There's a woman lying in the street. Why?
Some neighbours watch and so do I
One of them is pointing: there she stood
and then I understand the dented hood

Were there demons in her mind
which have settled up there on the fifth
where Sebastian and Isabel lived
until they vanished
in the jungle of Peru
and no one has a clue

Then, the beeping of the coots
What chain of incidents did precede?
Didn't anybody see her need
standing there, the city at her feet?

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

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

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

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

This 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

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

The wind is calling me outside
it's exactly the right wind
to walk in the wonder

of the long avenues
that enchant the air
with swirling blossoms

and restrained, start singing
in me with joy
mixed with sorrow

for the falling, away
from life, away
from the leaf shoots

the swirling awareness
that it is almost over
however much I would have liked

to stay and respond
to the call of the wind
the calling wind

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?

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
shall I ever have them?

Sometimes a new beginning is
scorched wood in black sludge
or in burned ground

after a devastating flood
a rapid conflagration, or
human stupidity

Then awakens the earth
of Earth
and her seed vault opens

Everything comes into bloom again
in our presence
but we know ourselves

and we dare not
rely on it completely
We are sons of Noah

we build it
in concrete: banks
full of seeds, safe

for everyone?

At night, full trains standing still
between the erigeron
The grass dike wobbles a bit

The water sighs
little waves over the railway
Geese splash around

Bye Atlantis
Bye floating gardens
Thank you, all the best

We're flying out
the earth is open
Where to, where to?

Rombom, the sun will come
Zirconium sparkles, colours
expectation everywhere

It paints our desire
promises us love and happiness
- a fabulastic home

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

Before we can no longer
seal the cracks
of windows and doors
against betrayal
we must take other risks
to preserve our dreams

Until we can no longer
dance away our common
powerlessness in love songs
with our hands and hips
and sing along with
the happiness and the longing

Then to dance with eyes and lips
and to sing along together
to drown out the sorrow
of the unwanted
farewell that we take
without saying goodbye

The apples taste like oil
the wind erases our traces
on the cracked skin
of the pale earth where
nothing flourishes and nothing thrives
It erases our contact

We have moved
although that won't help
against the refugees

who will follow us
as homeless people
What will be the difference

between us and our guests
if we, willingly or unwillingly
share the rooms and the food?

Necessity unites
but then everyone must have
their privacy, otherwise, you will

as in a large family
only want to escape
from one another

Living a bad life
of being wronged
and still wanting to live
- even without hope

Endure the misery
support fellow sufferers
and occasionally enjoy
the surroundings

and a story of the luxury
to have enough despite
the fumbling and the bungling
that always crosses people

My guilty life
of powerlessness, not letting
my family go short, and soon
consuming more than necessary

Also nearby, there are people suffering
and dying nearby, and I live, I want
to make the best of it
and hope for better

We repeat stories
that call us beautiful, courageous
or good, complicit only
to our humanity

Our body has a head full
of officials for problems
Efficiently and with integrity
they follow the procedures
implemented in our brains
that warn of side effects
hormone storms, agonising
tissues and neoplasm nooks

They are our brethren, keepers
against unused reserves and
calcification, guardian angels
made of providence
Problems come to light
in time in the routine
which unites our forces
to our best reason

My own right started
underground, resisting
the parental authority
it bit its teeth
into itself

Théir religious own right also
started underground, resisting
the established authority
it bit its teeth
into itself
and into followers

it fantasized
over later and practised
violence

so that I must remain silent
underground, powerless
I hold on
to understanding
what is not allowed
to be said

I fantasize
over the past and football
without a ball

After the ritual you were healthy
but the medicine
made you burn again
Do you feel nauseous?

If only you had listened to me
He can't help it either
he needs those ice pops
against the ulcers in his mouth

Don't forget to buy batteries
and tomorrow you have to do it
like me, especially the bathroom
and don't put anything exactly in its place

then it will be clear
that you have cleaned
Oh this misery
all the noise

wet bedding
high deposit
and your family
isn't helping

Looking into the light
of the golden mirror, I eat
all the comfort that's in the house

Kissing is no help
crying only after sleeping
from exhaustion, disappointed

but it is no different
than expected, than it was
during the siege

Wanting to live
remains the watchword
After a cold shower

putting on my make-up
getting my courage together
A new day, golden light of the sun

I am empty, not a person anymore
Not dead yet
Worse
Cast out

They shun death
and the evil spirits
that I carry with me
and might release

Not welcome anywhere
Nobody visiting me
I have to pay
for my husband's fate

He must be
dissatisfied
with me, a worthless possession
to him, to his family

Nobody loves me
They will send me away
If I don't work hard enough
Or bring them bad luck

Fall over when I want
to squat with a cat
Well, then lie down

and be a warm bed for her
Give everything a slight twist like that
and take measures

hand grips in the bathroom
reduce my wishes
embrace chance

think: I have been lucky
with my body, with the peace
of friends, in the street and at school

and keep longing
for skin and sun
keep listening

to birds, rain and maqamat
though there is sadness sloshing
in my stomach and pissing in my head

Flush the rest
plans, days with green poo
and fruitless menstruations

It depends
on how I focus
Usually, I don't see anything

but the almost standstill
of slow shifts
or the to and fro

of shootings that I can't track -
life, in the city
and within me, active

even when I am passive -
metabolism and cell renewal
invisible but perceptible like the fight

for my existence and that
of the bacteria that struck me
as a long-awaited home

Across the road there was the land
Homesteads, mixed farming
In acid air the animals
cleared their throat, safe
behind the teeth of the dog

each of them subservient to a higher order
Only the rooster didn't know that
I grew up at that fringe of the city
and in my absence the farms
have grown to giants

which have eaten the landscape
But they don't have an appetite
for hills and gorges, they would
choke on winding roads
So they leave the Hinterland alive

