I have kept boxes (first quality)
with nails, a jam jar full
of keys from unknown doors

and a pile of suitcases
foundjects from mother's house
memories that have become secrets

as undescribed museum pieces
sparsely on a shelf in the shed
put away by me for later, ever

to open my past with it
when time stands still, and I
no longer find doors

to the future, only
can get lost in the present
or in the past

Oh Venus, you most beautiful
why didn't you dare
to lie politely –
what everyone would see-through?

Had let Mother win
who after all lives in the heart –
mothers deserve love
and honour more than anyone

Had let Reason win
waking in the head, or sleeping –
it definitely is the highest
possession a person owns

You, who keep bellies awake
with desires and satisfies them
with insatiable pleasure –
were you afraid to be forgotten?

You have nothing to lose and yet
you bribed the prince with promises
and you warn people
to avoid beauty

to hide it under clothes
and behind closed doors
where time creeps in their skin
weakening their flesh and eating it

The rust of decayed roses
in filthy vases, dust
on the table, once with love

been made from the bones
of a beech giant

next to the old letters
handwritten sketches
of two souls, forever

young without worries
no scratches in the gold

of the promised fidelity
no indefinite questions
or double doubts

that burrow and toss
between skin against skin

I scan your photo, who you were
is my fantasy, I have no contact
with you in that flower field near Merano

You looked at me questioningly
at that moment, in this photo
of my and your thoughts

since then timelessly
frozen on the edge
of a black eternity

Scanning myself
in the mirror too, I see who I seem
to be and not who I want to see

in the irrevocable traces
of my existence, pieces
of nakedness and makeup

When there's moving so much
inside me, my belly, my heart
and parallel in my head

chaos everywhere
how could I be quiet?

My muscles follow slowly
because of the small balance
wheel my whole body rotates

just as the earth spins around
its axis, through elementary particles
shooting around back and forth

I am in the middle
and I don't feel the speed
united with my own storm

just movement
It's called inertia
but I call it life

She stands firm
please let me sleep
against her rough hair

which I brush
with my fingers
I should go home

I cannot stay here
shouldn't dirty my clothes
on the donkey and the stable

I cannot sing with the birds
on the land, like Francis did
my little Francis

I always carry him with me
let him slide in my hand
like my father used to do

If only I could hire an unemployed giant
for little money, to smash everything
and take it away (big chunks, quickly clean)

I lift buckets down
the hall of the old house
all rooms are as filthy

as the poo pit, to vomit, while
there is hardly anything in them
Out of poverty

the man sold what he could sell, tell
the neighbours disapprovingly
they have no compassion

The rest, I throw in the garden
and what's left after the fire
is debris for the extension:

shards and a pocket saint
worn like him, well
you never know what is true

You can only glue what is dead
I master that art, the chemistry
that will last

But before that, I kneel
in the field, my knees crack

cautiously I root up
the past, a simple scoop

easily breaks more than I would like
I collect what would disappear

under prosperity, I dig it out
for a new parking garage

and find pieces not to be
forgotten, to know history
broadviously

Captured from wide and far
around, now pinned up
to prevent them from disappearing:
trophies from the past

stone signs on stakes
saved as a description
of the daily history
that nobody remembers

shards of time

from the ground on which we live
the hereafter of our ancestors'
blood, their sweat and tears
a living foundation

for our prosperity and the rest
the impotence and the gentle love
of caring, is too flaccid
and too volatile, in our souls

just a knowing

The past in depot:
warehouses full of treasures
air-conditioned
rarely viewed
waiting

for a story
that makes you curious
sheds new light
on the artist's life
or a drama or or

something under oppression
something that makes the strange familiar
in short, the waiting
for chemistry with later
through an appealing story

(sell pebbles from the Kidron Valley
  as cornerstones of the temple:
  God's nearness in your hand
  with the wisdom of Solomon
  and his wealth with it)

Custom-made
with a story
the past may be
worth something
to us

Life has to last
because the great things happen
in your youth and it takes years

to process them
and then you'll want to redo
this or that

with later knowledge
or experience it anew
because too often

it can be done better
With more attention you could
have enjoyed it more

could have been living like now
but would you be young then
or an old soul in disguise

in a restless body
on expedition
to great events

that will matter
a lifetime?

