For old time’s sake
I read the book you gave me
I read it
And then read it again
Hoping I would find traces
Of what used to be

But all I saw were empty words
And empty memories
I read it
And then read it again
For God’s sake
I’m still trying to forget you

Most of us don’t even manage
To become a hero, just for one day
But the Starman came, he saw, he conquered
He blew our minds
A creative centipede
A shapeshifter
A kook
A man who sold his image to the world
And showed us that heroes still exist

I have the reputation
Of being of brutish disposition
But I am the kindest soul
Taking all things slow
Carefully I tread
As I enter the room
With all the vases
And the precious porcelain
I am not the careless elephant
Who tramples all he can
Because he has the advantage
That he cannot see what lies behind him
Broken and bent
Nor feels the damage he is doing
With or without intent
Instead I am a careful soul
All too aware
Of my potential power
Of the possibility of my machinery
The damage that I may cause
The rampage that I may commence
And the carnage that I may create
I may be of brutish disposition
But I am the gentle giant
Who, with heavy steps
Gently treads amidst the gentry
Vying viciously for the vulnerable
Battling bravely for the bruised
A persistent poet trying to mend
Step by step
Word by word
Poem by poem

I am not a mad man
Indeed, I’m not a man
I am the Fisher King
An enigmatic fraction
Of your frantic imagination
I come and go as I please
Mixing serene silence
With immaculate impotence
Who will help me
The King and his kinsmen
The King and his people
A barren madman
In a barren world
Living on hope alone
Hope and make-belief

Yet behind the façade
Of a harmless hermit
Lies greatness and goodness
And the promise of purity
The meaning of life
And the riddance of meanness
The secret of bliss
Without ignorance
The purest pleasure
For both body and soul
For the King and his kinsmen
The King and his people
The barren madman
Changing the barren world
Into a painting-like paradise

So forget about reason
And the rules they imply
And embrace the essence
Of my delusional ravings
Look out for the invisible
Listen to silent whispers
And expose hidden meanings
I’ll be here for a while
Resting on the riverside
For I am not a mad man
I am not a man
I am not mad
I am the Fisher King
A barren beacon
In a dark, dark world

I guess I’ve been searching
For the meaning of life
In all the wrong ways
And in the wrong place

I delved into the deep secrets
Of lottery tickets
Hoping that a circle or three
Would reveal life’s mystery

Next up was a casino
Where I went straight for roulette
And found luck almost upon me
Yet the little  ball changed to forty-three

Then I soon discovered
That despite my hopes and prayers
That after my game of Blackjack
About life I still knew jack

So now I’ve come to realize
That life may be a lottery
But that doesn’t mean a gambling spree
Will reveal life’s meaning or mystery

The last time I took a stroll in someone else’s mind
I collected as many thoughts as I could
And nurtured them until they made sense
And gave meaning to the mean masquerading
Of the malicious and the morbid

When there’s nothing left to hide
The truth becomes a vile enemy
And ignorance the purest form of bliss
For once the stroll has come to pass
The shades of darkness remain all too clear

What use for the thoughts of a madman
Paintings of images made up by someone else
Uncanny, alien words that rattle and shake
Their true meaning resonating inside my head
Wondering if I was looking in the mirror all along

I’ve been mistaken for a conquistador
When really I just break hearts by accident
There’s no evil in my deeds
And no wickedness in my words
I’m just looking for lovers who are lost

I’ve been trying to fix the unbroken
And all I do is break what can’t be fixed
There’s no cleverness in my words
And no thoroughness in my deeds
I’m just a lost soul looking for love

So you will know me by the trail of broken hearts
And the flower in my buttonhole
And that smug look on my face
And the searchlight in my mind
Aimed at nothing in particular

Last night I closed my eyes
And walked through the abandoned city
Where people hide behind the windows
With closed eyes
Imagining someone’s walking by

As long as we have empathy
Love and unity
Forces louder than words
And louder than bombs

As long as there is moonlight
And music and love and romance
We’ll face the music and dance
And frustrate them with things they don’t know

And we will use our brains to think
And our mouths to speak instead of preach
And our hands to hold the ones we love
And our thoughts for all things constructive

The city of light will always glow
The city of love will never perish
And the only answer we ought to give
Is to celebrate love for and from Paris

