Three Star, Happy F***ing New Year!

No, not about me

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52nd week is one of utter madness. For some .. for some life stops in 52nd week, for others it starts all over. If you belong to the first group, those seven days might just kill you. For all that bustling and sprawling, that magically seizes the better part of one whole week, as every nook and cranny of worlds murderous machine pretends to stand still, is actually the time, some, but not few, find themselves cast in utter silence – a vacuum without a breeze. There are more people dying in 52nd week than during any other time of the year. Mechanized Suicides. Loneliness is a killer not to be taken lightly. Once the best headline of a prized journalist , who of course now is rotting away in some home.

I was in the middle of 52nd week when a question popped into my mind.

„What is the most valuable thing you own right now?“

It was a creaky, sneaky, almost bluffing stammer, a shadowy whisper of a voice which belongs to someone, who wants to know something you do not. It was phony, it was fake.

„Well?“, said the voices mocking counter-part, „Well? Right know?“ I raised my own brown eye-brows while staring on the blank face of my wall, imagining a mirror. Annoyance has its way to drip. „Right now I would guess that would be the headphones grabbing the sides of my head.“

A lover’s embrace. It was noise – a silence-filler. It was meaning. It was loud blaring music, which echoed within the ghostly remains of feelings, once so deeply felt, somewhere in there. Some slaughtered musician’s grapple of a hold on existence.

„You know what day it is?“

The mocking voice again.

„Do you know what day it is?“

I heard you.

Knock, knock, knocking…

„The Day, punk…“

December, the 28^th. Three days left of another wasted year, in another wasted life. Four days after I sat next to my mum for Christmas. 36 years. There was a time when we were five people on Christmas Eve. Five – that’s a force to be reckoned with. Serious fun. Two people, two related people … that’s just … ridiculous.

„We still have us!“ My mum.

I missed the precise year, the exact moment, when she started the spilling. I can’t remember under which fucking Christmas tree, I saw for the first time, that there was a little sauce, a little spittle, a tidbit of some fluid running from the corners of her mouth. It was spilling back on her plate. Grief had turned her face into a sad grimace, years ago. Still, she was lucky. She started feeling the pain, when she was old. It came to me when I was young. I’ll never forget the exact moment. The instance my lungs started burning, because I couldn’t breathe. It hasn’t stopped since. Do you remember the first time you jumped from a diving platform? 10m, 5m, 3m, one … Have you ever felt the panic that swept through you on the way back up? When you thought your breath would abandon you half-way to the surface? When a numb, but hungry burning spread through your lungs, your veins, your head and when you were aching to give into it? Do you remember the moment rationality was screaming from its corner about certain death, the punishment of giving in? I’m talking about that kind of burning. It started on that day. And every day since then I’ve been tempted to give in, to fill my lungs with delicious air, when vicious water is all that awaits me. This kind of burning turned my mother’s lip into a tic – something she obtained to piss me off personally.

I was in the middle of 52nd week, when past failures started clamping down on me. What are a man’s failures? Women, of course, those sweet creatures which are supposed to take the pain away. And they do. Love is a wonderful thing. It attaches meaning to an embrace, a caress, a small gesture, a smile. It fills the endless, contingent chaos with something you can crave … up until the moment, it turns to ashes among fingers. Nature has a sadistic sense of humor. It creates empty bubbles in our being – holes, blanks, emptiness nagging you to be filled. And filled they get. By people who are not up to the task. Have you ever wondered what kind of cruelty the words „I love you“ compose? There is nobody in this world, who can fulfill the liability that comes with them. And as much as we like to hear them, inwardly they scare you shitless .. you and me and even your annoying, completely useless little mutt. But we all hope that they can complete us, oh how we hope. Why? Because of that lack of any perfection people seem to feel within themselves. And every crestfallen hope rips bigger blanks in our being.

