if you raise a joke
you´ll live to be the punchline
the murky twilight of youth
never amounted to anything
beyond itself
love means daring
love hurts like truth
the aftermath of dalliance
leads back to the fortress
of excess
in which you can hide
in which you can gloat
in which the nothingness
dresses up like profoundness
deeper than rejection
rests a splinter of awakening
the funny part
And your feet are already numb. And the fleecing never stops. And your hands move away from the light. And every thief is a poet. And every darkness looks the same, every corner is a killzone. You colour me pavement and yes, they tapdance on my spleen. And they promise and promise, yet the stuckness remains. And you wonder what the SQUIRREL is all about. And it´s about nothing. Behind the nothingness is brutal desire. For control. And the day is already night. And the demons are right there for the blaming. So the fleecing goes on.
(SGS, 2022)
inside the knowledge of structure
hides the pools of deceit
inside the worn down defenses
the promise of a revolution
you can fool some of the people
some of the time
retribution is the award of the
asshole unhinged sentences
drip from the lairs of Themis
you will step on the vile viles
you impress upon others
shrink down to natural size
eat the horrors of your design
less than a human being
is what history can offer now
(SGS, 2022)
Sitting on the fence doing nothing for two hours. That was Beth. She was in her own world. I wanted to cushion her. Provide her with some adequate parenting. After all, I felt a kind of responsibility. Back then we had a gazebo. A rather large one. We were going to use it for important guests. It had been neglected for years and in dire need of cleaning. Furthermore, we needed another cleaning lady in the house. The house in Bath, of course. She would have to move there, evidently. I offered her the position.
At first, she didn´t answer. I mean: she was family, of sorts. I was doing her a favour. “Ask me again tomorrow”, she said. She was quite the little lady. Since her mother died, she would never use more than one sentence, sometimes just one syllable, in response to my questions. Always bigheaded. To imagine that I would have any time for her little mind games.
Then she disappeared. For hours, at first. Then for days. Then for five years. And she had the nerve to ask me “Do you still have a position available, madame?”. She´d never called me madame before (even though she should have) and it was an odd request, considering she didn´t look like someone in need of a job. She looked like someone in need of manners. And in need of discipline. In need of direction. Dressed like a lady of the night, hair dyed and mountains of mascara. She looked quite the witch, Frank and I thought.
Showing up after five years in that circus outfit…..And in all of that time she didn´t even call her family. Certainly not me, but I never considered us to be all that close. Nobody had heard the slightest squeak during this period of time and then that ghastly attitude was right back. As if her childish obstinance was her only travel companion. Oh my, did thar girl put up a show. She turned heads, but she didn´t seem to mind. She seemed to thrive in the midst of the clamours of suggested scandal and subdued debauchery.
Well, softhearted, as I sometimes find myself being, I decided to take her in. To ignore what seemed like a…tattoo?…..on her ankle, to ignore the attitude and to embrace…..well, embrace the possibility of a decent women that might be lurking somewehere inside that repugnant attitude. After all, her mother was my dear second cousin of whom I have such fond memories. I think we had a, shall we say Youthful, phase at some point. But never like this. Such crude behaviour never characterized this family.
And the music. The horrible music. She always carried around this electronic device that somehow played music. Somehow this thingie, this demonic object, could be connected to the family stereo and one day…No, I should probably start somewhere else. Beth was never able to stay quiet for very long in public spaces, in church, at the market, in the movie theatre. She was a source of such unnecessary bouts of noisy behaviour. She kind of got this from her mother, who was never a quiet one. Permanent commotion in the wake of her entrance. The mute button was almost nonfunctional. Or at least broken.
Anyway, the music. I forget myself. Well, one fine Sunday afternoon me and the girls gathered on the veranda to have our Sunday tea. As per usual. We were listening to Bach and Gershwin (also a common occurrence at my house) and laughed heartily at silly, entertaining things. Then Beth enters the room, waving her apparatus and asking if she could plug it in the stereo system. Nobody knew what that thing was or what would ensue, but I nodded hesitantly in agreement. I shall never forget the sounds that came out of our beautiful, danish designed stereo. They were so horrid that the entire party moved inside the house and the conversation was quite stifled. After the incident I deemed it prudent to offer Beth the position she craved and a room. In the other house. I had no words for her transgression so none were spoken.
In Bath, Beth seemed to change. Not in an altogether bad way. She was actually not half bad at housekeeping and, according to her colleagues, the tattoos were covered at all times (the nose ring all gone, oh, I didn´t mention it earlier due to….decorum). There were even rumours of a boyfriend. Of sorts. He looked like a right gentleman in his suit, well-mannered, a gifted conversationalist. Everybody at the house liked him and there was a buzz about him that could be detected all the way from Bath to here. I would probably have enjoyed his company.
Only, he was not a man. Per se. He was more of a….woman….who had turned into a man? A trans….something? I keep an open mind about these things. I really do. But a woman dating an…..ex-woman?… in my house? In front of my servants? Speaking to my children? That could not be tolerated.
I do hope Beth is doing well in Los Angeles. It´s probably a better setting for her….preferences? Kind? And there might be a fence there where she can sit for hours, imitating a sphinx in a loud manner. I just don´t need to know about it. She had her chances, I stretched my patience to its full extent. Rumour has it that the house in Bath has turned into a proverbial graveyard. You can almost hear the dust settle. I like it like that.
(SGS, feb 2021)
Pie chowder
Pie chowder
Pie chowder
Chowderpie
I could go on
In a San Francisco mock-up
Poetry wrecks a monday
(SGS, 2022)
the flow of resistance
and how it never quits
I clawed and frothed
and the everflow
of tacit remorse
wielded a memory
I never possessed
(SGS, 2022)
and all the doors in all the
walls in all the houses on
all the roads I could not
bear the thought of
planets just bowling
´round the universe
like biliard balls on the floor
in the bar when the game
gets out of hand underhand
and under the floor boards
you´re sitting dazed and bedazzled
the universe playing in your eyes
water we are.
and thirsty.
(throwback to 2016)
at emerald coasts in gardens of sepia
you lose yourself
in wonders of yore
print our future
with your seasoned gadgets at hand
I won´t spoil the plot
I´ll be otherwhere
chanting nebula
among these dead leaves
this persistence
among these frozen formalities
this gesture
let it slide
squander
you want me to belong
to the idiot circus
repeating the same tricks
now I turn around
the idiots and I look alike
I´m an idiot
not your idiot
grant me the pleasures
of my own hell
(SGS, 2021)
sgehlert 