From within the safety of the train compartment
Memories, written in stone, glide by
There’s the Roman church
With the statue of the priest and his dog
And the enigmatic farm
Where llamas and ostriches stride
And that one funky albino kangaroo
And after that comes the castle
Which in my mind is inhabited
By an anachronistic loner
A degenerate nobleman
Who hides within his fortress
Hoping that the days of old come back
And after wasted grandeur comes earnest cosines
Carefree children playing football
While their grandfathers smoke
And discuss the Tour de France
And eat Boules de Berlin
Images that I have seen a hundred times before
But  the celebration of triviality
Has never been so precious to me
As these images, gliding by, through the window
Written inside my memory

It’s contagious
And outrageous  
Not very courteous
And quite ferocious
It is ridiculous
To call me pretentious
And  it’s very conspicuous  
That I am, au contraire, extraordinaire

Because I reckoned
That playing a game of chess
Against Death was a bit cliché
I decided to challenge him
For a bit of table tennis
Needless to say
With his boney build
And his empty sockets
I soon smashed
His will to live
To pieces
And I’m especially proud
Of my outstanding performance
In the seventh set

It might not be the thing
You’ve come to associate me with
This elegant display
As I steadily move forward
Do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
I take my time for things I like
As I enjoy the things that slowly pass by
Life’s too short and too fast alike
And I’m just a helpless little pawn
But do not mistake my slowness
For laziness or worse
As you come to see me
As someone who values life
And takes things as they come
Slowly and gently
Like the turtle’s steps

I tend to mix up do’s and don’ts
Not out of recklessness
Malice or even stupidity
It’s more a second nature
To walk into precarious situations
Ignoring well-meant advice
Setting off alarms
And wreak havoc
And instigate confusion
And set of ***** traps
To see what might happen
And I am well aware
That curiosity killed the cat
But as long as I’m still standing
I’ll do what I shouldn’t
Because life’s for the living
And living is all about mucking about
Without do’s and don’ts
And with enough curiosity
To make a grown man cheer

Sunk into the sink again
With only a bottle to keep me company
Playing a game of poker with my shadow
While my mirror-image is trying to avoid me

I went over to the corner
As if somebody had told me to
But despite my wicked ways
I won’t take two-faced lessons from you

With every other ticking of the clock
Another heartbeat skips away
But I’m not the man to cry for all things gone
People they come and go anyway

It’s been six long days
Since you tried to get my attention
And despite my hand’s habit of giving in
My head is immensely immune to rising tension

So I swapped the happy holiday memories
Forever captured in a motionless scene
For movie heroes and nature’s splendour
I choose what never was over what has been

I do forgive you that you won’t forgive me
That is the natural order of things
But I must admit that I lack the rigour
Of fully clipping this pretty bird’s wings

So I choose the path of cowardice
And put you in a dusty box inside my head
It’s much more easier to forget you there
And clutch unto make-believe instead

It’s been six long days
Since you tried to fight your way back in
But all I need is the comfort of loneliness
The illusion of doing it right, mixed with a sip of gin

A poet and a poet meet in a café
Striking up a conversation
About everything and nothing
About love and lost love
About the dark side of the moon
And the nurturing side of childhood memories
About that one time they were both at a hapless poetry event
And about mirrors and magic and moonlight
And mice and men, terrible men
And about women, gentle, dangerous creatures
Who broke their hearts in many pieces
And how they turn innocent boys
Into almighty, all-knowing poets
They talk about their ego
An ego that has become huge
Despite the fact they are not read
And don’t make any money
They talk and talk and banter
And slander and meander
Verbally that is
Until they’re lost for words
And the secret code of life is cracked

The first time I visited the freak show
I nearly burst into tears
It wasn’t because of the cruelty of it all
It wasn’t because of their cruel deformities
It wasn’t even guilt, not even a bit
It wasn’t about the greed from the stupid ***
Who ran the freak show

I burst into tears because I immediately understood
That the roles were reversed
And that we were the freaks
We, the cowards, who hide our deformities
And denounce our guilt as useless morality
And clutch onto greed and a hunger for entertainment
While every day we ourselves star in the freak’s parade

And the freaks themselves they are not moved
By my dreaded revelations
For them the truth was always pure and simple
Bonded by their deformities
They understand kinship and compassion
As they clutch on to each other
And the parade of freaks moves past them once more

As the sun creeps behind the water
The sea gently caresses my feet
Passionately surrounding me
As if I was a creature of the sea
And although I’d like that to be true
I cannot escape that moment
When the sun is gone, and so is the sea
And there’s only the moon, the sand and me

All things considered
I’m not too unhappy
With this underdog life
Watching from the shadows
How other people
Who consider themselves
To be happier
**** up
Time after time

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t that lonely beggar
Who hunts for food in garbage bins
And performs incoherent monologues
Because there’s nobody to listen