She took the biggest part from me, back then when there was much to take. But I’m a grinner, I’m a cheater, I tried to breathe by shouting it away from me, tried to calm and still it with a thousand angry words, powerful in taking the guilt away from anybody. I didn’t deserve this pain. She could take my anger and sooth her doubts about herself with it. My words assured her that she was a good and worthy person, that she didn’t deserve whatever small and insignificant thing happened to her. It would have taken less — my words being sheer overkill for her pains. All too eager. And when she used them and turned them against me, she made them worthless to me too. She consumed me, she used up every beautiful thing I had to give, any truth I could find and would give away carelessly. Oh, how she liked doing that kind of thing. They all do. What a fleeting thing truth is. So … conscious of its surroundings, so fickle. If you cannot have truth, don’t you need beauty? That’s what you lose next.

I was in the middle of 52nd week, when I started counting: How many words now … and then. How long did I used to write, when I was in a frenzy? When it poured and burst out of me now and then, what numbers did I produce? 1998 averages at 15,245 words per outrage. Today? I don’t have to count. It’s a trickle. With every defeat I lost a few favorite linguistic specimen. Devoured by some stupid hoe. When the words ran out, I started losing the pictures and one day … memories. In the end, all there was to color my existence was gone; all I could cling to in order to barely keep my sanity. When you think long enough about it, you lose it. I remember the day, when real meaning seized to exist. What a delicate thing meaning is. Just a little  difference – a difference that makes a difference. Got it? Creates it. Puts it into reality. Did you make that difference? Did you have any say in this matter? Ever wondered why people don’t like differences, but still need them? Ever wondered why we turn artists into folksy folks who are different from anybody? Why we turn anybody into geniuses? They have to be something else, so they can represent everybody, so they can stand for any cause. If you want one good advice from me, it would be to never ever get a cause. Listen to me, kid. Don’t burden yourself with the stale and shit illusion that you can make a difference. You don’t hold that kind of power. You really do not. See above.

I got almost through 52nd week, when I accidently looked into a real mirror. There is a faint danger in seeing yourself.

„That’s you – in all your glory!“ The voice of vanity, didn’t hear her for a while.

„You’re whole, you’re complete, a fine specimen.“

I raised my hand to my face and with the astonishment of a toddler, saw my reflection doing the same.

Unity. Control. Control through unity. This was me.

„This is you. THIS is you. This is YOU. Grimaces and big, gaping eyes. Look, look. It’s so easy, there it is.“

All I’ve been looking for. There wasn’t a single part missing.

Age old pictures were flooding the mirror: Me from the outside. Me imagining, how I must have looked while doing this, while feeling all this.

She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips…

Why do we never consider ourselves as complete as what we see in a mirror?

„Because it’s fiction.“ Some other voice.

„That’s what you are – voices.“

„But they are not you.“

„You are not complete.“

I am.

No voice.

„Just a feeling.“

It was the last day of 52nd week, when hope stepped back on the scene.

It was the last day of 52nd week, when something started talking shit.

It was the last day of 52nd week, when that new year seemed like a great chance.

Because something is happening here.

It was the last day of 52nd week, when my dreams again looked impenetrable.

Beautiful dreams. The last resort. A chance.

Soothing word clicked together.

„Breathe.“

And exhale.

And … go for it, sergeant:
„This journey might take us longer than any one of us might have ever expected. We do not know if it will ever finish, we do not know if man can be redeemed, clutched out of the deepest abyss of his own fear. There might after all be no more in this world but man. His existence a short deterrence, his life a gift, which has become a burden due to this faint nowhere everybody feels within the most inner core of his being. It’s the real, the one thing, that cannot be voiced, put in words or cast in images. The one thing anybody feels within himself and feels ashamed when first noticed. Humility, humanity, there are a few fibers shared by everybody, which bond us to the same fate. Think about this whenever somebody strives to alienate you from yourself. Think about this when you fear anything.“

My hair .. it feels … damp.

A speech. A fitting gesture to begin another year.

…

It was the first day of first week.

I made it.

Hit rewind.

Push play.

Do it now.

I’m sick and tired of this muck and muddle.

„Yes, ma.“

They ask, and they exclaim. Nothing else.

Battered and bruised books,
it’s what the cool kids nowadays look for,
in their flee markets, in their yard sales,
because an aging patina,
is so much more ‘beautiful’.
At least in things.

It is a story on top of the story, I suppose.
And you girl with your fake horn-rimmed classes,
are so sensitive for other people’s stories, right?
As long as they are dead.

