All Swept Away

Sickness often, often attends me. I'm ruled by pain
Tortured memories burning my brain. Oh make it end
Killed for nothing. Killed by no-one. I was just a boy
Weak and lonely, cold and bloody. Give me a hand

Cared by many, but I know none. My life has gone
Rage and anger tearing through me. Who's God will pay?

Made me fight for you. Made me die for you
You and your sick God. You hope to be loved
We're all swept away, so you can have your day
On blooded knees for you. Heaven calls to you

But I won't die without
Without your heart
In my hand

My Dying Bride

The not-happening

Some time ago, not a long time but still, I was sitting on the train home and in a compartment a bit further down sat a most beautiful girl. Every time I passed her she smiled at me and I smiled back at her, but not a word was spoken between us. We were both sitting alone at opposite sides of the carriage, still we only exchanged smiles. Half way through the journey she was gone, I can't even remember where she got off. For the rest of my homeward journey I contemplated on how I should have approached her, I ran through countless of opening lines and what were to follow those and what should again follow those, all too late. I still wonder what we might have had in common and what kind of music she listened to, and what movies she liked. I have travelled by the same train several times since this first encounter, but I never saw her again.

The not-happening was so sudden
that I stayed there forever,
without knowing, without their knowing me,
as if I were under a chair,
as if I were lost in night.
Not being was like that,
and I stayed that way forever.

Afterwards, I asked the others,
the women, the men,
what they were doing so confidently
and how they learned how to live.
They did not actually answer.
They went on dancing and living.

What determines that silence
is what doesn't happen,
and I don't want to keep on talking,
for I stayed there waiting.
In that place, on that day,
I have no idea what happened to me,
but now I am not the same.

P. Neruda

First day of Autumn, and late night at the Office

Today autumn arrived, and my days at the office once again became somewhat longer than they have been the last few summer weeks. I do not object to the arrival of windier, darker and perhaps also quieter evenings, I quite like it to be honest. Though my days are almost always full of plans and assignments, I often look forward to the late evenings alone at the office. This is for me a time for thinking, reading and writing, even more effectively than I usually am able to during the busy time of day. When every other office is empty I make myself a new pot of tea and put on some music, some quiet late afternoon autumn music like Tom Mcrae or Susanne Sundfør. This poem is from Susanne Sundør's album The Brothel.

The Brothel

Purple pavement
Crookfingers knocking on windows without souls
Bodies are swinging from rooftops and poles
Howling through hollows
Restless nights and one night cheap hotels
Oh, I’m only drifting to always come back

And I search for something
Oh, whatever I don’t really care
Driving with their lights off they can be anywhere
Rolling down their windows
Open card with open mouths
Golden teeth and golden cars

You call me your eyes, you call me your mouth, you call me your ears
Still you follow my trail
I’ll do it all, I’ll do whatever you say, God has left me anyway

Love I laid in payment
Stars with stains and heaven and afterglow
Beneath the ashes of echoes buried alive
They are howling through hollows
Once we share their temple of our arms
Now our heads are hung up on walls

We are ruins within ruins
On every corner a gladiator is begging for another century
When no one cut your tongue to know nothing and to know it all
To be both the animal and god

You call me your eyes, you call me your mouth, you call me your ears
Still you follow our trail
We’ll do it all, we’ll do whatever you say, God has left us anyway
You call me your eyes, you call me your mouth, you call me your ears
Still you follow our trail
We’ll do it all, we’ll do whatever you say, God has left us anyway

There are echoes in the garden is anybody listening
There are echoes lost in the garden is anybody listening
They whisper:
The ones who are only living are the ones who are only dying

Komakino

I reread James O'Barr's The Crow tonight, and just wanted to write down the last poem in the book by Joy Division:

This is the hour when the mysteries emerge
Strangeness so hard to reflect
A moment so moving goes straight
to your heart
Condition that's never been met
The attraction that's held like a wake
deep inside
Something I'll never forget
Pattern is set, the reaction will start
Complete but rejected too soon
Looking ahead in the grip of each tear
Impulse that blinds every move
Shadow that stood by the side of the road
Always reminds me of you
How can I find the right way
to control all the conflicts inside,
All the problems beside
As the questions are right,
and the answers don't fit
Into my way of paying, into my way
of paying

Sonnets in the Night

Sonnet 23
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burthen of mine own love's might.
O! let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Sonnet 24
Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath steel'd,
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur'd lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

W. Shakespeare