Tell a thousand and one stories
of the magic side, of roses
veils, lamp bowls, starlight

sweet tea and carpets, beautiful
bodies on thick cushions
and forget the robber

who sold me far from home
forget the murderers
the poison cups for the throne

the first one that I didn't drink
and not even fifty years old
the second, unexpected one

Tell a thousand and one stories
sing of the birds in the pleasure garden
sleep in harems of delight

between pink water lilies, gold
brocade and the moon, dream, dream
dream it will always stay that way

Not write You Now! or I Why?
but more than a subject:
truths
skilfully collect them
prune and rebind them

in stories and novels -
make an exemplary report
against forgetting
the unique battle or
the special failure

in an argument or poem -
expose and illuminate lovingly
the unseen aspects
and the hidden patterns
or explore the unknown

A high whistle, the banging
in my throat, I look
at the monster with one eye

it rages
towards me
I look
with my other eye

who dares to press
his thumb the longest
on the rails, in sight
of the express train

The train driver is startled
but not Pooh, Edward Bear
living under the name of Sanders

He likes his new name
(maybe Winnie is a girl)
and he does not know
the swan of long ago

I am Christopher
I love stories and I live
behind a green door

The train driver is startled, and I
am not myself, my thumb
presses upon the rails

It's one of the trillions
of temporary states
of my consciousness

in which everything is allowed
and possible, in the childhood
of the universe

No you or me
how real is that?
A green door

is just art, made
from a piece of tree, exhibited
in pop-up museum earth

I can talk to men, and laugh
with my girlfriends
they are playful, like kids
and you are both
you write me t+

You don't have much time
TM I understand
IMO it is also healthier
for your thumbs

You will see, UNK
&NBD how it works out
HF& you'll always have LOL
with a second and a third choice
to be happy, NP4U

You know that
somehow better
than my friends
00 LU

You don't belong with us
we are better

I have to choose
between participating or not
or clean hands

We learn we
are better
and we let it be known

Diabolical stupidity dances
through the streets - everyone
who is not like us

Here you have a thick letter
of chocolate, the sign
of your name, this is you

Take, eat, grow up
redeem yourself
from dependence

Speak
my language

No clear translucence
no words ventured
on pure water, but

describe-pictions
sung love lines
mist-lingual truth

wise as unwritten
laws I wanted, I thought
     I was nineteen

     and didn't know how
     but I would
     write and sing

     of bodies and wounded children's
     leaden castles in the air
     with harnesses around their open nerves

     soul splinters everywhere and hearts
     that suffer until they break
     on the twinight of their song

I don't know what is true
I see connections and doubt
about my head-servant

for he draws them compulsively
and connects memories
amidst all their twists and turns

More and more often I want
him to redo it, but
it takes him increasingly more

imagination to understand
what is happening and what
in summary, is untenable anyway

so haphazardly does it come
criss-cross from all sides, and it
gets lost within me and falls apart

My hand, accomplice, writes down
what the winds of time wish to
keep, blown into me, drawn out
of me, and kneaded

into common words, short
sermons in comprehensible lumps
and every time adding a dash
on the tally stick of man

All the worldly wisdom hidden
in clouds of short-sight between
blinkers and closed doors
against the fear of getting too little

And so many emotions with it
about past, present and future
not to mention the
reproaches and apologies

Smudges of earth
on my strange hands
I see it and rest

I don't have time for tears
but they fall anyway
and my heart falls with them

My brother lies in the sheet
behind me, but how
can a corpse be my brother?

I must be strong and believe
that he is eating the sweet grapes
that his murderers claim

Sand in my hair, my cheek
rests on you, you're still there
I hear your voice softly

comforting mama and repeating
the facts, oh Jalal, you shine
in me, forever

Why use old language
if a new one hits shorter and more
powerful into heads and hearts?