The vernacular calls
for control, no surprises
Customs and property protected
privileges defended: prosperity

It's a street race
of unintended consequences
Everyone spurts along
the back rope

It seemed to be good ideas
moving plants
channeling rain
taming animals into cattle

but one thing to another
there is no end to it
and we ourselves must
also be modified -

not humans anymore
but people, not standing
in the way of the people:
a true democracy

Men didn't get me
with their gob talk
about heaven

on earth they're willing to give me -
higher than I consider to be possible
they'll make me fly

She rather holds a broomstick
between her legs, they laughed
among each other till it wasn't so funny

with their gob talk
about heaven
on earth they're fighting each other for -

the earth they're fighting each other for
because it isn't good enough
for masters who are afraid

to serve
but I can swim
even under gob ice

To understand ourselves is
to understand our paradoxes -
that it is all real
consistent and sincere
without inner contradiction

Our youth lasts longer
we are fertile for longer
so we live longer
the earth becomes crowded
the silver tsunami reduces prosperity
and we contend with a lack of space

We fight for interventions
to prevent
pregnancies and overpopulation
and we believe less and less
in the fairy tale of the desire
to have children

Immortality lures
us to recombinant
techniques to recreate
ourselves in our image
and likeness

You see it everywhere: stones
burnt black with bones
a barbecue in the fire
of angry men

Sometimes dies one nobody
speaks about it what do you do
if the truth is too painful
if you even want to guess?

You don't run into soot stones
you keep back
or poke them curious
if there's anything underneath

I wasn't there
but for sure, I'm not crazy
so maybe she was -
thinking to be human

like us

When the sirens blast I never know
immediately that it's the test
of the first Monday

My head goes crazy
I'm wrongly
tuned

Just like you
I am cautious
of imaginary dangers

far from my neighbourhood
and in the dark future
such as the global death

of oceans and people
Beware, it comes close
it flies

into my street, in league
with missed opportunities
and the uproar

of my achievements
But then I think: oh, right
it is twelve o'clock again

I'm really going to do better

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

We know the images
know what war is
but the bunkers are empty
Our sky is soft

We know the people
with passing paces they walk
home in a spiny skin
cautiously over the sandpaper

of the hurry of their lives
They take a subscription
to series and the hospital
which is always cheap

We know the paths
beyond the musty acid air
of fresh building rubble
they bend

through muddy fields full
of fellow-sufferers in luxury cardboard boxes
and pathetic stray dogs
bur our sky is soft

the world is not here
under the red sheet
of mama's bed
on a holiday

If not the facts do count
not even the people
but money and power

under the banner of freedom
equality or faith
weigh heavily in the pockets

of the senators
and treason is the reproach
to anyone who would

protest time after time
when is repeated
that Carthage must be destroyed

     then the wise words from the
     mouths of gifted speakers fail -
     and who then can be the leader

     of the democratic revolution?

Dredged up, laid to dry
between walls of fire and villagers

watch, dogs lick their lips
Now it's up to me

to be brave
to know whom to trust

not wanting to avenge
anything, not to be an offender

Now it's up to me
whether I want to delay

the inevitable, against better judgment
hoping for a saviour so I won't

have to dare the impossible
Now it's up to me

to dare
to die

There's nothing to eat in the kitchen
of Charles Frank Watchman
born here in this town

and deceased last winter
We polish the worktop
made from his gravestone

There is not a scratch on it
The coffin in which he lay
have we traded for

nothing, bacon and beans
Times are changing
but inequality is not

no matter how many marches
we walk to the Great Golden
White, Pink, or Blue House

The birthday over
watched a short film
dozing, unable to sleep
Wake up with pain
Jaws, head mostly

Holding my breath

Where is the hospital here?
How you will leave there
you want to know in advance to know
what you want
what the facts are

You count
the symptoms
incomplete
so turn around
Breathe until it is light

Get up exhausted
dizzy on the edge
of the bed, feel
no pain, there
between the shoulder blades

My reflecting fearsome brain
is expecting tears from pain
for dying is defeat, an imperfection
denying its deceitful counter-question:

Do you succeed to meet the challenge?
You too do need to keep your balance
between success and rotten muck
the scene of stress from modern luck

where envious wealth must pay the price
of precious health that's jeopardised!

Feathers, falling
from the wings of the dark
angel, falling, losing height
over the foggy graveyard
- the fields with stakes and stones

Men had to kill
boys were frightened heroes
hunger and disease did the rest

Life is scrawny, the chests
of the girls are too flat
for the babies in their bellies

Between the frail black feathers
they arrange flowers of past times
- the flowers of future times

With every colour they dream
of the veiled sun
and wish it back

Back then I had to get used
to myself, who I was
in my mother's videos

now to your voice, to you
lifelike smiling as if
you are in the other room

back from the story
in which I stayed behind
It is so definitely over

even if you and me together
would hear and see again
what it was like

and just as little would understand
that you really have existed
there and then

You can endure it
but you won't get used to it
you won't get used to it

It's quicksand, tricky
but there are no beasts
that gouge out my eyes
to tear me apart alive

nor is there any tide
no flood that drowns me
I'm just stuck
as in concrete, the sand

has hardened, yes
if there were tourists
I would wave at them
in their photos, but

there is nobody

I don't even feel anymore
how cold my legs are
I think of peat bogs
eating humans and animals

and I think of passers-by
who come to my aid
before I start to hallucinate
and dry out, waiting