and says: Hey it’s light out!
And it is. It’s day, night is done. That’s the thing
anyone can see.
A day with people like any other and if it’s summer
something’s growing. It’s January
and still the same old dirty
street of whores. Trade. That’s all there is here now.
And maybe the whole city’ll change in the night
like a brain written off by a dose.
Just to be safe he’s relearning
quickly the old words of love.
Firewater
My sister is Firewater
I tell her: honey
she tells me: tenderness
and we tell each other: I love you.
And we drink Firewater.
Today the moon protects me from danger
at the head of my sister.
I’ll swim in the water
in the power of fire till morning I get up
and clear out
through the dark hallway by memory down from the top floor.
My sister is Firewater
she’s got messy hair and in the morning she says: go to work
I think: I take what I want and give what I can
and we tell each other: I love you.
The moon blazes and the two of us’re here in the Firewater night
skin on skin. And everything
is important. Sister. Now, at night.
You’re next to me in my dream
and after. Sound of breathing and touch of a fingernail
to the rhythm of blood in my brain. You.
Be with me. Closer still. My Firewater.
“Now go in peace”
the man in the cassock told the crowd
of Christmas people below.
Now I can see you every night.
I saw the words: Freedom or death.
I made them up. They’re Sister’s.
& the Ghost strode up the stairs toward me
I got a cramp in the elevator down
in my guts.
I’m thoroughly awed
brother
life.
Hey- I say
An my life’s like ABC. I don’t do a thing
I organize verbal matter
just what my cells tell me.
Singed brain.
My mafia.
I said: freedom or death.
I wanted and searched. And now I know they’re Sister’s.
I sleep with em. In the same flat. In this smallish sorta room.
He’s There
I slash my back
so I’ll know that it’s me.
If it hurts he’s not an actor
stride altered by band-aids.
On the riverbank were trees
dampness settling into their tops
now there’s just a hole.
Is this still the same city the walls
and streets my turf? Would I tell
him myself the child Hi Take care Good night
pass him by standing there
key around his neck in a raggedy sweater
with a puppy? Would I bring him home? Or
is that brat still there?
An are pedestrians passin him by? Nasty faces? Yes.
He’s still standin there and he’s alone. He’s lost. His feet burning
over and over through that same that one that fiendish block of asphalt.
Into the City
On a sleepless night
sometimes faces swim in the dark
here and there one pops out
someone you used to know.
Then they all disappear with the morning trams.
Every madman knows how that is.
So tonight again in this home
full of Czechs in their in our
very own genuine state.
I guess it’s better than bombing
definitely.
Sleep you don’t gotta die you do you say to yourself it says softly
into your brain. But even that isn’t for sure.
Shadows shift slowly along the walls and the moon’s been there
for hours now. It’s like past lives.
If you went into the city
you would feel it with all its shards.
That can be managed.
Here and there in the wind
a trash can creaks like a living thing.
Another Story
I felt
the friction of the future
and in your face my own one, love.
Fate, its weight. Waves of life
true happiness etc.
B-o-g willing
before the year is out I’ll be an averagely agile businessman
dealing in used cars
that’re fast as an eagle
as a pig
as someone else.
A guy’s gotta live off something
if he wants to.
I’m also someone else.
I put my head on your arm
a little big but it was her.
Then I met my double he finished
my sentences the city was warming B.’s dead for you Brother
went away and at 7 a.m. the day caught my woman
at a fire drill tuning up
a hellish band
played to please all and the important appointment was
at 2 p.m. in the Tchibo coffee shop
but that’s another story.
Me, for Me and B. and Defense
For me he’s changed into B.
I call him Bog and hey Bog and think of hearts and of skin.
Someone was casually kissing caressing thinking of nothing
and someone was walking alone into a tunnel of corpses
B.’s all I’ve got now
and some words aren’t at all pretty.
Dreams can be horrible someone screams and he’s there
in a bayonet dream and some live their lives and they’re totally theirs.
Some things you watch with your eyes find out
from others some things
are already written down. It’s obvious.
You’ve gotta believe a little in all of it.
So you don’t get lost
so the big dogs
don’t catch you defenseless
the wheel doesn’t run you down
the black widow bastard doesn’t get you at home
at the end of the world in the dark.
Morning, Still
My hero that fella
I killed a rat killed a man yeah right another time
another place lying in the sand of a desert island beach
with a naked woman.
The fella laughs
and then someone forgives him
maybe
we’ve lost more than that and is B. here at all?
Anymore? He wondered that morning thinking of the court.
The one that sits nonstop from the very first second
from the very first cell from the dawn of the Earth
guess so he told himself looking in the mirror
as he shaved himself with his old razor
forever fucked up with
crud and rust.
Along the Way
Two little birds perched on branches
like in prehistoric times.
Even the blood looks the same
maybe thicker. Luggage jiggled in a threaded cage
by the lightbulb over our heads.
Up under the spider’s web.
It was in my brain.
In the concourse they offered newspapers fliers flowers
kitchenware rags a whore and among the other passengers
I recognized the devil a man who wants to kill and a man
who’s going he doesn’t know where and there was no way to hide
among the trash cans or even in the elderberry bushes.
I was slowly beginning to love the spider now I knew:
he’s got something going.
That time in the bar over spinach pizza I told
the most beautiful woman in the world my innards my everything
and the vein in my brain that link to the universe
nearly burst.
She smiled because she knew about life
and what it does: that’s the way it is.