if i could live

like a poem

       i 

wouldn't 

need

poetry 

to live

From nowhere, I’m from nowhere, I fell down when the pinnacle

of the TV tower pierced a grey cloud and unfolded on the bony

grounds, unfolded over two snails and a plastic film

From the street crossing the forest, I ran away, mouths full of wild

bear leek, feet furry in moss green pools, margins so damp, so

wound, I jumped over the crying sirens into rubber gloves

From the volcanic earth, I ate truffle and mussels at the rim of

champagne and lava bread, toes blackened in the richness how my

liver bubbled in the heat

From the tiny blood seed that travels through arteries that travels

through vessels that travels through fat cells that clings on to water

that enters the plumbing

From the bar where I had three gins and whisky and vodka,

everything, careful not to step into any stereotypes here, to drink

myself into global anaesthesia

From other places, which I left behind now to PET sculptured trees

and pretend I speak / don’t speak / listen to everything, pretend we

all love and laugh and laaf all the same, pretend we all don’t do it

similarly / differently, holy fck, does it really

matter

zähl plastiktüten 
verbleibende sterne 
unter rot-grünen lichtschranken
und dieselverpackten wolken

nacht,
 an den gelenken
ausgehakt 

ein letztes wahlplakat
verwelltes schlaflager

„wir können nicht“
„es tut uns leid“
„kein kleingeld dabei“

diese fahrt
hat lange genug
gedauert

zähl unerwartete verspätungen 
zwischen München und Kiel
und endgelagertes 
schlechtes gewissen

bauzäune 
schneiden die welt
in Rittersportquadrate - 
hier muss jetzt

    was neues entstehen

every gap across the chocolate

bridge

snow

inching decadence of orange

lights above Notting Hill

night, unused

                    flavours of –

               night

i. More plant than beast (J. Skinner)

ii. Are all lichens communists? Cosmopolitans?

iii. Oxygen and fine dust cannot split up on their own.

iv. Bark fingers / hair corals

                    pinned bubbles / like punctuation

v. Manna Manna

vi. German female French Italian Spanish male. Trans-lichen. Me(a)t in a word

                    bleeds in radioactive would-be-amber.

vii. Nature’s slowest email, Culture’s spam (E.berger, modernised)

viii. Joint, immured

                   grey-green hyphen

                   ated

ix. They don’t like being / no one likes being

            stepped on (Barbarossa is dead)

x. Contribute nothing but the history of colours: almost white

xi. “I didn’t know how to categorise it.”

xii. Entangle a counter-point. Only borders / are written records.

xiii. Fuelled calcified spines: leaul salted moss

xiv. “Ordnungsliebelei” ("order flirtation", Google Translate) kills ferns

                                                                                               & forms

xv. If own defences are weak: becoming fish (writing is not like fishing)

xvi. Silver scent; green-yellow ecometer. Paying rent in sugar, mapping rainbrows in braille.

xvii. Shortcut to Darwin: weave through grouted gaps, through wrinkles & guts of walls.

                Glück (Lücke) / Luck (lack) is needed

                to flourish

xviii. be parts of bodies, uncommon & palpable Olson outgrown

xix. Treed beards. Chewing gum ontology.

               Freckled turmeric-mountains

xx. Do not look / for isolated places times move symbiotically*, elements

can be combatted

with the right hair waX

ray this. Any fract

ures?

*„Das bekannteste Beispiel für Symbiosen sind Flechten, bei welchen durch die innige Vereinigung von zwei ganz

verschiedenen P￿anzenformen ein völlig einheitliches und neuartiges Lebewesen entstanden ist. [...]“ (Linder 31)

How departing from the main road feels

How expectations turn into tangible feelings

How roads break apart leave no more than a destination

How light breaks up when it all falls upon us

How I break apart when light falls upon me

How scribbling falls apart when confronted with thought

How it falls apart when confronted with autonomy

How it crumbles under a much too stern gaze

How it dissolves under the thought of a gaze not stern enough

The ABC creates strands of dates and days a watering heart falling down on me

Did you leave handprints in there / in the seas

Did you leave sand grains of translation

In the wind only their whistles

Über setz / über für mich

collecting Maoam paper, coke bottles, silver foil

to the splish-splashing

of waves,

thigh-high anaesthetics

colouring children’s toes into lavender petals –

singing Die Wissenschaft hat festgestellt

at the top of your lungs

helps drown the numbness –

zig-zagged fringes, two gaps for front teeth

mossy cliff-patches on striped nicki leggings

bin bag after bin bag after bin bag

with seaprints others left behind

later

we

warmed our calluses

over the steam of thick pea soup

connected by tastes of rubbish

and the blissful understanding:

as far as our eyes could stretch

we had cleaned the whole wide world

zwischen Ostsee und Nordsee

heute nacht träumte ich.

von einem singenden Eisvogel.

Er war wirklich – aus Eis.

Ein Brautvogel, ganz in Weiß.

Halb-lebendig nur noch. Wissend,

dem Ende seines Lebens nah

zu sein. Das Wetter änderte sich zu schnell.

Er schritt vorwärts. Die Augen halb blind. Den Kopf unter

seinen Flügel gesteckt, hebend, wenn er sprach, nach jedem zweiten Schritt.

Er sprach so schön, sprach nicht, sang. Die alten Opern. Und als er sang

erstand ein zweiter Eisvogel und folgte synchron-verzögert. So staksten sie beide, wunder

voll singend dem Ende entgegen. Ich schaute zu, unwissend wo ich war und wer. (Im Traum sind

wir lebende Materie.) Beim Zuhören gefror auch mein Blut

zu Eis und ich wurde

Vogel

stumbling feet

on crumbling ice

the sea’s exiled the tide

in dreams sea wormwood spreads

an anise whiff

Swimming eyes

Halligen glass veins

tentacled caps

in moonlight dye

waves cling film rings

from distant astro

dance bathing legs

in lucent marmalade

the sea’s exiled the earth

in dreams.

Metallic moonlight

like a bitter lick

of perfume

dries the tongue

 

as shell dust

powders

my bare legs

 

I count days

by the ways

the light

falls in cinnamon pools

 

I read

from May

through September

without counting the pages

 

bottle breaths

of summer

 

label them

in a language

 

I don't understand.

He said
I'm too perfect
that he's scared
to touch
my shell
might powder
 

blow
away
in the wind
 

Heart note
 

I wrote his name
fifty times
in glittery ink

Base note

I sprayed my bedsheets
with elf leaves
I always wanted to fly.

my compass

points north

vanilla sky

I

am long gone

travel

with the sun

behalte mich lieb