timing

I serve eggs burned,
or not boiled long enough.
If timing is a virtue
then I am a sinner,
always too early
or hopelessly late.

The nice people already
have found all their friends
before we finally meet
and I am already gone
when you arrive at the party.
Timing is the worst part of my life.

I wrote this poem a day after the deadline for a poem contest about timing. 🙂

I need not do life over gently

Some hope is built on trembling sand,
sometimes it’s just a reaching hand,
some words are lame, like love and friend,
when rhyme can’t cover for my fear
then my work is over here,
I need not do life over gently.

There is no freedom if not everyone is free,
there is no love to lose when you are hating me,
there is no meaning in the word eternity,
when nothing changes for the best,
then let my bones just rot away and rest
I need not do life over gently.

I made the pic this morning right before a rain began to fall

The funeral of a dead line (or: the morning after the wake)

Awoke between
yesterday’s bottles,
torn calendar pages
and bread on the table,
I taste the bitter sense
of this madness
that is making money,
washed down
with coffee.

Time to work.

I am sat at a table of wood

I am sat at a table of wood
on a wooden chair,
this is the kitchen
where no one is cooking anything
and nothing reminds me of life too much.

I have my laptop and my coffee mug,
the one with the crack that is not a hair,
and here is where my story has to write itself,
while outside blackbirds, dust
and autumn clouds can fly around. I do not see them.

I need no more than the crack that is no hair.
What if it was? Whose was it? Why is it in my mug?
Of goes the mind, away
from all that’s wood in my kitchen.
Stories write themselves this way.

Shelter

I’ve found a shelter for sad days
when outside hail and thunder rage
and inside all is such a mess,
I don’t need blankets to hide under now.
My shelter is to know that you won’t run.
I think I found a friend somehow. My search is done.

Poems among poems

There is a place where all the poems gather
for their annual meeting, their social affair.
They have a beer, a hug, and rub a shoulder,
another year older, some typo’s are showing,
now who found a partner, and who is still single?

With pain do they watch the old villanelle,
that no one understands these days as she mumbles,
getting more and more tipsy, till she almost tumbles,
then someone takes the old girl to the home,
while here in the café the others mingle.

The haiku, always the first to be silent,
as he is short in words, buys all a new drink.
They talk about rhyme, and how to omit it,
there’s almost a fight, but just in time
a nice Shakespearean sonnet makes them shake hands.

They dance rather rusty, two free verses go crazy
and a tanka throws up, but nobody cares.
After hours, when the others have left,
two disputing sestina’s still linger
and won’t go home till it’s already day.

😉

So much to say in so many words.
Till next year, my friends
and take care of yourselves now!
May the spirit be with you
and the sentences flow.

entry for dverspoets week 68

Als dit een liedje was, zou je het dan zingen? If this was a song, would you sing it?

Misschien moet ik hier eens muziek onder zetten,
het een liefdeslied noemen en zorgen voor rijm.
Ik kon zachtjes zingen over hoe ik je
mis
en dat het voor altijd zo treurig zou zijn.

Maar jij luistert toch niet, en je leest evenmin,
dus waarom zou ik het wagen, mijn vriend.
Ik kan je beter vergeten, ik zie je toch nooit
weer
een mooie romance die het niet werd.

Maybe I should put some nice music under this,
call it a love song and make it all rhyme.
I could slowly sing of how much I miss
you
and will do so till the end of time.

But you wouldn’t listen, and you don’t read
so should I bother to do so, my friend.
I better forget you; we’ll never meet
again
a romance that just had to end.

Dark Season

I watch my life grow darker now each day
and all around me lesser world is seen,
a bitter cold and storms till it is May,
a window with no view, a misty street,
my mind that’s waiting but for what indeed.

The postman lost a letter no one needs
it’s flying high above the neighbour’s roof,
forgotten words that no one ever reads
as rain has washed away the ink, they’re gone.
The postman sighs and struggles, moving on.

I’m not that good in seasons with no light.
If I could just fast forward a few months,
or replay Summer – I would be alright,
relive a bit of magic that I found.
But such is life, to live it all year round.

Mensch

The train was packed,
my mother and I
went back to our country,
after a few weeks
on board with my father.

The journey took several days by train.
We sat on green benches,
the last part of the journey with some Spanish men,
who were eating olives all journey.
They offered us some, but we didn’t like.

They drank wine and laughed much.
They had a lot of suitcases and bags.
We crossed a border once more,
and the train stopped.
Costums officers entered.

The Spanish men
got agitated, panicked.
Without knowing their language
my mother knew why.
They had no papers and needed to run.

They wanted to take
all their luggage, but there was no time.
“Go,” my mother said.
To make herself understandable,
she used her hands.

“I will put the luggage
out through the window.”
Did she have no respect for uniforms?
They left in a hurry
and my mother did as promised.

The train then left
a few moments later.
My mother seemed pleased
that she had been able
to help the poor Spanish men.

Then, the last thing we saw,
was how the customs officers
had caught up with them
on the platform.
They took the men away.

My mother cried for them,
feeling their defeat as her own pain,
as they were poor sods,
trying to earn a living.
She was a Mensch.

I don’t think this is a poem, but I tagged it as such anyway (May the poetry police be lenient!) It is a true story.

Older

Now I see the child I carried
how he ages, becomes father
and time never went so fast
as when I shrank some inches
beneath his shoulder, fading
on my way back to where I was before.