for Roxanne

1.

They combed their hair before the battle.
On the shield they admired their bodies.
Ready for death at any time and now
as with love once and its own gifts.
My, what battles it too hid
though it had its narrows open.

2.

With bodies glossy as a panoply
they deride the Fates in Thermopylae.
“It’s better. We’ll fight in the shade,”
they smile and threaten with spirit
the entire time as if they had won.

Our works are human but immense
thanks to the spirit and this alone.
It’s a matter of choice.
“In the shade,” as Dienekes says.

With such words, chum, you go elsewhere.
To Thermopylae and a fabulous life.
To a secure, animate immortality.
For certain you feel it before the end.
Don’t pretend you can’t see it.
Don’t wonder of what avail.
Do set forth.

3.

A horde of wild Persian spears.
But, don’t think, there’ll always be some Spartan
who’ll measure his phallus as if of an enormous size.
Then he’d laugh. An eternal child.
It’s this laugh that death hates most.
And if you are a man, you give it to death.

4.

In the end they fought tooth and nail.
A naked, physical epilogue.
With rare self-sacrifice.
For the times and morals to inhale.
And let the crowds wonder about
the perishable, the heavens , the destined.

5.

They didn’t want to live at all costs.
It was indeed a extreme choice
but their strategy had gist.
No needed weights in their transient life.
But gravity. Due gravity.

The road was closed.
Tear gas, barricades, fires.
How were you to come to me?
Yet another bloody evening.

Strange things.
I feel I’m hearing the demonstrators:
Those in love and those uninvolved
are never innocent without participating.
I can no longer find an alibi for you and for me.
We innocent? Unanimously guilty.
We placed so many thousands amongst us.

Now for music, the riddled silence.
A mute resonator, the now empty street.
A lifeless, airless scene.
All round the quelling forces.

Those fools think they killed you.
They see only what is apparent to the eye.
Their mind doesn’t go any farther.
That’s pretty obvious.
I cogitate:
With blood we cover our every faith.
And as I think, somewhere afar it’s windy.

Barricaded onetime in the stormy room
we translated passion as an inexplicable phenomenon.
What didn’t we do for the body! And we’ll go on doing
as long as we are hungry and fall in love spasmodically.
For isn’t love also hunger?

1.
THINK IT OVER

“My cunt is more fiery than your Molotov cocktail.”
Written with red spray on the wall
in time it’ll fade away.
Never mind, real blood will continue flowing steadily.
Think it over.
You are choking with injustice and all of a sudden you are roused.
And when above all you are turned on, then you exist.

2.
EVERYTHING IS A PUZZLE

“Don’t fuck with your mind.
Don’t think with your cock.”
Odd the graffiti on the wall of tolerance.
One more puzzle for you.
And yet a reason for meditating in various ways,
To be roused by hook or by crook.

Thus you expand feelings, meanings
and make time attractive.

Paradoxical is only how gradually
all the necessary end in a puzzle.

Arid road. Not a single tree.
All the more strikers raise their voices
and clench their fists like cypresses.
They are fixed to the ground for it to become
a friendly landscape on a human scale.

But I’ll say it straight out, without comparisons.
Neither vox populi nor God’s ire.
We face facts and go on living.

In the end, a comparison is suitable.
We are a deep conviction, like hidden roots, like trees.

Thus do we write History.
Though a course given to time
for us there is no one and nothing tangible.

Flaming voices and frantic flags.
A protest meeting, reporters will call it,
indifferent before the next news item.

As if it weren’t apparent that another report was more apt.
And though no one speaks bluntly ,
in the square there’s no room for a rash explanation.
Every body here is free and formidable.
We are only a few and unarmed.
So what? Ideas are fear and terror.