photoreceptor

(this is one more "non-poem" that i composed in english and german at the same time. so it's really just half of it. it's completely realistic - none of the situations or feelings were invented for poetical purposes.)


1.

this would really make the day of my old friend
sherlock: i can see the letters of the climbing ivy,
the pizza guy’s yappy dog bustling after some rolling
ice cubes, as well as the little pakistani woman

hugging the latest harry potter volume. i can even
see things that are not there, such as garden raspberries
and lacquer footprints on my door-sill (at least
i do not see any, but can see that there are none there)

and the sweat, too, of those that drink too much beer, the books
not bought by the haughty frenchman, and my very
own tears evaporating in the morning mist. it will
be noticed that any wit that may ever have lain

between these lines, has simultaneously oozed away,
a fringe on the flowery carpet of yesterday’s hookah smoke.


2.

i greet as my sister that girl, all in brown,
with her head on her knees: what her locks are viewing
are the sap-green railings and wallings, differently brown,
of the city railway that cuts deep scars into our world.

your cord jacket is facing ninety degrees in the shadow,
and you won’t tell me whether you’re weeping or nodding; my dear,
in this spot of no man’s land between steel and anthills
your skin is from the balkans, and my heart from farther away.

those black centipedes and blinking caterpillars down there
do look rather cute, and hail to the city offering us
to leave it that way. but before that happens, i’ll stand
here till my heart be branded with your name through the soles

and the two of us have found a pub, for a cup of iced clarity
and one helping of sweetness; you and me, we can damn well use some.