everything
I've believed
was a vitamin
deficiency
In Amsterdam we lived on Rooseveltlaan
in the Rivierenbuurt our courtyard
was a school’s playground the kids screamed
ran and attacked each other
I went to a hypnotist I’m afraid the plane
will crash but it won’t matter
Clinton was bombing Kosovo
it didn’t matter I walked to the Tollstraat
bought weed and drank tea the weather
was bad I didn’t notice
I was playing music writing poems
time was getting older the poems
and the songs were getting worse
eventually we moved to Koningsstraat
the people were artists the poems got worse
I didn’t play music we moved to Portugal
the people disappeared the weather was good
I noticed but the sun was bad
I didn’t write poems and I didn’t play
I kept going back to Amsterdam
everyone got older and nobody mattered
the weather was bad and I noticed
Lost in that I can’t be found
crossing Campo Pequeno
or riding my scooter
toward the Marginal
under the aqueduct
through Praca Espagna
where Marco sold two
Euro bits of hash
and the boys drank
beer all day
or boarding a plane
to our house in Amsterdam
where my Josh White
and Big Bill Broonzy
CDs were it got
to where I felt at home
it looks like no one
lives here she said
no one does I said
For twenty three years
there was a leak in the roof
I stuffed it with a plastic bag
when we first moved in
forgot then spent ten years
writing and drinking smoking
while it endlessly rained
mornings hungover on terraces
wandering the east afternoons
leaving the lotus eaters
to laugh alone
one night around eleven
I went out they were still there
what are you doing here they asked
the dumb music blared
I was bored I said
of writing and drinking smoking
no one knew I wrote
Falling Asleep
translated by Ishmael Gomes
am I being patient
I dreamed
I couldn’t fly
children seem always about to cry
In Manarola
in that turquoise sea
I floated weightless
and forgot to breath
now I can see more
than what's there
I’m comfortable nowhere
not even asleep
30/6/2005
All life is alive and here and continues sun
plucks fire from the deepest cold soul
sleepy with indecision everywhere is talk
in a tower of broken languages the
breeze and the seeds of every plant dying
to live there are only beginnings music
shifts the afternoon from the din of trams
and bicycle bells the peasant German
transparent English still conspires
conquest like a wounded admiral
anesthetized with a loyalty few could
feign anonymity plagues the ego as if
anything humans could create is important
leaves are born from branches shade is
shadows we’ve obstructed the light to
balance our potentials and failures so
easily embarrassed and given way to
police uniforms power confused by
morality’s detonation it’s better to sleep
than to wander for poetry drowned in
dreams there is only laughing and crying
true nature buried in the constant flux of
thought too near the surface of the skull it
escapes through the eyes and mouths of what
promise could perpetuate this species
which for the first time discovers the
ignorance it lives children who frighten
their parents into guilt of them being born
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