Stars
If everyone is a star —
we have to believe something —
brown dwarfs would be the majority.
And they barely emit light,
just dull TV glare
that gives one a headache.
White dwarfs
are even worse:
harshly lit canteens.
Imagine the gardens we’d grow
if the sky burned only red giants.
Think how love poems would blaze
if your small green star
could melt into my glass.
Treasure Map
Marx says history repeats itself,
first as tragedy, then as farce.
Marx should keep his nose
out of my family life.
Brel says childhood
is a geographical phenomenon.
Look at your grandma, says Karl:
when you were small, a marvel.
Later you see this gentle guardian
had no life of her own. Tragedy.
Time dilutes destiny.
The reek of cheap soap
swallows all:
Grandma, now a punchline.
Grandma is a form of post-capitalism.
Thus spake the communist —
now bar him at the door
from my family’s business.
The Americans were right.
Down with counterfeit Chinese fathers.
Where is Jacques,
where is Jacques when you need him,
with his geographical phenomena?
Magic Lantern
Sterile as an operating room,
she stares at me, asks for papers,
faded like an old passport photo,
stains on the glass. Look closely,
and you’ll see the girl she once was —
white dress from her first communion,
the grass, the swing, her first kiss
in the Nieuwkoop Lakes parking lot.
Arrogant, she might’ve modeled,
collected fiancés —
in the end, it all amounted to lint:
kids, a supermarket checkout, part-time
at an office desk.
Years passed. Now she sits here.
Just a model for security cameras.
Kilometers of footage
no projector will ever catch —
and there, a turquoise dwarf
mid-act of friendship.
Northern Lights
An atmosphere is a fine place to linger.
Pick people with an atmosphere — preferably at Christmas.
Not those dull-eyed ones.
Try, damn it. Breathe in
the tree’s electric hush.
Think of the Christmas tree.
Dressed and undressed.
Undressed and dressed again.
Recapitulation
A scent of long summer twilights.
Nancy, soft as a hummed G.
Nancy marzipan-drunk.
Nancy with a fence.
Nancy without a fence.
Nancy.
Caught in the riot of long kites,
just strange enough for a childhood.
After an exodus of useful doubts,
lost to the household of chance.
Bee
She would have loved
to live at the fairground,
with a golden trunk.
Day after day, in the name of spawning —
in a convict’s stripes,
in candy-heart tales.
Bulldozers push coins,
she headbutts flowers,
slides her greenish light
beneath my paper-pale childhood skin.