and to be heard.

26. 06. 2019

Why are you laughing? -
They tell me. They tell me all the time.
I don’t know.
I laugh to get away,
Or to get you closer

April 2020

Insomnia.

Scraps of words and thoughts suffocate:
Close your eyes, open them again.
They swirl in a dark whirl,
Unlived in the light of day,
Unlost, unquietly,
unfaithfully, vilely, unchallenged,
Blame you again for everything.

07.04.2020
2:42

When your lips are stiff with dumbness,
You think you won’t be understood,
You speak, but the thought you hear is not the same
And you feel like you haven’t been you for years,
And you’ve been asleep, or walking around, or just being him,
And you ask yourself who the rascal is.
Who’s the one who’s shackled your mouth, Who’s made you forget that you’re you,
What you can say, speak, to the paper - and to everyone.
It’s as if you were asleep, stunned,
Deep down inside
And you couldn’t call out to yourself.
So it’s no wonder other people can’t hear you,
And you’re afraid they won’t understand you,
If you don’t understand yourself?


26. 06. 2019

It came, it came, it came.
And it’s been hiding for a long time - you can’t pull it out with tongs.
I like to taste again
My own - or not my own? - Thoughts
I like to run my hand over paper, unthinkingly,
Catching their scraps in the air, sybaritic,
And listen to them rustling on the paper,
Listening to their sounds inside yourself first.

07.04.2020 4:03

I ask you, what are you thinking about?
Nine o’clock in the morning is such a good time to think,
When trees float by in cobalt and sienna,
And you’ve only slept so you can start the day over again.
I’m thinking about how we could
Could have met here on the train Could have
Think of each other, who are you?
Could get off at the same station in the middle,
Talking halfway through the journey,
Talking, running away together.

I can hear you breathing, I’m thinking
As if I’m seeing you for the first time.



March 13, 2021

It’s like balancing
Like dancing on the edge of a ledge.
Here you’re swaying on your toe, not knowing
In what second you’ll feel the exact support under your feet.
In what second you’ll know again
That you’ve got your footing and you’re holding on tight
Like when you were a kid and you’re holding on tight to a limb
Before you jump off the branch?
What second will you know that your mind will hold you,
Like your body when you’re bobbing on the waves?
I can’t be the way the rules say I should be,
The way someone else intended, not me.
I can’t promise that I’ll shut up now, that I’ll shut my tongue,
That I’ll go to sleep peacefully or work,
When there’s a wave in my head that won’t let up
And if I shut it up I’ll drown in it,
Or she becomes me and I become her.
I can’t promise that I’ll want something now or not,
And I can’t do anything against my will.
So what should I do?
Release the tsunami,
Closing my ears to others without looking at them, can I?
Denying all the rules for me, made up not by me,
All the strokes of my lines, not by me drawn,
Barefoot - triumphing! - running over the hills? In the rapture of my own impertinence!
Am I still five?
I want to look at the stars without fear,
That something unknown and terrifying is hidden in them,
I want to look and think that I love what’s up there.
To think that it’s beautiful.

So I said.



August 25, 2021

The audacity is unbelievable!
To want to have both
Swirling, flaming,
Heels kicking at the sides in a whirlwind
Fiery, fiery, born,
Tickling the fingertips of the lines -
And to have love.
To have yourself -
And have another beside you.
To have the unearthly
And to have the earthly.
The audacity is unheard of
To ride like a mad rider
With the croup slipping,
And to walk lightly
Through the sun-breathing streets.

Let’s pretend you and I are strangers.
Look, the sun is falling on the hills;
Down the slopes, shadows to the road,
With transparent, light patches caressing the snow.
Let us pretend for a moment that we are not us.
Look, the snow becomes thin, transparent and breathing,
Like a net, bleeding with fiery languor in the sun.
I remember seeing it as a child,
And I remember the singing of the trees as a child.
Neopolitan yellow-pale,
Sienna natural, cobalt blue.


Let’s play that you and I are strangers?


March 13, 2021

Like a caressed body.
Canvas. With strokes like kisses.
Touched, as gently with a finger,
Over the warm skin.
Traces of love, if one could see - they would be so.
Like brushstrokes on a canvas.


You know every stroke.