These poems were written between August 1988 and September 1991 in Germany during the time of re-unification,with the exception of two composed in Holland,and one upon returning to Canada.They are dedicated to the boys who became my friends along the way at a soccer club in Dortmund. rjm
NORTH STAR
Across the great curve of the Earth he shines
Across the Dawn,across the darkline
Of the wing of my jet that sears the Sunlight
Tip of my heart which looks for one
Soul-solid and star-steady
Jugoslav joy
Upon a star-chart one brilliant lightboy
Who stears pure-ready and right to my side
From who’s soft eyes i cannot hide
Welcomes me to Germany
Here are my open wounds to see
If you should heal me
Let it be by the harvest moon
Across the great field of the Battlegod!
Emblem for Iviza
Pardon me if i missed the beat of your child’s soft heart
But i am a dumb beast battered and weary
And could not say “I see you” right away
Amongst the bazaar’s cheap trinkets and kitsch
Though i can say “I saw you right away”
While searching for treasure in the back of the Jugoslav’s
Jewelry shop. On a silver chain
A teardrop clung,amber and glowing.
On the sportsfield you wear a light blue jersey
You bounce alot but get the job done
Afterwards,when you come from the showers,
Your hair hangs wet on your pullover’s shoulders
On Tuesdays sometimes you go to church
To tame your heart in the hands of priests
But i will dislodge them
With vibrato howls on moonlit nights
And the stoic ones,or the teachers of pleasure
Their wisdom will shatter like stained glass windows
When i stand by you with a Blackwolf’s growl
With my neck hairs raised and my white fangs bare.
NETCME
Walking through the daylight hours of dreamspeak
Having lost my reserve I rest and see
The wet black jet black Turkboy’s hair
His white gold light gold bright gold chain
He is bundled like a baby on the bar of a bike
Driven by his older cousin
But he knows me and he comes to me
With his secret dark near-Asian eyes
Behind who’s shadows lives a touch
I would soon know one fog-bound night
By the light which falls through drawn white curtains
Or the light of an orange autumn moon
For i am a man full of warm grey love
Waiting to bathe a boy in protection.
Nothing other than what i am i shall be
Strong for a satin soft Turkboy like Netcme.
YESTERDAY,ALI
Yesterday,Ali, i carried you all the way home
Down the sidewalk where the four streets meet
And though you had been all day at school
And had just returned from the Handball Hall
You still took time to visit with me
In my room overlooking the Brewery.
Yesterday,Ali, while you were studying Math
I rode my bike by the Ems Canal
Where barges in motion and cranes lifting freight
Display a faultless geometry heaped with black coal
As black as the whorls of your sweat wet hair
In my room overlooking the Brewery.
Yesterday,Ali, when the floodlights came on
Training session went on without us.Victory
Did not seem worth having; your natural laughter,
Your sudden tempers,your grievances made more sense
Than mechanics of soccer.I’ll stay with you,Ali,
In my room overlooking the Brewery.
Yesterday,Ali, I carried you all the way home
And buried my head in your dark blue jacket
As you fenced our way through parked cars and people
With slashing umbrella and left arm around my
Straining neck.Discipline did not seem worth dreck
The tough little man drilling his troops
The tough little troops displaying their zeal
Of Triumph they would make a meal
But they cannot feast like Ali and me
In my room overlooking the Brewery.
SEEING-EYE DOG
Once upon a city street where madness in motion
Made many mindless
I met my young Polish boy friend Adam
Wearing white denim and an old gold cross
It was May and May blindness was in his eyes
So I, an old sighthound,gave him direction
Leading through turnstyles of human procession
Across intersections of frenzied comotion
Into my still room of bare essentials
Including a fleece-like rug we lay upon.
We lay upon an old fleece rug
After tumbling about and playing strip poker
Until suddenly i knew i was leashed and collared
And would lead him that way a long time,maybe forever
While he,in turn,would feed me the Manna
Of his unpolluted Manchild mind.
