In the tearoom, we pretend
to be good friends – in turn
we bounceball our days

If only I could make contact
but with words, it doesn't work
Our hands are close together

We gaze outside
it can't be explained
although we understand it

And that already comes too close

I dream myself in the sun
on Italian shoes, eyes
follow and admire me

That is what's missing, naturally
should have been there after years of toil:
being in my place, tired but satisfied

waking up in an easy life
(fish jump into my pan
  the cotton is flowering
  high in the summer)

I dream myself in America
Spotlights are waiting for me
They follow and admire me

where I come, in light halls
and clean streets smelling of
jasmine clouds and sweet men

who bow to my analysis
(I speak, light on my feet
  with big, wise cat eyes
  Thank you. I have made my mark.)

I have become old
and I can only play
with my thoughts
the rest is too stiff

But don't be mistaken
it is pleasant to feel
in today's warm wind
what it is like

to stand on the jetty
in a thin dress, waiting
without the need
to do anything

but enjoy, flapping
in the sun, while I
can see now how
it all will continue

My crush and the child
who embraces my leg
the same child next to me
with her own child

on her arm, our feet
in the surf, breathing
one love, three women
with wild hair

just like on the mountain
where I throw up the ashes
into the world, that's how I play
my life together

I am a balloon
tied together
with strings of gravity

to a hawser of people
in a knot of umbilical cords
(the earth)

My inflated head thinks
to be independent, floating
in its own piece of heaven

(a fantastic existence
  above all the complications
  in the knot)

so full of all sensations
that I don't want to puncture them
because I'm a balloon

Less than two square meters
that isn't much skin

to make contact
with so many people

who attract me, all the children
I would like to cherish

besides the cows and the donkeys
with whom I'd like to have a talk

too many animals to mention
also the amazing beings

that plants are, their strength
and acceptance to carelessly

lose to fruitrobbers what they get
and the stones, rough and smooth

in all colours, they touch me
down to the finest folds, deep

in my body with the wind
of my thoughts

Laws liberate people
more than anything else
The smoother, the more

they are like a clear lake
making the elusive depth
of the sky understandable

Not the separate laws that are on their own as poles, that limit, oppress and obstruct

that have given me a life sentence
so that I have all the time
where I smooth out legal rules

to world laws
that are not after anything
but everyone's freedom

From a chest, I eat
books, and the chest eats me
and carries me to the other side

I flee to my freedom

It is my destiny
to be a female knight
awakened in a dark tomb
my soul draws drops of the deep sea
up from the earth

into a fountain of love
which lifts me to float
to the light

It is my destiny
to be a female knight, young
without blemish on my soul
which hangs within me waiting
for reports of a distress

too bad
to check off unseen
I must take action

It is my destiny
to be a female knight, I intervene
and impetuously turn the odds
with superpowers
of good will

As a child, I could have walked to
the other side, the ice was thick enough
but I belonged here

on this bank
I still watch the geese
and in summer the paddle-
boarders and the bombs
of screaming children

I know the boy with green eyes
the others who drink beers
at the tree, urinate in the canal

get pizza and kiss
with chewing gum girls who
have come on scooters
to be entertained
and admired by them

Sometimes a thick barge sails by
with thick cushions, happy people
and white balloons, and sometimes

I look with a long neck
over the convex pavement
of the bridge and, in mind
I walk over them
to the other side

Finally free in an open field
where there is more to see
than I like
Nothing

that catches my attention
being an obstacle
hiding
what is invisible

A lightning field of insights
that prove themselves
once you have an eye
for the heartbeat and the breath

of the tree of life
in which you move
Then it is difficult
to be blind again

and lonely
and forget
the herd
and the earth

The brains above my mouth
make me eat on time
two extensions detect
food and that's how

it got out of hand

The eyes made the hands go
to the inedible world, and
made them build extra rooms
to store things

I too went
and from time to time
I migrated back to the past
my friends and family

with whom my itch started
to make cartwheels
to another world, away
from the table at home

where I had eaten enough
and was looking into the distance
where I hoped to be touched
by a new love

