Archive for June, 2007

The laundry held captive by windows.
Behind them these moles in their vase.
Blind over scents do my vows break,
the beach just a theatre of waves.

A milky way loop of lace curtains
prompts me to cinnamoon latch.
I try not to stare to the floor, shuffle
on record for groove & with moonbite.

Weather grows fine in your kitchen,
sunlight seared thin at bake moo.
I love you. Let’s climb chairs.
We have conversation, we untalk.

From the girth of skillets we cake
walk over tight panache machetes.
Slit from the cadence of whistling
a kettle warms hands, warms even us.

She’s ruggy like an early started summer,
talks as if her words are straws you clasp.
Ofcourse she has a boyfriend, what a bummer.
Her eyes the honey of every courting wasp

glazing this room – she doesn’t mind none
offering her white teeth to the lights
and she, the friggin queen of all barhives
will answer them whenever you’re in sight.

Just to answer you. She has no choice,
no will of her own because her voice
is just the blend of all souls that straw there,
wishing they’re the ones that fail to see her.

We work out every day on the edge of the pool
which isn’t too large but it has lights under water.
They shine like carbonised soup at night and I think
of closing my eyes or get another drink at the Cork.

We eat strawberries with forks here in the morning
as soon as the nurse says the light is too thin
after the cocks crow spinning like magnets I swear
sometimes I see her take off that bikini in a window.

They have great drinks here but I never remember
the names. Upset with the rub of summer crickets
go off in palm trees like cheap car alarms.

Sometimes the girls get lonely, I see them
bounce in the warm mirror of my sunglasses.
But I’m afraid to rise and lose my tan –
one has to keep an angle to shine even later.

One day I’ll start my car and drive to sea,
slow as a sip of bourbon they’ll all follow me
On a dame blanche of waves I will swallow
all the little lemmin girls who cream to be saved.

Scratching of oranges and backgammon pieces.
Furtiveness on the street. In the teahouse an old man
that keeps losing himself. His eyes are wornout beads
broken out of a rosary. Chiming

of prayers. On the background the roar
of three bridges that uphoist the Bosperus.
It’s too hot to sleep. He’s got a bottle

of cologne, his grey hair
smells of sweat and lemon. Tonight he will
drive his cab and shyly ask passengers
to point the way. In the mirror

he sees the phantoms of a nightlife
he can’t comprehend. He looks on the meter.

His city is a city with streets and birds,
neighbours and flowers on wooden balconies.

This place is something else. His children will
leave it one day. They will pick him out
of the teahouse, while he’s just dozing off
like today. It is hot and he’ll sleep

and wake up bewildered in a city
with streets and birds and neighbours that whistle
like wasps around the honey of nightcaps

or sunlight. His hair will smell
of lemon, his hand will search the rosary and

he will shyly ask us,
one last time, to point him the way to
this house, to this long street.

M.H.Benders, 23-06-2007

Ik roep vandaag uit tot gedichtendag, omdat het 42 graden is. Bij 42 graden blijf je binnen en ga je gedichten schrijven, danwel oud werk in het engels op je weblog posten. Ik begin met het eerste maar zal later vandaag een selectie engelstalige gedichten posten.

Een gedicht van mijn hand in de zich tragisch voortslepende Hassnae affaire. Breukers noemt het initiatief op de Contrabas ‘seksistisch’ maar die is dan ook nog nooit publiekelijk met vriendin gesignaleerd. Ondertussen probeert Eus het met scherpschutterij, zal hij de duistere romantiek van Benders daarmee onklaar maken of zal een derde, vierde of vijfde hond met het bot gaan weglopen? We zullen zien.