to paris, like a sea creature taken
by the wind, then snapped back.
the hidden sun here knows not
my hotness for earth, which i keep
closed and secret.
you, who are so believable,
eavesdrops on all the languages,
tangible and intangible. you who hold the
infinite pace that spreads, and spreads.
like death or Rodin’s garden in winter.
like your slow breaths in the night,
such faint music. how to transpose it?
in what time and which key? better
to let the silent stay, i think, and keep it
as a strange&wild phenomenon in the
middle of spring, disguised as rock or
a climbing scrub. mute like the hours.
‘love’ is not. ‘eternal’ is not.
you do not obey to meaning. 

shhh…no words anymore. no smooth white clouds
anymore. no intoxication or men’s company anymore.
my soul lives in air and i can’t bear the scent anymore.
in the dark, only he knows the river stones like fishermen,
the small curves of my waist that tremble, all soul
a flame. 

shhh…no one, no one knows anymore
the maddening truth - that audacity of ecotones. in spring
times the tendril of passions can overwhelm any brownstone
like ivy. the sea enters and pulls back all the unnecessary
flowers. they make me stop and ponder about
courage.

paris21

fate of nations veering like any man’s 

on the soft hills of paris. if i could paint, i’d paint

it as undulating anemones dressed by sleeves

of water: just the affect of another unwatched host.

swish — it could all go with the northeasternly

diagonally across our last moment. all laurels taken.

not another voice was needed. ok, maybe just

a sweet little whispering or a moan.

cherry red ‘oh’s to throbs of time. 

because nature speaks no language, just a quarter of
unbuilt ground would be enough for ten lives of song.
even then, somethings remain leftover, which i only perceive
in evenings when the stars are not there, and you are far away;
times of mania and the leviathan.

green heart of winter, you were born to take care of the
essence of snow and the hour that has not yet come.
somethings break through sounds and at the end of
our century, i can see you at the helm of every city, birdsong,
even light in that last vermeer.

i wish the millennia would be revealed to you sooner
even though it may immobilize us. bring me harvest of lilies,
violets and magnolias. blooms for me irreverent 
of seasons. i send letters to you with night-kites and 
no addresses, just to count clusters of words like constellations.

yes, my love could been better, but surely my labour is witnessed
over and over. 

after the blizzard on a clear day, the last of snow softens
into darkness. the earth thawing with longing into longing.
we drive through the roads encased in glass
imagining an ocean evaporated here. more quickly now.
we enter into the arms of another freeway and boulevard
with signs that tell me to look to the rearview mirror.
against foothills and fog i can see the corners of my
visage lamenting of a lost battle for the shorelines.
all light gone out. i think i can hear the lost seas, the times
that collect us in ideograms of feathers and clouds; and
i was happy to have lost, all i have lost, in you. 

6am runs on an island named austevoll
make me a little weary. the pavement
lit only by cars that come and go,
intermittently. that traffic and hail of

light. i am glad for the company and
afraid of their onslaught, either way,
unprotected. all of us are now unprotected.
everywhere the glassy air makes

inhuman sounds. the unthinkable comes
every morning and wakefulness dims
our small fears of death
like embers and ashes.

we brush our eyes and step out
filling the spaces that missed us.
and to the ground we fall, like
so much snow. we turn and i think

the trees turn with us. things are more
than themselves here. always they
withdraw from me. either you play with
storms or you drown. 

no one knows how he got here. he carries his own gill nets and flies - a parade of musk and lavender across the baltic seas - past so many little catastrophes. no flame anywhere in sight, just the grey white of richter paintings. like a classic film noir. 

sometimes the light travels with him, sometimes not. and i am tempted to approach him, bring him peaches and geraniums from the south, old songs in greek about young girls and ouzo. 

it’s been years. i have yet to decide. but i followed him here and i wept when i saw the mountains, behind the sun, which comes & goes, like miracles. he goes on collecting light on a blue globe. i go on waiting, with the instinct of stones.

i would not want to see your face again

your sad cheeks and your windy hair

under the hood of your jumper

under the sunny rain.

when your face opens to my face

i am stuck to it

and i would like to eat 

my toast in the morning

without getting crumbs on you

though you didn’t seem to mind

a little heap of brown grit

on your chin, and sometimes

soymilk, coffee, and even a spoon.

well, until you do. slowly you 

remove your glasses and put down

your tea, small seismic disruptions 

of the morning routine. i peer at the 

book review intently. the windows

shatter sending glass fragments and 

coffee all around the room.

i keep my eyes

on the paper

but that was the way to another life.
she wakes as the founder of a still
rocky plain. her coat flowing, her hair
moving like eel grass, or seaweed
in a shallow cove. drifting in and out
of rooms into the open air.
she seems to rise and fall with
the wind, swaying further, and
further away each time.

o the things i drive her to, and
try to call her back from. my thoughts
always floating like dark balloons
and my sleep deep and fecund.
she arrives every now and then
to help me, reappearing like
an avatar. a naked avatar, laughing
and obscene. her body sunk in a green
wrinkle of seawater, lit by a huge moon.

full moon over oslo in the middle of february, and
i have so little poetry in me that i’ve settled for writing about
writing instead, and how it bums me out. i wanted someone to come here to
show me a holy something; a peach or a lilac branch,
give me permission to think of bears and misbehave for a while.
i can’t do it by myself. i mean, i’m ¼ genetically kite i think, i need to be
carried and dragged and propelled and so on. right now i seem
to have caught on something (i hope it’s a mint tree) and i wish
more than anything to have inherited more kite-grace.

thinking about having a peat bedspread (i’ve even googled that
the other day) makes me remember the way i felt when
i put my feet into the marshes, and feeling that memory makes
me all fuzzy inside. it’s a scandalised kind of happiness, you know,
like shit, did we just get away with that? at the same time
i sit here wondering if there is a poem in fingerprints and
the shadows of the moon. some kind of b&w, 2d poem, that’s
embarrassingly opaque & beautiful. it will be weird but trust lives by its own impossibilities. 
it will be so weird.

with a little more touch and seeing
we might just survive this winter;
some kisses given and others
not; snow white reproaches of

my silence. yet the wind, the wind
veers well through your forest
of hair, through that unripe,
unready beach shack

where we danced and drank wine
till the mornings, befriending
lonely fishermen casting their
lights out into the sea.

never do we precede our fate,
always we bungle another tongue,
so abandoned. so forgotten by the sun.
always you bring me espresso

in the morning
dark and yearning.

at lunch he dives.
by way of aperitif he dives.
he dives for breakfast.

when you dive
the world pours up around you
continuously,

a ribbon of motion
defying end in
a tone that borders on arrogance.

sounds and colors deepen
on their way to achieving
darkness and silence,
which keep receding.

a different situation however if
the entire time the thing
he was diving to reach
were diving just behind him.