Commercial poetry
I can take some green paper out of my pocket and make them kill a fish for me or drive me to the end of the light I could buy a woman for the night, or a rose, a rose for a woman for a night I could make you say things like thank you ...
Geld is het enige wat telbaar is, dus is geld het enige dat telt - tijdgeest 2018
Imagine
You've got your life instagrammed. You stream a persona that never repeats. You snap up who you are in a dozen photos a day. You scroll through the deadened sea, of the others, and heart who you think they are. Your imagination is infused with the smell of Madagascar vanilla. You know your world. You ...
“a good poem corrals the mind of the reader, but leaves the gate open” - found on the Internet
On the mountain
We climbed the same mountain today A few white hairs we blew in the wind We surrendered to what never attacked us We entrusted our future to a rock I roll small pebbles down a precipice to test the symbolic capacity of this mountain. You smile and I talk the next two mountains in you ...
Rijkdom
Op een steenworp afstand van mijn residentie bevindt zich een eethuisje, waar mijn zes kokkinnen 24 uur per dag eenvoudige, doch voedzame maaltijden voor mij, mijn gezin en mijn gasten toebereiden. Ik beschik over meerdere gezellige woonkamers waar mijn personeel op ieder uur van de dag koffie en taart serveert. Naar mijn badhuis is het ...
What power is only poetry can say.
Macarons
Lured by a row of pastel macarons
I enter the store like a stray verse,
looking for comfort in its soothing hues
The soft face behind the counter smiles
when I smile, before I order a coffee to go
with my pink and orange macarons
Zo kennen we elkaar: tien facebookvrienden in het echt
Het volgende artikel was niet interessant genoeg voor de traditionele media. Het is op deze plek gepubliceerd omdat ik het eventueel geïnteresseerde lezers niet wil onthouden. We weten allemaal hoe er in de traditionele media over social media wordt geschreven. Er kleeft een stigma van oppervlakkigheid aan. Het gangbare idee is dat we ons online ...
Wealth
A downtown apartment with security and a water cooler.
The furniture landscape emerging from a Persian rug.
Slow drip coffee. Long bookshelves with "art".
A low noise dehumidifier.
A mahogany banister.
Gentility.
Heirlooms.
Silence.
Freelance bullshit jobs
I have been fascinated with anthropologist David Graeber's concept of bullshit jobs for a while. I have written a bullshit job poem and a bullshit job rap. In this video, Graeber mentions an informal poll he conducted on Twitter to classify bullshit jobs. He arrives at five categories:
Spiritualiteit
Deze keer een gastbijdrage van Henk Beukering, die ik wilde redden van de vergetelheid der blauwe duimschroef.
Spiritualiteit is collectief pathologisch narcisme.
My violin teacher
After twenty years I found my violin teacher
on Facebook. She remembered me, that was one of the joys of teaching, she wrote.
In the mean time, entire lives have started:
our children born, nine eleven, financial crisis. History has happened.
I want to ask her about my vibrato.
Reading: Harbach 1944 by János Pilinszky
János Pilinszky (1921-1981) was an Hungarian poet who served in the Hungarian army in the Second World War. His work has been translated by Ted Hughes and János Csokits. Warning: I read a very dark and graphic poem:
Dinsdagcolumn
Voor het eerst sinds een jaar heb ik, volgens mijn eigen berekeningen, gisteren mijn maandagcolumn gemist. Vanmorgen leek het er even op dat onze rakettenman Kim Jong-Un dat ter ore is gekomen, want we werden wakker van het oorverdovende geluid van overvliegende straaljagers, langer dan gewoonlijk in deze contreien. What is that noise, zei mijn ...
Oh great people, great healthy people
Oh great people, great healthy people with bosoms abulge and necks like reeds I want to like the fire of empathy that burns on your cheeks I want to write in the wake of your perfect gait I want to abide your teeth, carnivorous and straight I want to bury my envy at your feet, ...
Protecting the Rain Forest
I want to protect the rain forest. I want the rain forest to exist, so I can protect it. The good and the bad face us in cinematographic reality. I still want to protect the rain forest for love of the unknown. For birds I will never see. For their emerald eggs. For all I ...
A belief is all we have
A belief is all we have
to hold on to, some warmth
weaning us for darker times
when we thicket each other's softest spots,
make our fingers lost and blow
weightless snow in each other's faces
when we make chocolate gestures,
blanket soft talk in some rearrangement
of tired starlight
Morning Routine
I have the best morning routine. It's an exceptional morning routine. It's quick and new and 'smart'. You do this morning routine, it will blow people out of the water. They'll never see it coming! It's the number one routine. The absolute best. There is a healthy brain guru named Jim Kwik who is peddling ...
I ride a subway train
I ride a subway train,
home-bound
There are empty seats;
I feel a cool breeze.
Two rhinoceroses walk by
I think: my wife and I.
Zijn prinsesjes schoon?
Miru, ik heb tijdens jouw opvoeding listen ingezet. Wanneer je niet wilde luisteren toen het tijd was om onder de douche te gaan, heb ik gepoogd je middels cognitieve dissonatie op andere gedachten te brengen. Ofwel je te mindfucken, zoals de volksmond zegt. Je wil zoals de meeste meisjes graag een prinsesje zijn en verandert ...
The Playground
The chubby boy points his toy gun at another boy His great grandfather fought in the war. This is not a guess. I am sure. His great grandmother was maybe a comfort lady to the invaders. But his gun is only made of plastic. He will be forgotten. I look at the boys. I see ...
Circle of Life
You too will get the e-mail from the hospital
You don't know when, or which hospital, or
if the doctor has been born yet, but
it will come.
The good news is that you can already respond
to that e-mail, by giving birth
to some humor.
Vernacular
coffee beans and machine guns change we can believe in. blackness is an ideal churches full of popcorn mumbling generals in tank tops nightliners piercing darkness a dead dog's candy eye, the tightrope of history cigarette butts drowned in cold coffee orphans and Eurydice in ironed T-shirts earthworms tunneling underfoot abandoned swimming pools, and an ...