How often have we been told about that man,
who kept a little red book full of poems, wisdoms,
close to his heart at all times, seeking for enlightenment,
in his mind’s eye scribbling the pages like mad,
in great stupor, because it is pouring, pouring out of every pore.

I wanna read that book, but it’s not around.

I wanna meet that man, pale cloud of dust and smoke,
you do not live among us any more,
we read books like it is a chore.
We finish one to start another,
so many out there, countless hours wasted,
to make sense of a life, that is like noone elses.
And looking for wisdom in the written word,
of someone, who has never known us.

You are keen to see what is old and bruised?
Go to a library, where they silently sit and wait,
like in a tomb. They are battered and abused,
they got more than one story to tell,
inscribed by scores of people looking for their way,
it rest in the marks between their rows.

One is question, the other exclamation.

Elizabeth

Six years ago, in the attic under that roof,
I swore it on my life,
you and me will suffice,
and we would go and ride,
that car through the midwest.
Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, and around.

I played the best tune I ever had,
on a honky tonk piano next to that bed,
you lied on and wept,
sick and on your way to death,
and I remember this hotel,
but I do not know when,
or whom or where.

But past had come,
to haunt your head,
to be fed, the tribute
of that happiness,
here and now.

The past place we shall not have back.

I’m on a highway,
my headlights all I see,
looking out for love,
I will do this trip,
next year, you just watch me.
Finally.

I’m at the good end of control,
the one without a looking glass,
and I will hang on and cry,
when I pull in the driveway of the man,
who is my father, the true one,
the one that makes sense,
that Spaniard with his wild,
unruly hair, and reckless, piercing stare,
the man who laughs so much,
in the face of whoever comes along.

There is a place where I belong,
the Midwest, the United,
the States, and the Americas,

And I sit at that three piece table,
and stare into my water and coffee,
and listen about the errs, and misses and the loss,
of all the people in the world.
How they fail,
how they do not understand,
how they cannot figure out.
It’s the only story we have to tell.

We are alone, we are billions and yet that is how it is,
the pale blue dot out in the universe,
life, it happened just once,
and instead of blessed,
we feel cursed. Why, oh, why?
Explain to me the man who wants to die.

And there is a tune, that is this city,
the one, that makes deadly tired people,
listen the whole night, when it
raises its feeble voice just once,
then weep and cry,
all it means, all it has, all it wants.
Magical, mystical, ephemeral.

All you old friends,
four faces,
warm embraces,
you are all there is,
you and that tune,
when will I find that song and that soul,
with which it will be alright to stare into the night,
to look at a star and believe in what it says,
to watch the universe and leave it at what it is,
to listen to what it tells,
and endure all its greatness?

You, you know who you are,
the girl I slept all night with on that beach,
with wild hearts until the sun told us we were finished.
Six glasses of scotch, headphones and the volume half way to the top,
and finally, finally I feel alive.

Just watching for a song

There is a crying,
slowly dying,
enigmatic,
scary ache in my bones,
to never love,
to never find,
what I hold
to be true
and dear
and kind.

The thing to fight for and die.
The itch and urge,
the pound,
hammer,
shroud and sound,
that rears its ugly head right in my gut,
in the pit of the innermost,
rises up through the soil
and my legs and my feet,
the energy beneath my soles,
that is going to come up and carry me.

That thing,
that unseen.

The storm,
that song,
that says:
„Lets fuck,
lets run,
up into the sun…“

Her strands,
each and every one
so wet,
shady,
clinging to that head,
crawling down her back
like a whip,
the sinner,
the saint,
scourging herself.

Two lips
so thick,
apart,
like I can fit my thumb right,
between.

The sigh,
escaping first her throat,
then her thigh,
the gurgly,
guttural cry for madness,
and ecstacy.

A single finger crawling,
scratching,
digging
up my arms.

Dull and blunt thumb,
pushing inside my flesh.
Make it crawl,
like a thousand ants,
like the sting of a bee.

Who is she.

Eyelids gape and glitter,
and her iris,
eternal, utterance, iriscident song behind a veil.
I wet a finger with sloppy madness,
and let it linger,
a spasm, short and sudden stroke,
on a tip,
tiny,
but endless,
simply beautiful.

