germo_sold_out's Xanga

Measure for Measure

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:27:04 GMT

I measure:
                sugar in spoons
                tea by the cup
                                      like I drink coffee black
                bitter by my mother's smile
                lips by blood flow swell
                color by the skin those lips brush
                love?
                love I measure
                                      in the leaving
                                      in the hollow echo
                pain
                pain by the beauty of its cause
                lonely in "goodnight"s
I know:
             geome- trigonometry
             français et Deutsch und 日本語
             and books pages washed in words
             pain which is the pain of love
             beauty by what I break
             my hands
                           memories ghosts
             only mystery
             mystery by what I don't know
             that I can't measure

             the silence after sigh

(Note: Xanga murdered the form for this one)

The Cause

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:29:50 GMT

The police have shot another young, black man
He will be put in a box and buried
In the cemetery, the communists, anarchists, and activists
will lament out loud
and from the microphone feast on his corpse
to feed the cause

But capitalism, government, and race do not kill people
I hang my head and close my eyes
We are all being buried in that box forever
I want to break something
Someone has died

The rest is silence

The Courtesy Diner

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:08:01 GMT

Bitter coffee, black
wrinkled hands with the half-and-half
drop them on a tray
The jukebox croons too far to be heard
through the cramped, greasy air
"Anythin' else?"
"No thanks"
No, thank you"
3:14 glowers out the window
past the apparition of your face
Your eyes sink,
twin ships, one end tilted towards the night sky
bound down more than five fathoms, full
Smoke floats up from the ashes
of a cigarette-wreck

"We need to talk"

Lettres en exile vienneoise I-III

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:12:46 GMT

I.

I walk the streets, the -gangs and -gasses
without a name, or with it tucked in my foreign-cut coat
a name tangled in the sounds of my native tongue
mangled in the mouths of officials here
who, tapping impatient pens, wonder I don't come gleich
when they call me to their desks

The grocery girl, das Lebensmittelmädel, hates me,
doesn't have time for me to fumble with check-out-request-and-reply formulas,
with the funny-colored paper and coins
and all I want: bread, butter, soup, and beer
and all I want:

and all I want: someone, jemanden
a thousand-lonesome-miles-by-September-night-and-morning-train someone

II.

But I'm learning the language here
by 10-euro Gesamtwerke
Rilke's picture-book poems, songs from Bachmann's Bohemia lost
Wenn die Uhren so nah wie eigenen Herzen schlagen
The hours chiming/beating as near as my own heart,
the one sent a thousand miles back in a letter
I'm no longer in-love-withed

Ich will nichts mehr für mich
I want nothing more for me
Ich will zu grunde gehen
I want to go to ground, to be destroyed

to be taken on the next U-Bahn
not within, without
it can wear my skin as well as I,

but November here comes cold
and leaves me no train
keinen Zug
home

III.

Men walk by with their lives in bags
women wait on benches with their heads in hands
Böhmen forever lost, endgültig vergangen
Time, our exile
   The ending year warms its bones in spiced rum and glühwine.
orphans everyone
   The rain makes the sidewalk schein.
widows the women
   The moon swims the river nachts naked, pale and rein.
leaves the men silent-standing.

When the first snow fell, I followed the Flocken ins water
with my eyes, wanted with my limbs over the bridge, into the night,
but I took the stairs,

and when the first snow fell,
I wrote my name in coffee piss
yellow letters on tabula rasa.
Der Schnee mindestens
The snow, at least,
can say it

New Poems

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:57:59 GMT

When Lady Sang the Blues

The bed made of brass
the brown in your eyes
the heart on my sleeve
beating blood in your cheek
Back then counting coffee shops and broken cups
dreaming black and white: piano bars
Billie and Ella
                                : cigarette smoke
like Bogart and Bacall

My hat on tight
your dress on loose

But you were always singing the blues
down from your window
up from my lap
singing empty tables
empty homes
singing what baby don't bleed
baby don't know

Well

sing it soft child
sing it slow

Sickle Moon
Swings
            the
                 sickle
moon
gelid yellow, fallowsallow
through night come on too quick
and Octoberwind follows,
d r a g s the revenant souls howling back to hollow earth
and shiv'ring bones
Swings
the
   sickle
moon
to the quick
a firstfrost harvest:
the crickets play themselves out
the last string still
summer's broken violin
Reaps
          the
               sickle
      moon,

silence

Radio Palermo (Corrected)

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:42:29 GMT

A woman walks across the water
step by treble step
a pretty young thing walking a cello string
with cello curves and alto clef
a far-away friend caught between the sound
of testo no capito
and percussion rain on café glass
coming through in simile
like dawn and day and wine-red night
coming through in coffee cream
empty chairs and exile haunts
time and space and rained-out streets.

A woman moves across a melody
poco a poco,
andante e dolce
coming through in stereo
on radio Palermo

Radio Palermo

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:37:42 GMT

A woman walks across the water
and finds you far away.
You hear her foot falls echo through you
and watch the ripples in your wine
as she comes stepping note by note across the sea
on a trembling cello string,
over space and time and the no capito vocals
coming through in stereo.
On Sicilian radio.
Coming through deserted streets
to knock on the café glass,
she waits to be let in.

Or is it the rain
that bends these lines in red and blue and black
framing radio sounds
into similes:
like dawn's skirts rustling red,
like day slowly opening both blue eyes,
like midnight letting her hair spill out over the empty streets?

Or like memory finds you sitting
and taking your hand in hers
asks you for a dance.

Well, Abby (Redux)

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:15:15 GMT

Well, Abby is a bird
And Abby's flown away
Beyond the thing's we've heard
And out of yesterday

Sunlight sings in sighing
But Abby sang in green
And though daylight was dying
Abby sang to being

You might whitewash a smile
But you can't make it bend
You know goodbye in style
But you don't know the end

A face drawn on the window
Socks left on the stairs
Her scent still on the pillow
One last strand of hair

A song without a chord
Has nothing left to say
She didn't leave a word
But I heard her anyway

Die bleibt

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:32:23 GMT

Der Tag vergeht
Da die Welt vergeht
Doch alles vergeht
Außer der Nacht
Die bleibt
Auch wenn sternlos
Sowie freundlos
Ihre Armen die Leere umarmend
Und Füße ins Vergessen baumelnd

She Remains

The day passes
Because the world passes
As everything passes
Except Night
She remains
Even if starless
And friendless too
Her arms wrapped around emptiness
And feet dangling in oblivion

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:10:39 GMT

Life we weave like cloth
sunlight fades, a lifetime frays,
and quiet death undoes

Cemetery suits,
choked, broken hallelujahs,
and Easter lilies