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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www.tanjadueckers.de