And the tears, and the shudder,
and the madness, all out of control,
if truth was around,
it would sit right here,
voiceless breath, senseless shout,
life … loud .

Won’t be spoken

A small red house, perched between some trees,
they put the flag right outside, three colors,
fiery blood, unwaivering gut, and sweet innocence.
All in a shudder of a flutter like an eyelid.

On the step that old friend,
open arms and knowing smile.
Last time we met, small peck,
some tears, before I left and walked
along that river into the sunrise.

That night I had talked like mad at her brick head,
so it might set on my shoulder and find some rest.
I had shivered and whispered in her ear:
„Just come on home! — Just fall into my arms!“

Back then, very same smile, a sob,
sharp shake of her read head and that
gesture of open palms raised up to the sky,
begging for a scrap of its eternal wisdom.

Now I’m back, even further from home,
in Paris, that dirty, rotten city on the Seine,
where you still feel Zion beating through your boots.
That sound that goes straight to your gut:
„Sweat, love, fuck, here’s to these crazy thoughts you have,
it’s all mankind has to put up.“

So this is me and I am here,
there shall not be,
more profound words,
ever spoken.

A thousand people on these streets,
I have not walked nine years,
below us all, there is this soul,
crawling and scratching at the outer core,
to break through and infect a nation
with dedication.

Freckled girl on her tips,
lets her arms dip, her hands flip,
standing on the river dock,
to get her heart shipped overseas,
where it will surely make its luck.

That good which shan’t and can’t be provided.

You can fill a night with old memories,
but a good friend always crawls
under your skin and makes it burn and tingle
for the raw and bloody manifold.
Sticking past, you sure are enough, but shouldn’t,
pure want bears the unknown new.

One day, she wrote a single line:
„I got a ticket, pick me up“.
That propeller plane on the tarp,
she, red-dotted dress, shoulders slouched,
made me want to put a knife in the gut,
of the man who made a lover
who never felt so safe,
she got the itch to fight.

With her, I tried reason, that great treason,
to our nature, the killing truth;
silent reflection that
turns her world to stone.

Sacred heart, cut-out trophy,
on display under an ancient archway,
they build a church around.
Her’s were the stairs we sat on,
when she laid her head to rest on
my chest and said: „Let’s start a war,
that we can’t win.“

Nine years ago.

A scene from a dream, made with a pencil,
so we can fill it up and ink it in,
this is what it means,
nine years away from a city to
find some peace,
nine years to be
back to how we were:
the restless, hapless, unreal,
unrelenting, bruised and branded,
truly alive souls we choose to be.

„This is me and I am here“,
my face a smile, my palms facing up,
there won’t be more profound words
ever spoken.

Tonight make me unstoppable

Good Night and welcome to the city of great appetite,
where the stars are eclipsed by our electric light
burning bright under the brass cuppolas.
This is the glow we scribbled like
mad till the sunlight.

Stark words we would have sworn our sanity to,
made and bound to reform our world.
This lovely place turned into dirt and smut
and all we are is pigs in the mud, staring and caring
about damp love getting us through.

I’m at the station and swinging,
my body singing, my shadow dancing
and shouting in the way we really are.
There they are, dresses and skirts,
and legs and awe and fiery rejection,
which is just a reflection of the urge underneath,
have a taste, just prick the skin, cup your hands
and drink.

What you taste is hope,
sad and divine,
the recipe is love,
the task to make you mine.
Wallow in the light of that wish
to be one, to become undone.

Imagine that gun,
imagine that man,
who put it to his head,
and asked: „Why not,
why can’t this be done?“

Because looming in the back of our minds,
is the figure that descends from so high,
and laughs at the gods about a rolling stone.
Triumphant cry: „Anyway, anyhow, no reason why“

Let us take one last sigh:
Because there are eyes out here,
that Alice falls right through,
into the world, where we hold,
and squeeze, and wish so hard,
that this warm body will be our ride,
tonight, tonight, in the desolation moonlight.

Where two is one and one is all,
and we are but, what we make up.

Sleep dear City, great world,
grab my hands,
I’ll make you spin and twirl,
for that girl, that is two great sins
in one.