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t that social media hero
Who tries to gain some self-worth
By creating a superman persona
Because there’s nobody that really knows him

The saddest man I ever met
Wasn’t even that peculiar man
Who keeps on staring through the window
Imaging the people passing by are terrorists
Or at least bloodthirsty aliens

The saddest man I ever met
He’s actually quite happy
And ignorant of his ignorance
Blatantly he rips through lives
As if he’s the Next Big God’s Gift

I’ve met too many
Manifestly two-faced people
Who’d stab you in the back
With the sincerest of smiles
To trust in the true dedication
Of man’s so called best friend

I don’t care about loyalty
Companionship bores me to death
And since I don’t need protection
I’ve solemnly decided that
The most truthful pet
Is my wicked, disinterested cat

When money dictates morals
Politicians try to pacify poverty
By keeping the poor passive

When money dictates morals
Politicians try to pacify the rich
By reducing politics to a puppet theatre

The pictures on my wall
They aren’t mine
Made in a previous life
By a man who used to exist
Pictures of places and faces
That shouldn’t mean anything
But glance by glance
They have replaced
The drab scenes of my own life
Familiar strangers stare at me
And I stare back
Jealous of the way
These black and white phantoms
Gracefully fill the room
While a colourful man like myself
Is doomed to play the second fiddle

I cherish my madness
Nurture it gently
Pour more oil
So that the flames can grow
I cater to its wishes
Let havoc wreck
And chaos endure
I need it
I feed it
For my imagination’s sake
My creativity’s at stake
Without the madness
I’m nothing
So the thoughts they jump
And bump and bruise
And go from there
To there
And there
And back again
Until order comes from chaos
And poetry from madness
And the calm after the storm
Spurs me on and on

I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons

That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had

At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin

But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality

Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench

All I need is my invisible friend
Although I must say
That lately he has been absent
The favours he used to do
Like splitting seas
And sending plagues
And the occasional help
With burning desires
And itching sinfulness
It has decreased
Brought back to an absolute minimum
Making me wonder
If now is the time to move on
But He and I
We go back such a long time
From when I was a kid
And He a couple of thousand years old
So it’s hard to imagine
That it was just my imagination all along

Saturday nights fill the void
Of weekday frustrations
And work’s condemnations
It ends the longing for something else
Or someone else
Or just someone, really
So all the cool, lonely people
Go to the heartbreak hotel
And dance and drink
And hope to find the thing
That they don’t even know
They are looking for

So we see through the eyes
Of hazy drunk people
Falling in love with the world
And themselves
And everyone else
Everyone who seems interesting enough
People made beautiful
By dancing and drinking
Hoping to find something or someone they lost
In the arms of a stranger

And I don’t mind
That you’re thinking about him
I’m used to being late
To the party anyway
And it has become a second nature
To come second
To substitute long gone ghosts
Marinaded in the melancholy
Of expensive drinks
And music I can’t relate to

But I keep on longing
for the Saturday Night Live experience
Because being lost
In a lost crowd
Has become so familiar
As it replaces
The horror of weekday frustrations
Of work’s condemnations
Of longing for something else
Or someone else
Or just someone

I spy with my little eye
Everyone and all
The faintest smile
The subtlest sign
Everything strange and worrying
And all that is normal
Perhaps too normal

And don’t feel scared
It’s in your best interest
That wicked smiles
And dangerous signs
And everything strange and worrying
Is brought under attention
Of people you can trust

And don’t ask yourself
Who is watching the watchmen
With wicked ways
And subtle methods
It’s better to sit and relax
And act normal
But not too normal

When autumn comes
Trees become exhibitionists
Shaking off their clothes
Standing proud in the rain
The increasing cold
Matched by an increasing nakedness

While humans plunder wardrobes
Nature strips itself off
Back to the essence
Of what autumn means
That Fall is the fall
Of the empire of pretense

So I cannot pretend
And clutch on summer’s façade
And hide under the foliage
Of warmth and joy
I must let the rain
Wash away my pretense
And I’ll humbly lay myself bare
Amidst nature’s nakedness

Help the aged
But not too much
For they weigh heavily
On the goverment’s budget
And on our conscience
And make us face
Our own mortality

Help the poor
But not too much
For they might think
They deserve better than this
And make us see
That petty philanthropy
Is pure hypocrisy

Help thy neighbor
But not too much
For there is no society
Just you and me
A collection of people
Just ordinary people
Trapped in individuality

Help your country
Above anything else
For there is honour
And glory to be found
Make the world see
And let them gasp
at our Grandiosity

And do help me
Above anything else
Vote and applaud loudly
Make this country great again
And help the aged and the poor
But don’t expect
Too much sympathy

Like moths I’m drawn
To man-made moons
To bathe in its artificial light
While the rain pours down
And the world runs down the drain

And in the end I end up
As a lonely, dancing ghost
Blinded by the fake moon
A worthy spotlight
For a would-be Gene Kelly

and cockerels

One word is often enough
To make a crowd go wild
Like “Fire”
Or “Bomb”
Or even a vague “Danger”
Sometimes it takes two
“Behind you”
Or “Get out”
Or perhaps a simple “My god!”

