Tanja Dückers
Photo T.D.: Copyright: Anton Landgraf
(Germany)
Simple Words
Simple words
like window book bread
words just loll about my room
on a grey November day
Without context a bit lost they
stand no they bum around my flat
my sentences
Scanty empty words like tundra
an alphabetical desert like an eremit
I hold monologues
scatter words like pebbles washed round
from november’s rain so usual
like tin cans
sound word car wrecks
rattle without meaning
words in the street
wait for nothing
Today words grey bread and
dusty cookies from the Penny Market
words and cobble-stones and toilet paper
Words like « and » or « very » or « still »
run about the sentence-streets
every day hundreds of them
in their long grey coats and their
bent down backs
Words fall today
coincidentally like dandruff out of hair
Fall meaninglessly
like chewing gum on the ground
Words fall today
a bit loose
out of my mouth full of junk
End of October
I roam the streets . Freezing
I put my old red hat on.
Hot from walking after five minutes
I take it off again.
Autumn fog hangs into the
confusion of my thoughts.
I could call you,
here from this flamecoloured
communication cage.
But I could also walk on,
past this treacherous, nicotine polluted
box of claustrophobic words.
Past white street-stripes leading forcefully
into november.
I could simply walk on, through the night,
through november,
take no effort to cut silly word-holes
into the stiff, cold air, leave you
drifting into winter alone,
walking through leaves of undefinable colour.
But I could still call you,
from this Red Cross-coloured wordcoffin.
Squeeze my congealed sentences
into this grey receiver.
Or I stroll on, just collect, preserve those words
in myself like in a frozen fountain,
word-cubes, buckets full, to the brim,
going further through the snowslush.
Narcissus, again
He went out to the bridge
to stare at his reflection in the water.
Again he couldn’t detect any flaw,
when he scrutinized himself
the last day.
Nothing – thirty years the same face.
Thirty years of trying
to escape from this face.
He had been going out at night a lot,
exhausted, exposed, overstimulated himself.
Kisses of women glided down his face.
He had collected their skins.
In vain, he looked the same as ever,
his boyish face,
sweet, immaculate, always
the same facial expression.
The very moment he jumped
and hit the water,
his face completely distorted,
dissolved in the endless
embrace of the river.
He died happily.
Names, People, Incoherences
In a far away cave
a name is glowing on the walls.
I’ve thrown all superfluous keys away, finally.
My garbage can full of orange skins,
crumpled paper, toe nails and old keys.
I found a letter without address yesterday
– smell of lavender.
The day before around the corner
a rusted gun.
I put it into an old marmelade-jar
along with the unaddressed letter
and threw it all into the sea.
I read door signs, street names,
neon-boards, everything
roars past me.
Some people carry their passport with them
every day.
Others have an elephant-memory
for birthdays and bend down
over horoscopes.
On my way into the forest,
candles in my rucksack,
I could get lost.
My neighbour attached
no name next to his door, nor to his letterbox.
I know that his wife
died a few weeks ago.
My dog,
which was found dead in a far away cave,
was called Incognito.
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