A Scrapbook of Lies E-Book

Knut Stang

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 75

Beschreibung

A German artist, poet, historian, suddenly writing English verses. No intention to create the next German song entering the charts. Instead, delivering his utterly unready attempts as such. Like a painter not exhibiting paintings but pages ripped out of some scrapbook. But in a world of lies, what else would such a scrapbook contain? Or if your truly honest what could you offer but lies?

Leseprobe

Inhalt

Preamble

White Chalk on Grey Canvas

I Heard the Faeries Call my Name

Dang Dang Ding Dong Dangeling

The Sand

Close Your Eyes

I was Asked

A Scrapbook of Lies

I Would Have Been Ready

It's Thus

Glimpses

Men Walking the Beach

Interlocution with Sparrows

Salesman

We Shall Prevail

Keeper

Language: Desperately Lost

Here’s to You One Last Goodbye…

A Borrowed Face

Despite the Butcher was Dead

Highwayman

All the Pirates

I Remember of Course

Lost

Miankou Mikosama

Drifting

The Cat

When All is Lost

A Man with Scarlet Foot

Patches of Trees

No, Tom, No

But Live

Echoes

The Lion

The Wave

The Mill

You Cannot

The Vulture and the Victim

When I Walk

Touching

A Night in the Vineyards

The Old Castellan's Tale

In Pale Light

With Gargoyles I Speak

Black

Red Ink On Very Green

It Poem it Lies

Harboured

Me Ain’t

Ruffle my Shingles

On Threshold

Mothers

Please

Leopard Man

Sugar Girl on Sugar Bed

Fallen From

Melodious

Me Like

Commerce

A Year

Creation

Nopeenopp

Freetown 1997

What About?

I

The Flake

Two

You Never See Her Eyes

Me

Lavadee

Measure

The Not-Being-Lied of Birds

Yumee?

May I

Rotten

In Darkness

Fake

Oratory

Me: The One

Haittihooka

I Had

She

Fail

Yummeeyummee

Black Coal To Cover The White

Why Would Anyone

Letters

All is Glass

Still Can

A Second – Helping

Strategies, Systems, Solutions

Cart

Perspectives

Can We Not

No Way

Language of Course

Naturally

Would? It?

What Might Have Been True

The World

I Thought

Could I

After Some Vague Acquaintance’s Suicide

It Was Never God

Infantry Man

Sad Fish and Lonely Chips

The Face in Broken Mirrors Fell

If All I Could Have

In the Mirror

Take

Shoelaces

I Fell Asleep

Pale Shades, Grey Shades

Is this a Knife

If a Book of Poetry I Were

I Could Say

The Unanswered

Need

Who

For Instant

Nothing

When They Said

Glistening

Diana

There Are

In School

So Far

I Remember Paris

Belanglos

Back

Dreaming of Mountain-High Letters

Waves

On No

True

I Happened to Fall Asleep

Words

Fact Is

To Fail

Don’t

Catharsis, or: When this would be the Best

Poems in Alphabetical Order

Preamble

Who would publish this / Georgie?

Georgie

ran the stream through

the forest while silver

dangled from the clouds

onto the emerald leaves

Who would publish this / Kathy?

Kathy

gathered splinters from some cross raining

onto our concrete suburban utopia

she named us European cockatoos

caged. Pecking exterminatory rubber wheels

Who would publish this / Furry?

Furry

she was the maid.

we had been through

this before. Our emptiness

was handmade.

White Chalk on Grey Canvas

I Heard the Faeries Call my Name

I heard the faeries call my name.

From whence the whispers came

I do not know,

but to the forests I must go.

A face to young to face the rain.

Seal unbroken, brethren, unbroken seal:

Send it to the rivers, to the ocean.

As if my heart knew how to dream,

to linger in the faeries’ gleam.

But only shadows walk with me,

their riddle is not mine to see.

Is this an empty corpse in motion?

To fade is more than to sustain.

The reel of world, but woe is real.

The trees lie hewn, the mountain’s high,

red clouds are all across the sky.

And I am frightened to the bone:

so lost, betrayed, and so alone.