It is going well, we are driving fast
away from where the bombs fall
Fatima's hand sways move move

We are many
stronger than the rules
We break through them

to a rich country, not a monastery
although we will live slowly, but
we bring our own rules

We want to work, take time
to learn and get married
to have a future

and to give it
to our parents
who did not believe in it

I have finished my work
Of course it was not ready
but I'm going

to start something new
Bye colleagues, bye rooms
I had a dream last night

The spruces loosened lightly
from their roots, green cones
rose in the stirred up dust

They did not fly away
but tilted and stayed
hanging upside down

a row of tree corpses
Their waving branches
darken the light

Nobody knew what to do
The same as before?
Or eat something

something tasty, maybe
it will be the last time
The sky darkens

The fish do not bite
Shall we take off our clothes?
There is no time left

to get to know each other
I have finished my work
It would never be ready anyway

I am bored, but the view
of the city at night
is beautiful, still

too hot to sleep or count
the skyscrapers, the stacks
of illuminated windows

My hand waves goodnight
Would anyone be looking at me?
I squint my eyes

to peeping telescopes
then I cast them down again
to read a little, insights

I already had, but can not rhyme
right now, with the world
that keeps me awake

If only I could sleep, dream
of light towers in the desert
without being there myself

My tent is in the room
rolled up in the corner
next to the guest bed

I glance behind me
the door is not locked
just like all the doors

in this hall, nineteen high
in the sky, I am a scared little bird
in a strange nest

that rocks in the wind
Inside, the air rustles softly
sensors feel what I like

to feel with my own senses:
the season, the sand and the sun
but I do not dare to go out

500 steps are too much for me
the elevator is too small
I take a long shower
put on other clothes

over my anxiousness:
here I am, in your world
to see you

I sit on the full power
of 210 horses, running
across Rooster beach
I exist, I live
ouring fast

my soul devours the surf
and the dune, the landscape
of my freedom, my dream
and reality fall together
on the border of the sea and friends

where I embrace my Norton
strong, autonomous and free
I create image by image
life from my desires
I create love in myself

Falcons do not grab footwear
for their nest, not the slipper
that the Pharaoh gets served on his lap

     He looks up and everyone
     looks with him
     at the falcon in the sky

It must be a sign
an assignment from heaven
and the search begins

     The welfare of the entire nation
     is at stake, the question
     is: to find or to fall

The court moves from cottage to cottage
to see the women and the girls
all over the wide delta

     The heavenly slipper fits at the foot
     of the foreign Pale Face
     the slave who is different

She had put it to dry
after washing clothes in the river
and shows the other one

I have practiced not to move
not to sigh, hack or cough
I'm on my way in underwear

They carry me through the thirteen
doors, folded up in a chest, books
under my knees, under my head

The world needs laws
that are above parties, for years
I have been thinking across borders

about the right to freedom:
of the seas and self-determination
of peoples, I sit still for hours

writing without a sigh or cough
I have practiced not to move
two hours every evening in the chest

to make a success of the plan
that my wife's love
conceived for me

I would
escape, not know better
and run off, maybe scared
without a street cat helping me
but free

I would
go straight for my dreams
the smells that I can't reach
stroll through hedges and gardens
I'll never forget it

Would it
have happened that way
and do you want that too
or is attention enough
when you meow

Entertain me, Caress me
or are you asking: Comfort me
you just have no idea
what prison is
set me free

By bike, I came to Poppel
and Cleves, abroad
Friends lived in Gendt

I got firm thighs and calves
school was in the city
college in another city

Then my world no longer fitted
in a circle of an hour's travel
but in Amsterdam it was again

like in my childhood, everything
nearby, the world big enough
to move in it under my own power

New friends within reach
and occasionally new neighbours
but family members scattered

across distant regions, sometimes travelled
in call and engine time, never just
together in between

I can't live faster
than my body
can keep up with
Cycling and boating are the maximum