I tongued his tanned skin and licked his clean stomach
As he petted me and clung to my neck
We’re not fond friends we’re paired for survival
I can pace without him
He can see without me
But in Happily Land and Everafter
The Polish Prince with round brown eyes
Belongs to a vision under broad wings
Of the German Wolf King and of Aechemenes.
Once When the Red Sun Rose Over Dortmund
I am the child triumphant
Of all my sunshine days i sing a song
I carry a banner glazed by the brightest glorious sun of invention.
I prance like a young stallion with my banner raised high.
I dance over the far hill horizon.
I am the banner of youthful freedom.
Nothing can defeat me
In an ancient grey dim memory eye you shall see me reflected
Marching proudly
Ever bright ever renewed.
I am the spirit of Man
Whose life is noble in the face of uncertainty and death.
Yet what dark forces are set against me
of despair and hunger
of lost direction
The beasts of adult intention,of greed and waste.
I am the child triumphant both girl and boy
Oh who shall bathe completely in my glory
The healer,the hero,the generous ones
See how i blaze in all directions
The banner swung joyously across suffering
Streaming away the desperation.
Where my feet touch the Earth life bursts forth
Secrets are revealed.
All who depress me,subdue me or shun me
Shall fail
I rise silhouetted by a blazing sun
High high the banner of my spirit my freedom
Valiant,uncontainable into every dark
and distant alley shadow
Giving of my light my life my joy boy girl woman man
Even in this forever past and future moment
I am the beginning of wishes and dreams
I prance I rise I sing
My music is an orchestra triumphant
Resounding spreading beauty intelligence wonder.
Caressing the inner ear of the hurt,the shunned,the ill.
Across great lands and galaxies i hover-a vision,
a child triumphant.
Nothing shall contain my will.
Nothing shall erase my memory.
I am the Manchild vision of triumph.
(addendum: this was written after i dreamt of a stream of young people marching over a distant
hill carrying banners, beaming glory and light)
Shield Against the Sword of Ali
I am not old,nor ugly,stupid or insensitive-
I am not an asshole or the son of a whore
I am not needlessly proud nor excessively humble
I am fun-loving and gentle when able
Stoic and hard when necessary.
I know the end of all unfeeling games
And the harvest of needing and caring.
It is you who must learn to care,not I.
I cherish those I love as friends and allies.
If you make of your heart a sword
I make of my spirit a shield.
Christmas is Over,Beckett Dies
Standing by the Kaufhaus with my head on straight
Sunshine seeping weakly over the city under the cloud fields
Some birds in the pet shop have escaped their cages
They perch on rubber boots and fishing tackle
Making the display window with its decorations
For Christmas look like an absurdist painting.
The Hoesch factory is steaming out crap from its schornstein
Florian,the Fernsehen tower,floats in the distance over the city
I am drinking in Sun like Sangria wine
Early this morning the sweet light blue skyline
Was flamed with hot orange outside my window.
I want to live by a beach somewhere
With a boy as pure as naked white sand.
By the carwash a man smokes a cigarette
On the sidewalk a Turk is bundling twine.
Nothing is happening in the city!
Christmas is over its time for Sylvester!
Bring on the dragonboy,the howler,
The one who will light my Roman Candle
And fire us out of Noman’s Land.
Who rings Outside will not come in, or, No more Mr. Santa Claus
One boy I gave the gift of my Friendship. He said:
“Thanks.Nothing else? I’ll be on my way then”
One boy i gave the gift of my Fighting Spirit.
He became strong and forgot all about me.
One boy i gave the gift of my Trust
He laughed,stole what was precious,and went his way.
One boy I gave the secret of my own Life’s Purpose
After which he could only criticise me.
With one boy I divided my last piece of bread
He said:”Man are you poor,old fellow” and went his way.
One boy i showed the gift of Comraderie.He said,
“I know who you love! Let us do the same!”
One boy I trained to become a Hero
He cried,” Its your fault,of course,I’m always losing.”
One boy I gave the gift of my whole heart.
He sang me a song with words that went “Wait One Year.”
And he never returned.
