War poem 7
Oh lord
I can't believe I'm bored
Already with this war
As it’s stored
With a destructive chord
On the dumb keyboard
in my mental ward
Am I floored
Out-soared, out-poured and
Out-gored already
Morally corrupted
– That no one can afford –
By this fake Voldemort?
War poem 6
So here’s my
No cry zone
Let’s deliver on Ronald Reagan’s off the cuff remark
And start bombing within five minutes
First off: the Kremlin bam bam bam
But he won’t be there oh no
Then: badaboom boom his private quarters
Although they must be vacant too ha ha
Finally, and relentlessly, – perversely so–,
The hole in the ground deep deep deep down
Where the bastard in command will be hiding
Let’s burn his wood, melt his steel, crush his concrete
Bam bam bam badaboom badaboom
Over and over and over again
Hello? Here’s the world’s not so gentle knocking
On your obsessed, reluctant KGB-skull
It seems to be the only way
To get a simple message across
S.T.O.P.
War poem (5)
My attempts to be of help to refugees and renegades,
Fighters and flighters, wounded and needy,
Hopefuls and desperates,
Have so far been futile, alas.
At a jam session in a whiskey bar last night
I met a young jazz musician
Who’d just picked up his sister from Kiev.
A silent, shy, dishwasher blonde girl
Holding her smartphone like a hand grenade.
She doesn’t speak English, he apologized.
Welcome to Amsterdam, I tried. (No smile.)
When I offered a round of drinks,
They gently albeit sternly declined.
Not once, I might add, but twice.
I guess this leaves me no other choice
Than to continue on the road not taken.
on tiktok
War poem (4)
How many murders
Do a mass murderer
Make?
A mass murderer, it seems,
Should murder in the double digits,
Should murder massively,
Manifold, multifariously.
Although a dictator with a fondness for famine
Or a faulty fanaticism
Would not technically be murdering,
He is considered a mass murderer nevertheless.
A mass murderer with a preference
For children hospitals and maternity wards,
Is not necessarily a more massive or more murderous
Mass murderer, but still.
on tiktok
War poem (3)
And then, – not suddenly,
but unexpectedly still –,
Like a silverfish jiggling in the knife box,
Hope returns.
Last night, in the clear wintery sky, against a backdrop
Of half a Dreamworks-moon, and stars,
A blackbird sang purposefully, almost too purposefully.
Who was he trying to impress except – perhaps – me?
In the messy backyard it quivered on a branch
Just a few yards from me
Looking right and left, or nowhere in particular;
Singing, and being content with that.
‘What are you doing outside,
Come in for dinner,’
my wife implored.
This morning, my daughter and I
Heard a woodpecker, but we couldn’t spot it.
It was annoyingly unspottable in the large tree
On the other side of the river, pecking, – pocking –,
Working on a coffin, no less.
War poem (2)
Never a dull moment, it seems.
First, my beloved cousin took his life.
Shortly afterwards, a storm raged over the city
killing a man, just around the corner from my house.
Then, a hostage crisis downtown –
only hundred meters from where
my youngest son goes to school.
And now:
the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Who said nothing ever happened
at all?
viktor on tiktok
War poem (I)
The Ukrainian lady offering a flower seed
To a Russian soldier in the street
With the delicate assignment
Worded so eloquently
Take that you motherfucker
Carry this with you in your pocket
So that when you’re put in the ground
At least something will grow out of you
Has inspired me to address
From the luxury of my kitchen table
In his second language
The snorting agressor himself
Hier du frustrierter Feigling
Ein Kaktus für deine Beerdigung
Schieb es tief in deinem Arsch
So daß noch etwas aus dir bluten wird
Crumbling an old cork
My father and I are sitting at a table, trying to enjoy
A left over Margaux that I found in the improvised cellar
Beneath the wardrobe in my parents’ final dwelling.
My birth year, I’m afraid, was not a good vintage;
I comfort myself that my father could not have known this.
‘May I open it?’ ’Why don’t you,’ he said.
We wondered if the wine would still work
And if I could get the cork out in one piece.
The answer to these questions was no.
It was a terrible Margaux but we finished it anyway.
Not for the first time, my father told me about how he
sailed from Sumatra to Holland by ocean liner,
A trip that took three to four weeks eighty years ago;
An unimaginable long time for anything, but
How I wish I were on that ship right now.
We talked for two hours my father and I
More accurately: I grilled him.
A familiar crossfire. He didn’t doze off once.
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