Like hens and cockerels
We are often running scared
And running away
From the smallest whisper
The vaguest rumour
And the slightest possibility
Until it is clear that the fear
Was a product of imagination

Then we’ll act as if nothing happened
A collective silence
After a collective madness
And we’ll look down
And mix in the crowd
Hide the fact that we’re aware
That our scare was worthy
Of hens and cockerels

I know a man
Who loves to hear himself roar
Because he believes a man becomes a Man
Not through subtlety but through force
That a man becomes interesting
When he’s seen and heard
So he moves heaven and earth
To be seen and to be heard

The importance of being important
Is the core value in his life
The pillar of his existence
The creed that defines his strive
The struggle of man to become Man
And to be the center of the earth
A life defined by importance
To be seen and to be heard

As the huntsman led her into these woods
Deeper and deeper they fared
He carefully whispered in her ear
That only of herself she should be scared

She agreed that once your path was chosen
And you were too far to doubt
It was better to convince yourself
There was nothing to worry about

So she followed him deeper and deeper
Convincing herself that she found the right way
Knowing perfectly well that the huntsman
Would become the wolf that would lead her astray

Like an actor about to enter his stage
The boy who would be king stood still
Motionless, with racing thoughts
And expectations to fulfill

For he knew that to be a king was to be loved
And love would turn to hate
And to be the lonely center of the crowd
That would be his fate

But the curtains fell as he put on his mask
And the doubts, they were pushed backwards
Set in motion, with smothered thoughts
The boy took his leap forward

And all were there to see him shine
And all were there to love him
And the boy, he cried and died inside
And the boy, he became king

On the outside there was joy and pride
As he paraded through the crowd
But there was dread and fury on the inside
And the noblest, purest form of doubt

He felt the fear get to him
And the nausea shook him to the core
But like an actor he should wear his mask
And like a lion he should roar

So the king, he put himself aside
And erased all that he had been
And erased all that he felt inside
And the boy was no longer to be seen

In a world where time flies by so fast
And people slowly forget
How slow things used to be
It is a matter of time and logic
Until everyone in time
Is abiding the laws of brevity

How I’d like to be a man of the people
To write poems that widely spread
To have the public sit up and notice
And nod to every little thing
That I, ever so poetically, care to share

My poems would be talk of the town
In fame and fortune I would bathe
And the public would subtly bow as I walk by
Wondering how I ever so clever
Show what the show’s all about

I would gracefully describe human nature
In a way that everyone would get
I’d share my universal wisdom
The essence of this life
And offer the promise of bliss

There would be nothing I would withhold
From the public I hold so dear
I’d help them cope with love and lust
With pain and loss and death
And all that’s bright and beautiful

But alas, I am no man of the people
And my limits are ever so clear
I myself am an isolated poet
And I fear it’s true what I hear:
That they don’t have a way with poetry, anyway

The problem with children
Is that they are too easily pleased
The monochrome boredom of everyday life
Turns swiftly into a colourful extravaganza  
As the mind-numbing and the mundane
Become the mind-blowing and the magnificent

Children have the gift of fantasy
Of carelessness and of hope
They add the extra to the ordinary
With long lost magic by their side.

The problem with adults
Is that they are never easily pleased
The monochrome and monotone
Become an excessive focus
As the mind-numbing and the mundane
Blow away the mind-blowing and the magnificent

Adults sacrificed the gift of fantasy
And seek the companionship of reality
Of money and of responsibility
With long lost magic on their minds.