Swallows
How speeding sweet an thy two eyes she sings
The swallowed wings that tasty flies
She sighs as though to say it were the feast
Of Jesus come to bring me toast in krummels
On the dusk’s wide open wind.
Over a park where duck ponds platsching
Stillness creeps as though the touching duft
Of roses mon amour.But “huur” does it not mean
To let herself be spread out in this park’s
Sane clinging bell and kissing up to tell
That soft love-boy to hold his first wet lips
His first sweet scheme on rassen clean-sown
By some gardener’s rain
To not resist the dare of his most urgent
Deed of all the fragrant fall
To know if she and how she would be kissed
And kissing there wide open on the lawn
After the wrestling boy has proved his strong
It does not matter that a man
Is sitting watching on a bench
Some thorn-way off or that
As stillness sweeps across dead streets
Another two are wrestling too
Though she,this true, would rather be
The first boy’s rented miss.
I cannot reach the swallow’s keep
Because it is too steep to climb
Or maybe i was born to sleep.
No “huur” is just a span of time
And if this kiss were measured in staccato rhyme
His world would stand still for three ticks
Before he knew “this swallow,she is mine.”
Though after church bell off she soars
Not daring more
The martyred bore of boulevards at night
The dog man walks his one befrosted
Spectacle for sight,and stranger says
This morning it was rain,now bright.
Yes,I speak,That is so swallows can make flight!
Summer Sorcery for a Polish Boy
De Stok Swimpark is bathed in sun
With bathtowels,bikinis and all that is young
Bodies are tumbling and diving and raging
Pools are boiling with children upstaging
Screams of delight and the lil’ one’s fright
Three pool keepers scan the tumultuous sight
While i search the bodies that climb the height
Of the waterslide ride.
De Stok Swimpark is hazed in sun
With friends and families and there is one
Not a Dutch child,perhaps Polish or Slavic
Who has me trapped in his pearl-blond hair
Who has me lapping up hot-wet air
As he climbs steel stairs almost sunmilk bare.
Like pointed blades our visions touch briefly
And eventually i see he isn’t scared.
“Oh do not be without a friend” I write
In jet streams over the sky but he cannot read it.
“Young stranger,do not play alone,” I cry
Over public speakers,but my language is foreign.
I draw the powers of the daymoon about me.Help me.
I plunge into the silence of my own longing.
Longing has a language of its own,I whisper.
My power rises on night wings over the daylight
It eclipses the colors and the roar of people.
It radiates into the chlorined fountains and tiled corners
It singes shrubs and lawns with invisible sorcery
And to my delight draws that catalyst to me.
It is thy pattern i see boy
and the paths you take beside the pool
and the glances you send that say you sense me
That assures me of my sorcery.
You are trapped by a foreign language
So i send you this key in a language of the soul
Of the soul that seeks my eyes then briefly
Of the soul I see deep deep deep and true
Like black shining gems framed by lashes
Flashing concentric lemon-gold sparks
Your eyes sunchild are the eyes of a nation
And I am the banner of a neighbouring nation
And no cheap paedo preacher my lord.
De Stok Swimpark is glazed in light
And i have seen thousands not half as bright
For whom i would not waste an incantation.
But your spells are stronger than
The strongest lifeguard on the tower.
Your tattoed father is an aging mountain
Your brother is frail and afraid to swim
Your brother is frail--that’s the thing
He calls you and I hear your name
(A NAME is a password long worth guarding-)
Djarnek
Stout wet boy stretched out down the slide
And i call “Djarnek!”
And he does not hide-pops up out of the cool pool
Beaming
Where i the dark stranger
I,the word sorcerer,know his name.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes,,a leetle-”
“C’mon,I’ll show you how to dive”
His smile flows slow as honey down into me.
“Yes..”
We dive.
Kite by the Sea
Brother I am weary,but its funny how it goes
Lil girl climbs on the roof,Daddy says Oh No!
Mommy says thats much too dangerous for you.
Lil girl was looking for an “out of family” view.