Letters are out of time, long, slow
and so privy they wrap reality
in nice words of imagination

The facts are difficult enough
to understand, just keep
to the news of your choice

That's why we uncover the core
cut away the nuances
and speak in plain language

popular Diets Duits Dutch, because
that way ordinary people have
become more worldly-wise

Poems are not word-
but life-processing

in thought-out feelings
and pain

treasuries of words
from our Language Mother

passed on
to teach

how we live and die
in the open institution

for talking animals
which is our world, and language

developed from hearing to reading
developed from ears to eyes

developed from letter- to image-
pixels, writings on the wall

on side-filling screens
where once were books
waiting for cleaning

About you, I don't know
Is it worth the effort
     to put on a shirt
     if you kneel, tuck it up
          and lay it beside you to shine
          in soft folds of well-being?

About me, I don't know
I shut my eyes
     my hands guide you
     to where I want to feel myself
          and where you've been, your tongue
          left cinders on my skin

About our love, I don't know
Hormones guide us
     through the course of life
     with blinkers against the fear
          as a slave to our body
          which wants to enjoy with every cell

About my thoughts, I don't know
They only can follow
     what I experience, in the faith
     that I will make wise decisions
          won't worry about anything
          and will let come that I come
               because then I'm not thinking

Cheerfully we play our future
we choose from the disguise box

the tulle Empress
the folly Knight with glasses
the black robe Judge
reading in the thickest book
and for me the starry
dress with the pointed hat

 : : : : :Today I want to be a Fairy
 : : : : :and do magic with love

Regarding our husbands we lay cards
Order, order in the hall please
this is serious, the Judge passes sentence
and the Knight shows the weak spots
in our castles, the holes
in the gauze garb of our love

 : : : : :to be sealed with an enchantment
 : : : : :that protects our bodies and our souls

We'll attack each other
until we are safe

Not always
it is possible to be honest and blame others
for their intentions and ideals

Not every time
you can get your right, take them apart
and call them stupid if they are inconsistent

You would have a full time job with it
not be able to sleep and get sick
By the way, it's hard enough

to set a good example to yourself
and not to widen out your choices
with excuses that restrict you

in choosing
what you wanted to choose
when you were young

and held your own
against adults
like you now

This is what it is about
the field, the floor
clearly visible
in the meantime

without an audience
the breaks between
exercise and cleaning
after the game

when stadium and theater
are lying empty in the light
Dust is snowing
in the drizzle

After the show there is nothing
but the vanity
of the game
and your own thoughts

nothing but field and floor
the polished reality
in which we perform our lives
- in drizzle and snowing dust

With Nana to the big city
the translation tongues in our ear
Mignoter et manger, pipi, caca

dodo, we understand everything
that tourists are doing here
Plain easy, isn't it?

she sighs, satisfied, licking
a rainbow ice-cream
Tiresome uneasy

I think, all those people
I don't belong to them
Grandma don't you think so:

grown-ups are actually
quite the same
when you hear them talk

because they already know
everything and I do not and
I think that's a lot more fun

If there is a heaven
where souls reside after death

within or far from their bodies
it can only be poetry
the meeting place

of living souls and old souls
whose pains exist no longer
here and now, only

as an image of fate
as an understanding angel
of the love

to live, to try
     the golden mean
     of following and leading

to feed the senses
     with the miracle
     of mother earth

embraced
by the heaven of poetry

If I formulate nicely
I always say something
that is known or true
but I prefer
the operating theatre

being precise
with few
ordinary words
to free a truth

from my experiences
something with the same meaning
in other languages and respects
so generally human

that everyone can be initiated
into it by his body, that, by nature
does not lie, but we prefer
to command it
rather than listen to it

Stones are immortal
the dreamt new bodies
of the spirit

of the deceased
on their grave, the bones
of the big mother

Throw them over your shoulder
with a covered head, then children
will jump up behind you

who know they are lonely
They want to cooperate
and imitate each other

Their sounds become language
which broadens their consciousness
their communication control

the consideration of interests
and of goals to be achieved -
the understanding what is going on

I don't preach, I'm going my own way
Not really, because where I go is already a way
I don't preach, I have mixed feelings
about what I know. I'm not near-sighted

I don't preach, I cast anchors, thousands
of buoys everywhere in the sea for those
who want to rest in familiar words
and want to be human together

Happy, then happy together
Sad, then sad together
Tired, then strong together
Alone, then not alone

I pass by, a passer-by
postponing passing
to stand still
and read

I hear sounds, I see people
a known world, a story
in which I recognize something
of myself, as in a photo

Curiously I look
for the poetess, she is seated
in her verses, peeking
I push them aside

Who would she be without?
A heart, an oracle
that extends my view
and throws it on other lives?

