the muscles got tired of holding up
the eyeball, spared me seeing
myself grow old, mature on a pan
on the stove of time
the idle tongue in the hollow of my mouth
I liken to an unemployed puppy in
a dog house
it strokes the inner walls
strokes the inner walls
like a home-crazed rag
before, it appeased, pacified, kissed
now others will whisper
say something nice; or nasty!
as a maiden I rose from a long sleep
in a green reed, or blue, in a lightless girlhole
I met a mirror that deep-voiced said:
‘see your beauty!’
later it drew me a yellow line on the floor:
‘come no closer!’
but white are my teeth
saliva soft as a spring
and the first hairs that sprout on my grave
are plucked by the girls on the lower corridor
laughing with the pincette
we girls also laughed as we
pulled weeds in the public park
girls laugh
time took me by surprise
recently a young woman led me up
steep steps
she is my mirror image without quicksilver
how old is my embrace today?
my breasts—x minus eighteen years old?
my lips?
my kisses?
that reminded some of absinthe drink
others of a stream in the morning
how old is my breath today?
the moments that I lived
fight over my bones
like the last breadloaf in a famine
does the vulture eat its own carcass?
and the lad on the night shift
rearranges and rearranges
invisible pictures on the wall
of mum
of children
of a minke whale
that, bloody, arrives at her wedding
a streak of blood on a long skinny fjord
the armpits of the lads, who on the beach
open the bride with man-sized scissors,
bawl with rage
and what I remember as I tore the membrane
off my bridegroom
with long, colourful nails
under the window in the midday sun
out in the dining hall, over a light blue tablecloth
is a quiet sweat pearl falling down my forehead
it is the superglue, strong as glass,
that fixes me to the ground
so I don’t rise from the grave
muttering nonsense
like a newly graduated high school student!
warm blood
runs through my veins like wine
though some call me the waste in the sieve
I produce like a fountain
juice for fully grown diapers
the freckled wasteland on his arms
that rearranges the pictures
that sprinkles the graverims with water from a jug
I see more clearly than my own reflection
see!
how the mushrooms dance
in the forest behind the material world
when the girl touches you
with her eyes with
her moist lips