I visited the market, a little while ago.
There I found pomegranates and tangerines covered in snow and covered in the cold. Summer’s sweetness in Winter’s breath.
Ice apples in ice cubes
frozen hands fishing
for vitamins
open up remembrance of warmer days.
More skins for you and the dog.
Cloaking down under sky invasions I watch them pass by and I watch the earth freezing
over in a couple of minutes.
It was only recently that I crossed a bridge to get to work. The bridge was the same bridge as everytime I cross it. The handrail, the graffiti art, the cycleway, even the river beneath the bridge. But this time the world around was missing.
In this surrounding of wool-like exhalation, a spider’s web collection of drops anchored between here and there. And I remembered a German palindrome: Nebel // Leben, reflecting mist and life.
As I played the back and forth of Nebel-Leben-Nebel-Leben in my mouth, a boat went by, appearing and disappearing between the limitations of river and sky and everything in between.
I came across a refuge dressed in turquoise tiles and dripping letters whilst debris grinded about the better times.
Tranquility, I thought, but it was a fallacy for the walls were talking to me.
Outside I found the replica of a forest right in a window’s joint.
And that is the cruelty of it all; time is unforgiving.
When to Scotland, I came to admire the very beauty of tartan against a grey Scottish sky.
Smell my dried seaweed, the water was calling. Smell my salty breath, the wind chimed in.
I wandered off to see the sheep. Blackface sang a song about obstinacy and dandelion.
Then the land ended and sky became sea.
I hid away from the sun. The leaves scraped like abrasive tongues over my skin.
In the end, everything pointed me to the water. Away, away we go.
„You have to see the sunrise over Venice“, I was told. But there were clouds in sky.
But all in all, you don’t need a Palazzo –
…and you don’t need the view from the Campanile di San Marco
…or canary birds on balconies,
you don’t need a sweeter sound than laundry drying in the wind
or a more spectacular smell then the remains of the Mercati di Rialto
if you just walk the remote lanes of the city, getting sooner or later inevitably lost.
It was a few days before Christmas that I took a walk in London.
The weather was neither cold nor warm (or at least I didn’t notice) but in the sky there were bubbles and the pavement was plastered with spat out chewing gums.
How long the night must have been. How short the night must have been. How sharp the underground lights sting the heavy eyes.
I didn’t care for a Christmas jumper. Although they were marvelous.
And I didn’t care for a pink piece of cake (someone else already did – halfway that is).
Then I met beautiful people at Camden Market. Psychedelic Rabbits and Leopards and Bare Ankles and all laced in gold.
From behind the window sill I felt a tingle. It was the CCTV watching me.
And the train guided me into my nothingness, lulling us into sleep; the machine a sudden caring mother.
My last friends. They left stains and the impression of their feathery weight on my arm.
More attachment to a city
in its autumn heart I find not only the twilit cold
one could expect
at the end of October
but layered structures that seem to exist in the strangest places.
Walking Oslo once again I wish for more
eyes to notice
more
hands to feel
more
memory to not forget.
As I walked through a friend’s garden,
I noticed autumn’s vanguard.
Funny, I thought.
There doesn’t seem to be anything more beautiful –
than September Rain on a goldfish pond
than rain coated tomatoes (that won’t get red any more)
than a tiny pool bordered by hibiscus petals
than sturdy blossoms awaiting the end of the year.
Guess my thoughts, I say,
to myself (because there is no one else I could ask)
and I answer:
It would feel a little strange to be a Rumanian stray dog
in Constanța
but I could do worse,
chasing cars
chasing fleas
chasing my own shadow as long as there is a sun in the sky.
Have you ever seen the peony’s bud?
It’s not much more than a tight oval.
But when the bud opens up,
the greatest petals
and carpels
and stigma
burst
out.
And while I inhaled the sweet rose’s scent
I couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit like the mind.
There is so much that the cranium
hides from the world.
You never
know.