For people like me
life is good
We are rich enough

And art is being make
everywhere

No scarcity
and no subsidies
Professional artists, poor

because they did not die young
in the sacred fire
of their passion

The depots are full, but
we lack nothing

For who would want to crowd
in exclusive museums and theatres
when there is already so much available?

I entered the display case
of people educators
subsidising snobs
the multi-rich and companies

among tourists and inhabitants
who want to be seen
in the museum café and
with sophisticated pastry lard
the conversation with careless clauses

they quote from an authority
whom nobody has to understand
to get the intention
of the praised artists

The shop was crowded
Spotlights on show-pieces
fancy coffee table books
and chic presents
for the season and the next holidays

Especially the past
is on sale, postcards
of the attractions
and sights of the city

interchangeable
like the collections
which graduated stylists
cast in international moulds
to magnets for visitors

He talks with me, laughs
accredits me an I
a human of her own

but I is a medium
of other humans
talking with a medium

of partly the same, partly
an other set
of humans with an I-

dentical reproduct --
Hotchpotches
is what we are

from the baby like this or that
the playful kid and the
jumping or sitting pupil

to the adolescent and from everything
adolescents never want to be
until they are

just like

just like good heavens
and not a whit better
under the guise of an I

Ballast or log, significance
or waste, all of me
that I have kept

because I don't know what I want
to save, every day I am busy
living and I just let it rest

I've put all my stuff out of the way
the books I'll never read again
the old pictures, the crayons

a chair and beautiful puzzles
all of me that has passed
neatly stowed away

in labeled boxes
but without any importance
whether they contain anything

In the middle of the night
tapped invisibly
played and stirred
by a heavenly hand
swings the woman

who I watch, who I am
I feel my feet free
of my weight, relaxed
are also my buttocks, all of me
is free to be seen

Dresses hanging down:
my sisters
upwards by the ankles
arms and hair gracefully
loose, swaying

on the heavenly hand
and pulled away
on meat hooks
our screaming
flown away

Walking past the signs Former
Red Light District I know I'm dreaming
of a better future

I can imagine it much more easily
than what it is like
to be a man

who buys the use of a body
without any notion what's wrong
I must arm myself against him

Walls? Dullness? Claws?
And company, then I can
laugh at jealous eyes

and the greedy ones
looking away from me
to someone else - no one

will I greet as my master
everyone welcomes me, Servus
where there was once war

This very night
you stroked a cow
in India
and I was there
while you ate cake
on Judith's birthday

With other arms you swam
to me on the little island
hidden in the reeds

I did see you
on the bench in the orchard
of grandma and grandad, telling
a family secret to your sister
She was wearing the dress with ruffles
and she was not interested

Over the trees you reached
her your sixth or seventh hand
to pick heath berries

Your heaviest arm was on me
and has woken me up
if I am awake now
with your arms everywhere
in life, in time, in me
dreaming this night

Your life still rustles
in me, in my mind

you think along with my questions
I hear remarks you once made

     Your life still rustles
     in me, in my feelings

     you move along with my blood
     I feel you flow through my heart

Your life still rustles
at home, as if you were present

the warmth of your body
somewhere tangibly close

     Sometimes your voice is there again
     in the movies that make me feel

     what it was like, but much further away
     than when we watched them together

Your life still rustles
in the scents of the woods

taking me by surprise in the seasons
familiar in unexpected places

The ancient duty
to take care of each other:
taxes came from it
so we had to learn to count

Great fun, we count
paving stones and marbles
the candles on the cake
and the money in our name

We understand the world
and classify everything properly
young and old, poor and rich
(stereotypes that grow with us)

until the numbers become too large
so many repetitions and memories
added up a rich life
that must be celebrated

Now no candles
but everyone is present
whether they want a piece of cake or not
and all children are there

Mama said you are
doing this so well
and thus she taught me

to be good, and now
I teach my children
by not being strict

that they can accidentally
or deliberately do something
that is not allowed

I see them discover
who they are, who they think
they are and wish to be

and about myself I am
thinking: who am I and
what has remained?