A short train or bus trip may go well
if I pay attention and transform
not read or sleep, otherwise
I will have to endure the skipped life
at a blow on arrival

Express trains and planes break me
up, then I immediately fall behind
and it doesn't help
to count down the kilometers
every five minutes
by tens at a time

My roots are lithe
they make me reach
for the world
to which they bind me
that's why I move them carefully
and slowly when I set out
to explore horizons

The voyage is turbulent
but the ship
is a beautiful ship

though there are no ship gnomes
to help the whole lot escape, no
only fools on board

singing songs of freedom
and toasting to distant beaches
Alas, we get off our course

The magnetic field loses strength
and the north pole is shifting
Ports remain unread

Barnacles grab us by the keel
growing anchors into the depths
of the troubled waters

Unreachable, the moon draws
a sweet scent in the salty air
Who could live there?

After today's four steps
I'm sitting in socks by the fireplace
My heavy boots are standing straight
and my back is still rattling

I am a henchman
I push the boundaries
of the ladies in love
and the rich gentlemen

I leave horse turd behind
and take the scent of freesias with me
The water in the bucket sloshes
like yearning love

I don't travel alone
We are armed
The papers are precious
Sealed letters

Beginning and maintaining
of relationships and major interests
Between the stops, the reins
of fate are in my hands

From the river, forest everywhere
with yellow knights, turkey tails
and white-bearded trees

Sometimes there is a silence
and I hear the treecreeper
here and there a stone

which is described
on the map of this area
a map that is not a map

but a summary
of intersections, bridges
and solitary trees

Tonight I will rest
in an easy chair
that important invention

after the folding chair, the tilting chair
the swivel chair and the wheelchair
luckily I'm whole inside

not shaken in a coach
with suspension
fit for a rest day

for considerations
about my journey and the world
accepts the outcome

Looking back, they read Innocence
and Peace above the gates
that closed on them
but no one knew whether
the exit had an inscription too

I wonder if it could
have been Distress
and Loneliness, no
those were empty words
to them at the time

The desire to know
more, to discover
what existed beyond
the walls, was the unrest
that drove them too

and that swelled into a storm
of progress, a dance
of the Great Time
that destructive power
of acquiring knowledge

If I behave, I can participate
half as a half-grown as if
it were fun in that world
on its head that thinks it can

cheer me up with a smile, kid
the best time of your life...
Cynics! Down with them! Down with fake!
I have square shoulders

just wait, I'm beating
the drum, I'm in
the hangout
about to

They have been hanging
for so long that their brains turn
everything around, having no idea
what's real, what's fake

At the end of the avenue
which curves gently
through the city
stands the train station

No tall, green crests
on the trunks, but
sturdy cross beams, on which
birds currently rest

Modern temple gates
which do not give access
to a sacred, heavenly
silence, but

which will carry people
on their journeys to each other -
free from obstacles
over all the hustle and bustle

I knew my neighbourhood
the streets to everything
I knew

but all those streets
didn't go anywhere
I learned, and I went

on larger streets
into the wide world
to other neighbourhoods

and those streets too
didn't go anywhere
I learned, only

comfortably home again
That's why nowadays I sit still
at home in my Rome, and

one after the other is coming
towards me over invisible roads
fast stars in the sky

of my thoughts

I like early mornings
then I'm on my way with a cart
and every day I find something

that has been put on the pavements
of the city, a teapot
tools, books, mikado
an outdated radio
a kitchen chair and stuff

In the winter I rummage about in the pub
in the summer along the canals
A failed, sometimes beloved man

Till my true one and I
will occupy an empty house
with a teapot, books, mikado
tools, an outdated radio
a kitchen chair and stuff

I am me and you are you
There are too many people

to possibly love
too many to possibly live without

manners, although it takes
the joy of the marvel

of each other, every other
you meet, you and me

who is like us
The people next to me

on the train are talking
I hear their stories, luckily

I don't belong to them
I hope

They are so different, or even
worse: I am the same

We leave the marvel
unspoken, unseen