Mad man’s laughter:
„My dreams shall be done.“

Grandma’s Kite

One day, my dad made that huge kite,
blue and bright, strong and fierce,
with little orange bows,
happily clinging to its tail.

Many Sundays we tried,
to make it fly,
amongst the powd’ry clouds,
that lined my grandma’s groves,
but no air would show to take it up,
as it was build too solid, proud and tall.

And so it sat,
in the dusty corner,
behind the armoire,
up in the house they had grown up in,
my father’s father’s father and his father’s son.

The day came the old lady died,
and my old man because he,
was a spineless coward just like me,
didn’t breathe a word.

Thus the only one I ever liked,
in that damned family of his,
went to find her luck in another world,
and I failed to wave my goodbyes.

When the message finally was mine to get,
I went up to her house,
the one where the street bends and dips,
and tried to remember what she did,
when I would visit. The way she would get
all she needed for every meal from her little garden,
the way she would turn the dial on her phone.

Someone had put it next to the trash,
the blue faded, and all but one bow still clinging to its tail,
but there it was, eighteen years later,
still looking as stubbornly happy as one could.

And I know this all sounds so cliché,
but when I took it up that day,
to where her apple trees once stood,
the wind went under that kite’s wings,
like it was a feather, and that huge explorer,
finally soared to dance among those powd’ry clouds,
that to this day,
line my grandma’s groves.

The Inbetween

And Steven Patrik M. sings,
and once again I notice those strings,
right through the middle of my core,
which make my stomach vibrate, tingle.

I look up in the eyes of my best friend,
after telling stupid truth about you,
He shrugs, then he hugs, than he pats,
then he says: „I’ll see you through.“

So all is said, dear world,
bring it on, I’m ready to lose control,
cause I am a man,
on a rubber band,
back to sweet sanity.

A film of sheen,
sweet and mean,
You and me,
girl,
have a date in the inbetween.

So sieht’s doch hier mal aus (1): Peter Sloterdijk

Wenn jemand beginnen will, mich aufklärerisch zu „agitieren“, so ist das erste, was mir einfällt, tatsächlich ein Zynismus: Der Betreffende soll sich um seine eigene Scheiße kümmern. Das liegt in der Natur der Dinge. Zwar soll man guten Willen nicht ohne Grund verletzten; aber der gute Wille dürfte ruhig ein wenig klüger sein, und mir die Peinlichkeit ersparen, zu sagen: das weiß ich schon. Denn ich mag nicht gefragt werden: warum tust du dann nichts?

So steht es seither: Der „engagierte“ Aufklärer rennt Türen ein, die zwar nicht richtig offen sind, aber auch nicht mehr eingerannt werden müssen. Es kann soweit kommen, daß man im Zynismus mehr von moralischen Zuständen weiß als im Engagement. [...] Die heutigen Spaßmacher sind alles, nur nicht engagiert, und können von der Verteuerung des Lachens in sofern profitieren, als Blödeleien den Zeitgeist besser treffen als die gute alte böse Satire [...].

(Peter Sloterdijk: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, S. 181f.)

Shan’t be impressed

In the morning of the night,
a dark lake of velvet water,
dreamt a crimson lullaby.

We shan’t be impressed.

And in the morning sun,
a blue bird sung and for
a moment rescued time from
fading.

And we shan’t be impressed.

And five kings so wise,
folded up a life and cut it up in pictures
to size and only one of them got
wise.

And we shan’t be impressed.

And one moon like bloody iron shone,
upon the king on his mountain throne,
and the lake a mirror,
flat and sharp.

And five blind mice chose to throw a dice,
so in God’s eyes they might suffice.
Now they all lie shattered but one,
who refused to throw and try a God,
who’s a fool for fools, when every living thing
is pushed into the ring.

And we shan’t be impressed.

And in the city of Amber a thousand bulbs
trascend an eerie glow, diffuse – unique  - unbound.
Three dark men in hoods, forbidden, play a hand for
all there is. Fate decided, tide abided, worlds outgrown in the
fierce gloom from the one of doom down in the caves Earth
once carved to make what lingers tender in the City of Ember.

And we shan’t be impressed