What happened to the dandies
Those gentlemen of the grandest Culture
Destroyers of dreaded boundaries
Mockers of meaningless morality
Inquisitors of a profound lack of imagination
Guardians of good taste
Messengers of modernity

What happened to those 19th century hipsters
Who so gracefully dissected Society
And whose wit and wisdom
Shook the foundations
Of mainstream hypocrisy
Of inept intellectualism
And lamentable lies

We are in dire need of retrieving
The lost art of being a dandy
To shake the foundations once more
And to revoke the righteous rage
Of the cultural creed
To set society aflame
With wit and wisdom

I used to think that fish
In little bowls and aquariums
Were pitiful prisoners of men
Deprived of freedom
Defined by frontiers
Hindered by limits

But now I know that fish
Might be happy in their prisons
Able to explore all there is to see
While humans keep on getting lost
In their prison of infinite possibilities

I used to think that I used to think
That you could not be forgotten
But all it takes to make one humble
Is yesterday’s ghost
To shatter the illusions we hold dear

For the past is a vicious beast
Always looking for a fight
To end the peace of present day
To end the promise of the future

To proclaim its hegemony over what once was
What now is and what might be
As it mercilessly sends the deadliest of assassins
Memories of what once was good

I used to think that I used to think
That you could not be forgotten
But all it takes to make me humble
Is yesterday’s love
To shatter the illusion that I hadn’t lost

For the sake of art or the sake of it
I went back to the seaside
With seagulls screaming in my ears
And a cocktail of cold water and sticky sand
Clutching between my toes
And a boulevard filled with joy
Ecstatic children revisiting the magic
Of blue sea and blue skies

And the beaches are full of women
Hoping the tan will convince their men
To rekindle the spark
Of what was once, and how and when
Holidays like these meant everything to them
While ships pass by like silent witnesses
As time slides and slips away
Sometimes it is truly better on holiday

People took pictures of each other
Just to prove that they loved one another
Just to prove that they really existed

People take pictures of themselves
Just to prove that they’re happy with themselves
Just to prove that they’re really existing

So they filter their faults, like their Instagram photos
And they summarize all that is good in a sentence or two
And they practice their smiles as if it is worthwhile
To try to like life just to get a few likes

And the only thing that is left to be real
Are the things that are real and that people feel
They shouldn’t be sharing, thinking it’s scary
To actually share what they feel is too real

True friends stab you in the front
And look you in the eye
While carefully twisting the knife
Hurting you just enough

With a vindictive friendliness
And vicious compassion
The gentlest way to betray
That’s what true friends are for

At the hapless poetry event
I thought I’d have a splendid time
But as a poet I should know
That life has the habit of being cruel
So immensely cruel

So I had to avoid the debris
Of classical poetry
And suffer from the boundaries
Put upon my creativity
My poor creativity

And I felt useless, since it turned out to be punless
They didn’t see the point of puns
And I felt pointless, for I could not rhyme
No, I would not rhyme
Such a horrid time

And people dressed in ironic ways
Tried to evoke the nineteenth century
Pretending that complexity
Makes for better poetry
Oh, my poor, simple poetry

So I stood there, with my glass of wine
And my pun-filled collection of wit
No rhymes to hide behind
And no gravity to my humble words
Oh, poor, humble man

And a lady in red, with blue hair
Awkwardly grabbing me by the arm
Asked me if I had suffered enough
And if I ever wanted to **** myself
God, how I wanted to **** myself

But the irony always wins
As words poured in my mind
With puns in abundance
So finally suffering inspired me
At the hapless poetry event

They throw bombs like I throw parties
And it’s equally hit and miss
Often a mess, never a success
And still we throw and throw

They have Molotov cocktails,
While I serve the regular kind
They’ll bomb your mind to pieces
While I serve peace of mind.

No bloodshed but ****** Mary,  
No barbarian, but Cosmopolitan
And my Irish Car Bombs and Kamikazes
Don’t bring death, but only fun

And the Paradise I’m aiming for
Contains gin instead of virgins
And Nixon doesn’t feed the flames
But keeps us frisky with its whiskey

So we’ll keep on throwing parties
And they’ll keep on throwing bombs
And we’ll keep on serving cocktails
Just to keep our conscience numb

I’ve always been intimidated
By the man in the mirror
With his cocky face and his self-assured grin

I’ve always been imitated
By the man in the mirror
With his worried sigh and his eyes full of doubt

I’ve always needed the city more than it needed me
Wandering its prominent streets
Being nothing more than an anonymous ant,
Crawling past the lines of mechanized zombies
With equally anonymous ants driving them

More than once have I bathed in its street lights
Hoping that it would find my personality shining through
Or hunted down my reflection in its windows
Expecting that visibility would lead to the end of my anonymity
I’ve always needed the city more than it needed me

But now my point of view has finally shifted
As I wandered the streets of the city I hold so dear
Finding that my need to be needed has changed

Finally I have discovered that the invisible man is happy
He is never told to go away
He keeps on wandering, amongst his fellow ants
Under the city’s street lights, reflected by its windows
Not feeling the need to be needed
Not feeling the need
Not feeling