A Learned Trick

This is how you disappear from the face of the earth
You don’t stay at a place for more than one week
That’s how noone can know
Where you are at one given point of time
Except for those you choose to tell
...
That’s how you kill yourself off off the story

The Chance Meeting

The Chance Meeting

After years of lines have paled
what we had at once recognized
in each other's faces
on that fatal October day
of fundamental misunderstandings

you should see me
wearing that black leather jacket
once again,
and that scarf of the colour of fire
and feel disoriented for a second

then come sit across from me
pleased to find me converted to Nabokov
and tell me about your latest poem
to which one day I might write the annotation

and I will tell you how I
the intrepid traveller, travelled on for our sake
and share with you the horror stories
of which you had had a glimpse
once on a visit, that had left you cold and looking for other pastures.

Toasting your success and my failed defection
we shall drink our afternoon tea

If only

Narrative and Identity

Instead of a poem
here's a reference to your pitless bottom,
spurred on by a
compulsion for compassion
I was advising my friends the whole night long

compassion for the German,
compassion for the English,
compassion for the American

compassion for the ones who
are ridiculed in absentia

and before I discuss this with myself
critically and
come to the conclusion that
compassion breeds injustice

I shall throw the whole thing
to the pitless bottom
of an Italian restaurant in deep Teuton country.