Late Signals, Honey Talks (Poems Vol. 4)

• A dose of dreamlike poems riding the waves of desire, decay, and fleeting rebellion.

COFFEE, ROADS & TRAINS

Morning coffee, a sandwich & juice,

a train that’s running late,

twenty-two degrees Celsius,

seventeen in the shade,

the road outside the station’s been milled down,

and just a few streets over

there’s a mysterious plot unfolding—

you’ll read about it in the papers later;

but who even reads papers these days?

Who’s got time for coffee and juice?

It’s either coffee,

or it’s juice.

We’ve worn down these roads,

worn them down completely,

but there’s no time for real repairs,

so we just patch things up,

because we’ve got to keep driving.

The train’s still delayed,

trains usually are,

because they always need to be somewhere

too early,

too exactly on time,

and you never finish your coffee,

because they serve it in cups

that are way too big now.

It didn’t used to be like this,

cups used to be just right—

but it’s not that the cups got bigger,

they’re still the same,

it’s just time

that’s changed.

It keeps rushing forward,

and all we have time for now

are just the small things.

RADIO

A lightning bolt fixed my radio,

now it plays without commercials.

A lightning bolt broke my radio,

now I’m without a weather forecast.

A bolt struck the tree behind the house,

sprouted from the ground

and lit up the lanterns on the roof.

It reminded me

that my head is like a radio—

when I take in too much,

I overload, I burn out,

when I take in too much,

I start spouting nonsense

and doing things I’ll regret later.

My head is like a radio,

my head is my radio,

and I’m grateful

when lightning strikes it now and then,

takes it out of service—

the radio goes quiet,

and I listen to my heart instead;

I follow my heart— and get lost.

The heart peels like an orange,

lets its juice flow again,

and when it wraps itself up again,

when it folds back into its skin,

I cross my arms over my chest

and wait,

wait for the next storm.

Sometimes it’s a damn tough job,

but in hindsight,

I cherish the days

when my radio breaks down.

THE QUEEN

Bees in the evening sun

were falling from exhaustion into the stars,

and she

was undressing every newcomer

with her pop-art X-ray eyes,

tucked in a corner, in an amber gown,

balanced on the edge of indulgence & disdain,

her toes crossing a line—

a line like a spider’s thread

glinting

like a hairline crack in a diamond.

In the kitchen, canned soups

had already won over the entire staff.

The lobster — king of the kitchen —

tried to shake the queen’s hand

but accidentally snipped off all her fingers.

Half the guests laughed,

the other half cried—

that’s what happens

when politics gets involved;

if it hadn’t, they all would’ve laughed.

And she,

she had already moved to the balcony,

now utterly fed up with honeyed words,

catching bees in her hair

just to keep them for herself,

bathing in their buzzing

for the rest of the evening.

Bees never spoke,

but they understood real honey,

and she,

through all the commotion,

and all the blood

pouring from her fingerless hand,

knew

that nothing much had really happened,

because the only true queen

is the queen bee,

and for tonight,

she’s already safe.

TURKISH NIGHT

They ordered a night, black as Turkish coffee,

and with a blown-out candle, they welcomed all coyotes;

yellow eyes danced in pairs all around them,

and the Lost Drifter forgot his song

right as he stuck his head into the last dumpster

at the end of East Street—

that long stretch leading off the plain

straight into the belly of the sleeping city.

In the middle of nowhere stood their Cadillac,

old as Bing Crosby’s Far Away Places,

and there they were — in the back seat, windows down,

not afraid of the coyotes,

and so the coyotes weren’t afraid of them either.

Night, of course, was never afraid of anything.

And the Lost Drifter might’ve felt fear,

had he not fallen asleep in that dumpster,

with Turkish blackness hanging above his head.

POSTCOITAL APOCALYPSE

Last night we exploded

like a rocket

hitting its mark.

We drank the entire night sky,

slurped it down together

— stars and all —

and now we can finally sleep.

The bedsheet beneath us caught fire

and now writhes in pain,

damp with burns.

Our legs forgot the weight of our bodies,

our hearts forgot the weight of the world,

and we could easily

sleep through another whole day.

The alarm clock

has no power over us anymore.