Dad, you know where it hurts
although you weren't there
You always ask exactly

for something important that
others didn't miss
in my story, an aside

of the path, a depth
I told around
feelings that I avoid

because they itch in my head
and scars that I keep covered
You understand it all

already before I tell you
and you say the words
that embrace me

and upset me
with sorrow, confused
with this happiness

The insights in my notebook
have become riddles, I remember
having had today's hazy thought

once before
but clearer, a revelation
that I immediately wrote down

and to catch it again
I've been walking for hours
sniffing for a trail

I walk along the niches-hut
of The Northern Lights through time
the sky turns orange again, the sea green

I keep flies out, I filter
the thoughts of the world
and stand still from time to time

to make sure
I am awake, ready -
my hand on pen and paper

Now that winter comes
and the trees have not been
in full leaf
I shiver from what will be

from the shivering people
in a winter of possibly
forty years, as end times
of the rampant growth

and also from the winter cold
in our hearts, because our life
costs more and more lives
and more and more sorrow

If we do nothing about it
our tears will freeze
to a crust around the earth
and there will be a spring

without us

It is empty on the Grand Square
The guide tells about the past
His words blow over

Birds above the roofs, white clouds
it takes a long time
until we go for a drink

In the café we cross over
in each other's language
to the streets where we live

and everything is the same
in a different way

We sing along to the songs
of our teenage years and toast
the world that is becoming ours

I stall for time, don't want to let go
of the guide, I'd like take him with me
and show him around my own city

let him see with my eyes
after seeing what he saw
not knowing what he was thinking

Where are the poets
who devote themselves to music
to the songs that are too good
for the lyrics to the melody
so that nothing impairs
the sound of the feelings?

Songs without empty wishes
Songs without tall talk
And no commonplaces in rhyme

Only tenderness and joy
to my anger and anxiety
my melancholy and desire
my sadness, the love
and the wonder
at everything

Otherwise a title is enough
even difficult enough
for a song without words

New school, it just goes
like that, not all of it
by itself, how to approach
and will it go well?

Is there anyone who knows
who can encourage me
who can look inside me and
sees that things will be okay?

I want this, so apparently
I know this is my path
I must trust myself

when it's hard and every
now and then dare to do
what my classmates don't do

I know my muse
she's not a woman

who only needs to be
available for the fantasy
I project onto her

She is active, she creates
what I bring forth
she keeps measuring

my intentions
Oh, if only I could think
of something

to bring her closer
touchable
without her petrifying

into a dead sphinx
dead earth

The brain grew, and the neck
for a larynx
because there was an unconscious

will to communicate more precisely
That succeeded. It had to.

The early born babies
with their large heads
entice everyone

to take care of them

Their clever cuteness
strengthens the group sense
and evokes words

which they copy, more and more
words have been invented

to raise them, that is
to make them less dependent
on caring, watchful eyes

You ask who I am, you look
for the colour of my eyes
what is sickening me
the status of my past

In the absence of facts you search
for traces, indicating words
places of interest, preferably living
people, who add pieces

to my portrait, since I am
camouflaged by namesakes
You don't want to stand guard
at my door, not try if it's me

who in school learned the stories
of the Jewish people and God on earth
who learned dead languages, and critique
(be able to distinguish)

who read of the shining armour
the red palace, sand for the coast
and foolish bees - all heavenly
and in vain, fragmented tales

because otherwise it would be fiction
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity always
scaffolded, pollarded and fenced off
Read, it says who we are, who I am

I think of thinkers
who describe other sides
of the old stories
and the new talk

who observe what is there
as new and notice something
other than is accepted and
put that into reality

Precisely this responding
to what is already there
is originality
or the illusion of it

In an earlier time
I would have been such a thinker
but now it is of no use
in the easy lives

of well-to-do citizens, no use
to outcasts, no use
to outsiders, no use
to my heirs