What is the blend
of my identity, the I
in my brain?

Stories are too good
to be true, constructions
that seduce me

to present my life
as an interesting entanglement
if you pay attention to the details

Love stories are too good
to be true, constructions
that seduce me

to present my relationship
as a special love affair
with which I comfort myself

With big and little stories I look
over the everyday
back and forward

I mix the images
to understand my life
and to learn to accept it

Outside, I march along in the drum band
of the world and beat the drum
Inside, I display my work
in a wonderful Myseum

I may well be a yellowed footnote
somewhere in small print
below the line of time
be a dead name
in the family tree of billions

as long as my work remains
is not dumped and
replaced by forgeries
or pushed aside by an epigone
who puts his name on the facade

and only occasionally mentions me
to old connoisseurs, as if I were an
inferior, a forerunner, in his collection
in his magnificent Myseum

Giants lived here, we collected their bones
in museums, their spirits in myseums
of status and power, pride and desire

We are the shining oil lamps
in which the spirits live on wishes
that we sometimes cannot control

Then one escapes
and he roams the earth
that gives him weight and makes him heavy

a giant who is way too big
for our world and people
are challenged by him

to unite
against him before all hell breaks loose
destroying everything

Helicopters roar across the country
and turn crazy
in fearfully hiding heads

Time is ticking louder

Appearances are an art, a few strokes
form out of paint, an intimate experience
of velvet, skin and sadness

There is no better job
than feeling proximity and depth
shamelessly direct, like in bed

Appearances are deceptive, my insolvency
is just a façade, like a name
given to you in ignorance

I no longer have debts
nor money, I earn nothing
and can work without worries

So let the pious people talk
I take care of Hendrickie
and Titus, everything is theirs

I've celebrated it
forty, fifty, sixty, the ten-
year steps of my life

have been preserved as memories
among the countless parties
of others, just like me

aging and remaining who they are
even though something starts
not to correspond in the mirror

When did that happen?
Was I present?
With my friends?

On forgotten in-between days?
When my hair thinned, my skin
weakened, and I became different

from how I feel – everywhere
where I touch myself
it is still familiar

I am ageless in life
with a deeply rooted pen
that wants to continue to enjoy

the taste of the deep
water, filtered through the earth
sunk from the present

Between the tangible past
I weigh what I can
put away, I weigh
what I can

All this familiar stuff
tiny things, a large suitcase
for a big trip, with a copy
of my passport from that time

Before I open the boxes, I turn
the superscription towards me
Yes, I remember
It's still there, dust-free

Kitschen equipment and crockery empty frames and some
parts, just in case
which has not yet occurred

I know the stories
that go with it and I feel
a time difference that does not exist
in my memory of those days

From times of which I have no idea
whether I unconsciously know about it
this block has been broken in Carrara

What kind of blood is running
through its veins? What is it calling for
in my head? A piece of stone

remaining itself, impervious
to everything I try
to attribute to it

It just remains what it is
while it forms form thoughts in me
which I cut free from myself with chisels

Look! Art. Mine. Do you see
me? Only I do it like that
Look, I exist!

The stone is still a stone
but I am only here now
in the contact, after the contact

The stone created
my creative thought
the stone created me

for a while, for those who know
a little, in time at most my name
but the stone keeps creating

Snippets of time, confetti
candies in five colours
We stare at the tastiest

Snippets, the hours and days
we live, snippets
of who we are

On a pleasant evening
we serve up anecdotes, bites
haphazardly on top of each other

We laugh character traits with it
to make our existence seem
like an interesting story

which is understandable, not an ego document
such a cut up story, cut to pieces
in film flashes or brainracking chapters

as if that would represent life

It's the old story:
Everything Becomes New
Everything Becomes Young, so cruel
is the beauty of life

which sacrifices adults
to their fault
their most grievous fault
of ageing

They still can stay, wise
and competent or not
if they give up their place
earlier than they are ready

Maybe they will then understand
that they also have jockeyed for
position in the past, and even worse
that nobody has benefited from it

so that sacrifices to youth do not exist
There are only real needs to sacrifice
the wasting ego to, and let's hope
there will be hospitable compassion

