JCTV =   wyltbmb? 

I have collected my poems in a book.To purchase the book click on the image. The poems contained in it have an intuitive form; their shape is that of a single thread of thought woven to a text which has been torn and frayed by the fickleness of mood and the crowding of possibilities. Its rhythms are walked and its reading is layered. I hope that through these layers my love for the thick-cut shapes and weights of words and gaps remains visible like toys left under a carpet. The rhythms and jarrings consitute a musical surface. The surface is not structured intentionally; it is a music of God and King and an explored unknowing. To read these poems I imagine someone with a great feeling for diction and melody but who doesn’t speak English. He or she imagines the glory of creation without penetrating it. In any case these poems are not adequate to such an ambition. It is a voice appealing to the gods of Spinoza and Nietzsche but also to the gods of the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh: three sorts of God, a first who is everything, infinite and must be loved, another is dead, and the third kind is constituted of unlikely people: supermen and women, whose humanity is still visible in the way they do their god-like things. The mind receiving the poetry, if it allows itself the time, creates the meaning of the poems by roaming at any scale of observation it wants. There is meaning in the whole, in parts and in the juxtapositions of words. And these meanings are in a potential state of conflict. There is even meaning between words. Meaning will be filled out by the experience of the reader. People bring meaning to their environment. I have attempted to set possibilities for meaning and rhythm.

to Nimrod, builder of cities

The City,

generous, soft and pliant organ.

Wild paths beaten to its core,

Dictate thought

that would wander aimlessly.

Ignore the paths.

The ponderous, shapeless form whispers.

The city to be penetrated

like an old-fashioned woman

The city to be conquered

excludes the very brave,

the men with muscles

Who look at the city with envy

Only the brave dare live outside,

they are the conquerers

and the prisoners of the outside

They turn their back,

They live towards the city,

their necks are long and stretched,

they are so eager

And it is painted with a child’s hand,

very carefully,

within the lines

We are children

and want to do so well.

We are so eager

to attract the smile of God,

or his wonderful brother.

The city is gravity

It scatters only the wish

as light as the sun

it orders the crumpled

and the possessed.

It makes time.

It starts with good intentions.

It starts with god in heaven.

Heaven is above the city,

another city

where the streets are made of gold

and finely wrought geometry:

A well-taught organogram

of hints and signs,

of places.

All paths lead to death.

***

Religion is something

we look at with words.

It stands outside

and can easily be entered

along our path.

Houses lose, always;

Big houses, small houses.

Squares with very big buildings

big colours and smells,

rhythms

and exotic dances

of garbage in the wind.

Proportions and generous flesh

harmonies of sour faces

Unexpected harmonies.

Loud symmetries

and quiet symmetries

Symmetries of movement

Symmetries of ignorance

And everywhere in the beautiful city

everything is exchanged:

A stone kicked by a sharp businessman,

comes from a time when there was no history,

only silence and noise;

a box dropped by a young boy,

brightly coloured;

a piece of plastic or paper,

crumpled with shadows that end everything.

It is difficult to see,

the handbag of a queen,

it twinkles in the sunlight.

Coca cola is everywhere;

omnipresent and divine

among the fools who do not brush their teeth lightly

Everywhere, there are

the expressionless hieroglyphs of change

They trouble the narrow mind

Of the waiting

Who wait for change,

to be frightened.

**

The city has a big soft mouth

It is very hungry and eats voraciously

It shits on us, copiously

Straight streets dissappear

into nothing without infinity

unless they lead to the endless strings of memories,

many of little consequence.

Curved streets push

robust buildings into the front line:

Canyons

SStreets without people

without brilliant cars

and the cadence of dancing bottoms

are like rooms again

And maps made by the little clumsy Benjamin

who, from the honeycomb of his mind

from which erupted a swarm of thought

had built a house of memory;

A city of memories.

Maps of abbreviated pasts

extended into that man's abominable memory

of a weak life

a hopeless mood

of intimate connections

***

The city grows

When it grows

it is a fun puzzle

of bits

and each bit

becomes a story:

a small pile of stories,

sedimented, stratified,

coded and retrievable

a place to be wonderful

ever to be beyond

still to be thought

wanting to be glorious

and it grows

it dies

and from its ashes

it is recreated.

Beginnings are invariably

swallowed in the centre;

the centre moves;

the centre is moved around

and the germ

has become unrecognizable.

But it is still there.

And the shape of the land

making the buildings dance

to keep their angles just so

so that we can walk

and stand up straight,

look at the heavens

with all their might left well alone.

And the river which divides

unknowingly

in its own happy rush

penetrates the city

spreading doubt,

giving birth to monsters

on the other side.

And the gods

the divinities

the messengers of the gods,

the angels

with their dirty mouths

consume happily and watch.

we

die well

dwell

The sky of the city

is a large arch,

a large sphere,

depending on your point of view,

of the small soul.

When we stand straight

we see the facades

and when we look down

we see the roofs

and small people.

When we look up

the walls make us

And if the city grows up

we have tall men

Very tall men

near heaven

so much closer

than you ever got,

you cause of languages.

These men

are no taller

than you

and yet they are tall

They stand on television

and they look bigger

Superlatives always do it

They move up and down

the replications of the world.

And it goes up

this little room

where everybody

stands to attention

and no one talks

or talks in hushed voices

This room lifts,

it elevates us

you cause of causes

But the height

is only for those

in the lifts

for all the others

these buildings only create

depth,

deep depths

abysses of depth.

The glass

makes everyone

see themselves

in their depth

or in their height.

Cities

have to grow downwards

Into the world,

digging tunnels

and holes

and wells

and caves

and channels.

Every city

is where people gather

to live the good life.

It is gravity

and it is attraction

and connection

and welding

Walls part

But incompletely.

They do not stop

the whispering

or the screaming

the bouncing

The roads

are not just paths

they are receptacles

of events

which are forgotten quickly

We are children and want to do so well

The city,

a luscious, generous, soft organ

The wild paths dictate thought

ignore them.

thE enD

Published by the author

Contact me at: jacob@voorthuis.net