Heal the desperate, too desperate to heal.

The dew on the leaves: a secret potion.

And fate holds answers to your pain.

I hear the faeries whisper: Just be strong,

because your way is dark and long.

And none but us is on your side.

(Alas, we are naught but tears you’ve cried.)

Dang Dang Ding Dong Dangeling

dang dang ding dong dangeling

hear me call your name

in my handmade forest spring

grows a many splendoured thing

run to me, and thence be lame.

lame? my

name – is my name

to you? I’ll be

game?

lame game?

underneath my tree roots dwell

dang dang ding and diddle

dreams I buy and nightmares sell

can’t you hear my household spell?

play that grassroot fiddle.

mare? I to you

ride? lame?

night – a croaker?

lame healer?

for you – in crackers.

life’s a coin: you’ve lost it here

dangelong, dangelong a-deedle

wash your eyes with sandy tear

night is nigh and end is near

life’s a rusty needle.

The Sand

the sand is glistening in

the footprints of

lost children borne on

the brink of the

millennium (the previous)

had I not been the one

whose feet slipped

along the way

our procession would

have reached limbo

in time

but then again

who would be there

to stagger when fate

outstretches its leg

to be the friendly dagger

slicing your belly

the sand still is

glistening with tears

wept by an unwanted gargoyle

foundling left on the

threshold of now

of course, I know its parents

as I know its

merciless brother

but keep all their names

as a secret until

I shall need coin

to harbour under my tongue

when the sand has devoured

all but the uneasy sleepers

chained on the brink

of another loss

lost in their own

heartbeat

Close Your Eyes

close your eyes and hear

there is no sky, no fear

no need to feel

nothing is real, nothing

is real

I hear the ocean calling

I see the pale moon dance

I know my emperor's falling

I've lost the wind of chance

take my hands and weep

flee my lands. I'll creep

into your bitter blue

no one stays true, no one

stays true

I hear a tree that whispers

I hear a mountain cry

I danced across my limbo

I far away must die

cut each word and wait

shoot the bird, we're late

flowers die in frost

everything is lost, everything

is lost

I was Asked

I was asked to be a poet

whispering words of laughter

into the abyss of her hands.

Yet I was all included

and my holiday affair was naught

but dreams of climbing a sacred mountain

and leaving myself

down in the valley of her soul.

Countdown, and then

a gift of energy

that made me rise.

(While the sky beyond

never kept a heaven within.)

I was asked to be a poem

uttering words of love

erasing the spots of guilt

on her hands of forgiveness.

But I was all excluded

from everything but myself

locked into the fountain

she awoke in my soul.

Cuts, and then

the meagre trophy of a smile

my heart she did beguile

and yet the howling within

was only her name

and the wind cried Mary…

A Scrapbook of Lies

Are you still waiting at the corner?

What could I pay you?

Coins for some loving?

A diamond for drinking your tears?

Shall we not reinterpret our lives

as timetables wasted on fears?

Childhood offered promises

daggers hidden under its tongue

iron strings scraping fingernails

abandoned poems lured in our eyes.

Shall we not reinterpret our history

as a scrapbook of lies?

Have we not been sufficiently patient,

when we found our dreams immobilized?

While others were crying and begging and praying,

have we been more than wasted to sleep?

Shall we not reinterpret our eternity

as a canvas without colours to keep?

I Would Have Been Ready

I would have been ready

to breathe your name,

but the dainty whisper

from the ice encrusted

peaches of your smile

suffocated the sparrows

of seduction on my lips.

I would have been ready

to warm you in night wings,

but your anger phoenixed (again)

burning down the horrified

trees in my forest of longing,

leaving nothing but ashes

to scratch your name into.

I would have been ready

to eat my life’s definition

from your nourishing smile.

But all the food you threw

to the glutenous dogs under

the table, leaving nothing but

crumbs to mark a way out.

It's Thus

It's thus: Uselessly cut.

Time whispers

drips of melon juice

in my ear.

(Nobody is greedless.)

It's thus: Unbeloved,

the soul be an anvil of shadow.

Strangers may lick

names into the sand,

we all shall be.