Lil boy is kidnapped without a sign of life-
I’m living in a trailer court without a wife
But i go tralala fly my kite by the sea
Wind blows up those plastic wings tugging at me
I’ve got a windblazer on my tent is waterproof
I’ve got a pocket radio and lots of apple juice
Teenage German girl greets me with “Shalom”
Sounds like a lie to me,don’t care where she’s from
Forty years ago that wouldn’t have been a joke
“Heil Hitler” i should just reply,but i don’t
In Holland children tend the graves of fallen soldiers still
Then a schoolboy tells me stories of Big Herman and Old Will
Brother I am weary,and my money’s running low
Feel like Arlo Guthrie, but I’m here on the German coast
There’s Mongoloid kids with water pistols
There’s a nudist camp just down the road
There’s an old seadog with a blond boyfriend
And i don’t know where to go.
So i tie a tin can to the tail of my kite
And i buy some extra kite string
And i fly that orange bug-eyed beetle
Over the dike,the campers,the kirmes and everything.
There’s football tonight on the radio,with a Marlboro in my mouth
There’s a bus that runs south just twice a day.
And it drives by the overseas port.
When i bring this kite down I might take that road
I’m here on the North Sea coast
A lil weary brother,but its funny,
I guess that’s how it goes.
An Insane Storm Blows Over the Madness Tower
Over the hills flew the Sailor
Over the woods flew the cow
Wine bottles rattled in the Monk’s cellar
The ears of the Zoo elephant clapped shut.
The Tiger barked after his stripes
The Watchdog rang the Church doorbell
A Grandma cried “ I’m all alone!”
A Baby laughed, “Come here--- c’mon here!”
The Ants clung tight to boulders
The boulders plummeted down to the White Valley
The Brass Orchestra went to the toilet
Where the Custodian said, “Your tickets please.”
Old Oaks hung on by their fingertips
Only swallows were suspended safely by their cloud roots
And fed on falling beetles and flies.
Soldiers of the People’s Army became dizzy
And threw grenades blindly in the air.
On came a Green Frog with leather whip
And said,” I’ll lead you back thru Heaven’s Gate!”
Only under the Dyke which the waves were slapping
Lived a Dwarf wiser than all.
He threw two duck eggs into the sea
Very quietly said, “Of Seven Seas the Master I be!”
The South Wind hissed,”To Where? To Whence?”
The Dwarf replied ,”To sense! To sense!”
And already a Rainbow rose to the Sun
And already the Brass Band with peeing were done.
The unfortunate Sailor fell down barely shaken
Grandma cried,”My God-where’s the bacon!”
The Dwarf who was wiser than all Wisdom schools,
Thought,”What a world up there,full of jesters and fools!”
White Swans of Geestemünde
Boys were fishing under wide philodendrons
Secretly with hidden lines
When the Taxmaster came
Demanding license! Sergei said
He would soon buy one (an old plastic bag
concealed under bushes full with fat fish they
had lured from the park pond).
I would walk some days over that place
To watch Vadim help guests into paddle boats
While in between we kick-boxed around benches
And I carved two walking canes deep in the woods.
For forty Pfennig we bought Himmy-Jimmys
And licked ‘till rasberry ice ran down our chins.
It was late Summer in Geestemünde
Some red pontoon boats had been fixed for leaks
When I sat by that wharf rolling cheap tobacco-
An eagle swooped down stealing a mallard
Fabulously in his sudden cruel claws
A rich boy had sunk his remote control sailboat
A drunk man slipped off the wharf up to his neck
My red-haired friend whose name was Victor
Laughed
and translated a song of mine into Russian
Until the old German chained up his boats
Pushed back the ramp and brought in the paddles.
Many bright early mornings I fed the swans
Out of my hand in Geestemünde.
Porcelain monsters on dew-christened lawns
They struck like snakes for the bread in my hand
When I lay down,they grazed around me.
Until one day i flew out of that city
Rocket fuelled and aerodynamic
And the dentureless man asked,”Will you go forever?”
And I replied smiling,”Yes.”