More and more, we speak picture
language with digital icons of Home
Heart (in the colour of the moment)
Envelope, Clock, Arrow and Bin

but icons of paint and blood travel
with us in their world of gold leaf
as portraits of the life
we like to live

thoughtful and attentive
like a busty bird
showing its feathers

and not camouflaging itself
in the attire of its neighbours
colleagues or pictograms

Those who haven't seen me in years
have missed the gradual transition
like mad people have forgotten their past
and continue to live as someone else

Plenty of witnesses, all
with different explanations
of who I was, what I did then
and how that was possible

What do you think, do I still
have the cheeks of a young god
and am I also the faces I pull
and the man you don't see?

Do you have to be a Vanessa - a
butterfly who knows transformation -
to have an eye for life-
long-lasting metamorphoses?

Is a fortieth birthday a divide
like this mountain ridge here

where the landscape is the same
left and right, but the rain flows
to other seas?

Past here, future there
and the understanding
that what follows will be less

beautiful than you once thought
though this doesn't cause the founding
of a Party Against Sorrow

It's enough to not appropriate
worries, to be as cautious as a snake
and to look honestly in the mirror

That way, even after Halfway Station
you'll remain upright, like a tumbler

Their luster gone
Increasingly, they are
falling apart, so small

have the fixed stories become
which, once sifted out
from the daily events
represented
my life and identity

And fewer people
still know the details
that make me a real person

Fortunately, I haven't become
those stories of my life and
better off with the reality
of my gradual
disappearance

Poverty and prosperity
both pull at people:
let go of the world

and focus on yourself
There is no authority
outside yourself

no doctrine of salvation
no enlightenment
The world is your own

truth

But it's a half one
Too internal, not: live
and let live, living together

in freedom, not: taking action
against ranks and classes
against lies, bogeymen

dictators and saviours
not wanting to interfere
with injustice against women

I watch it, the exercise
of the law of the strongest
and my silent protest

pains me, it makes
my heart cramp and
burdens my love with worry

Others take to the streets
but the new old, hardened
rules are armed

and do not break, that's why
I lie there massaging
and softening myself

The clouds nod slightly
In my mind, the wind lies down
and the birds hold their breath

You have to do it yourself
whispers Helping Hand
The air vibrates softly

with the words, yes, I must
remain soft, and make not the hard
but the soft stronger

The words form a sound
palace, with ocococo and ococroco:
Rococo Concerto and Orinoco Crocodile

Memory is not a palace
it's more like a skin tattooed
with impression after impression

The skin is the largest organ
and yet you can store more
information in the brain

with countless axon-aids
automatic memory aids
like the term for gossiping

because that's what you do over tea
and then you sometimes spill some
confidentiality

Barnacles are a kind
of chickenpox, but different
and people are paralysed at night

A handpan resembles a mussel
a panhandler is a beggar
- his pan is open

You can learn a lot from language
and with it you can learn
to play

Well, my old diary
has almost had its day
I read it over once more
for beautiful sentences

too beautiful to be lost
I copy them and weave them
together with imagination
with equally beautiful sentences

My experiences seamlessly
fit together with possible events
that I now, years later, imagine
and would have liked to lived

just as Stendhal reworked his
dull notes into a stammering account
of a heavenly experience, dizzy
from looking up at the vaulted ceiling

where the painting, on the contrary
is anchored immutably in the then
still wet lime, entirely real, firsthand
Grandeur, not only in hindsight

The army shoots at medics, at bringers
of food and at the voices crying
to report on it

The army shoots at children
it drove from their homes
or lets starve there

The army shoots at refugees
tortures their bodies and their despair
kills their vital organs

The army shoots at everyone
in no man's land
until no one is left there

and none of the spectators
have to do anything anymore
because it is over

Old people stiffen
They eat less and less
That's the beginning

of their end, but I want to go ahead
I crawl and waddle until I can run
and in the meantime I do magic
and grow myself taller

I am impetuous, at least
in the desires that bud
from my soul
regardless of season

