Some English poems written over the past six months or so. Various themes. Mostly about love. I can never fully explain why one day I want to write in Dutch and the next day I am more drawn to English. I suppose it’s partly due to extreme globalisation (English being the lingua franca of the internet), and partly because I want to share my creative output with non-Dutch people in my inner circle. I’m learning Danish too, maybe in a few years I’ll feel confident enough to try writing a poem in Danish. If you want to recognize LLM generated text, look for egregious use of em dashes (—), they seem infatuated with them (or emojis…). Something about LLM generated text makes me sad. Wish it wasn’t so commonplace but this appears the new reality we live in.
Poems
It’s more important to be nice, I guess, than being wise
— Julian Casablancas
Advice to myself
Read books which are never read.
Say things which are never thought.
Write words which are never felt.
Muse on nothing worth your time.
Do not protect the whims of the heart -
let them fly like a bird with bruised wings;
they’ll land safely, carried by the wind,
if they dare to leap from their hideout.
Fallen leaves nourish the forest floor
and, similarly, failed dreams should
be a fire in the woodlands, cleansing
a path for bigger and bolder aspirations.
Rarely tell the truth, spin a web of lies
in which you get caught too: this is art.
Prefer abstraction over heavy realism.
Don’t let ‘wise’ get in the way of ‘nice’.
blurred vision
evening, desire, merely
wanting more taste,
more touch, your face
half-forgotten dawn
tastes of dew in desert
sun soon evaporates
heart too tender
marinated yearning
solitude - mallet
straightens out fibers
single-textured, single-
minded, filled with
love for you, only
more love in absence
only more love
to let the blood snail and thicken,
as a second skin grows
over these spineless dreams.
— Andrew Waterhouse
spineless dreams
sailing on waves of time
superficial poetic imagery
nimbly avoiding cliff faces
aided by a dash of rum
ship’s on the right course
when it crashes on land
poets their dreams strand
as they fail to describe the
sound of bow striking sand
Distance
My skin has not felt delight since your skin
left mine. My eyes desperately crave the sight
of your eyes - the ardour coming from within
an elastic band that binds our bodies tight.
With each passing day, separation expands.
Fires with decreased oxygen burn a lot longer
and with each lost touch from your hands
my adoration and desire only grow stronger.
We might not spend each minute together
but stretched bands tend to bounce back,
and when parted, we’re connected by a tether
that keeps our love intact, even as it cracks.