There is a hungry growth blazing
in me, I eat to keep on
eating, there is so much
to reach to, I jump

and I eat, I live

I am where I am
and want to be
I drink my mother
and breathe my father
I root in my mother
and grow in my father

I'm in the prime of
the best time of
my life, the spring of
my life, where I am
where the grass is greener
and where I want to stay

At night the sky is dark
when the moon is black
by day the sun often shines
behind the clouds
when it rains I get wet
and then I dry again

So everything stays the same
repeated over and over and
within that security I can change
almost unnoticed
while I am who I am
and who I want to be

Hair brushed smooth
snorting with confidence
looking out at the world

Old issues
to settle, entrances
to force, risks to take

Manoeuvring
through the day, peeping
for opportunities

for good works
in my mind already
performed a hundred times

Resting next to my horse
trusting in my strength
my moral strength

I don't need to dream
of emperors and dragons
I'm like them myself
a focal point

of energy
finding free ways where
it desires to flow to
or away from

I dream of
renewing
what is stuck
or run off track

passing on order
to the fire
water, earth
and air of life

Everything flows easily
I also rely on that
I do what I like

In the eyes of others
I sit on a throne, so
they ask for my guidance

and I pay attention
to what they want to achieve
It costs me the freedom

to go my own way
but the better I see
what people do, understanding

the course of lives better
and sometimes I can lead them
I don't have a guide myself

and I always have to
step off the throne
and step back by myself

I've been initiated, in classrooms
in workshops and at home
in bed, I knew it for sure, I too

am a devil's child
such a person who, in flesh
and blood, can live on pleasure

who smears soap on his skin
places incense between his clothes
puts on an apron and prepares dinner

Every bite, every kiss
is a yes from my senses
and I can't be more earthly

than, out of lust, jointly
initiating a new human

being into a body

The wind is weak, yet
there are leaves swirling
before my feet, often
it goes that way for me

What I don't hold, is blowing
away and could fall into pieces
so I jump back and forth
with long arms like a juggler

Should I let everything
happen and just watch
with barbed wire
around my thoughts?

Changes and decay
never coming to an end
I balance on tipping points
in the golden mean

Games must be played
seriously and fair
otherwise it is serious

That's exactly the problem
There are always deal breakers
unreachable

if one wants to call them to order
and cries out in the wilderness
so you have to go higher

higher than the highest
court, to the star
of everyone's consciousness above

the illusions on earth
and the half knowledge
of the restless people

who know no silence
and fill their thoughts
with duties and wishes and

make claims on others
But I raise a shield
against their trumps

Heaven is my freedom
to get to know you
to look into each other's eyes
and to name the marvels

the little things
ourselves, so familiar
and mysterious

our feelings
that flow through everything
guiding or frustrating us

the interconnectedness of everything
all the parts and particles
and the overarching heaven
of our thoughts

The rhythm of the seasons
keeps my heartbeat in balance
if I go with it

and don't lazily indulge
in the provisions
in an easy chair in winter

but put on a coat
and go out, over mountains
or meadows for views

without walls
with a warm sun
in the centre

of my body
expanding my mind
with the landscape

In the transition time
it is peace for a while
To combat each other
the old powers are too weak

and the new ones still too small -
infants in the nude
who endear and
temporarily disarm everyone

in the pitiful awareness
that this nudity will lose
its innocence to the desires

that proliferate in the growth
of body and mind and
that can disrupt lives
as if a war is going on

It will cost a lifetime
of missed opportunities
to become old and wise
and allow peace

Since people who are not farmers
build cities, with inconveniences
and weak spots that they demolish

to improve the world
since then also fields
and grassland get a roof

with robots 24 hours a day
because there is a time for everything
exactly the right time

for the day and the night
the next phase and the harvest
everything can be made to the minute

but personally I still grow
uncontrolled, as it used to be
for everything

There is a shortage of chairs
around my table, in the house
for the cousins who died

young, the old family
members and the friends from everywhere
who stayed to live here

in absent presence
letting me experience
warmth, cold and wind intensely

on the heartbeat of the Force
in my body, in my meetings
at my table in the house

of my awareness, my serious
adventure of giving and taking
they wished for me

and that I will wish for you:
that death is not the end
that life goes on