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I
Write a Song for You
©
1999 Nina
Wilhelmina
I
write a song for you and leave it to sail the lake
violet water a mirror for the burning sun recreates
the song and name it by you. Hikers climb the green hillside
they comb the hinterland, yet light as bright as you
they'd never find. Lily clouds like a drifting litany
nearer to you than I could ever be,
but I know the wanderer's lingo
and speak it to them, hoping so
to your ear they will bring the echo.
My sepia December is getting old
you got your snowshoe and your lips get blue
when I lift eyes to catch the weather tonight
will there be light, will there be you?
Invisible soul, what do you see
in every snowflake that flies your way?
I want to be nowhere but here waiting by the tundra, wondering
where you are to be when sometimes the air be an s.o.b.
snickering at me. I may stumble time and time again, I may
find heroes are fiction and this shiver is not so fine
I may be knocked down by a snowbank
and this hurt is all to real, I'm too old for a fairy-tale.
But I can say to the cold wind,
just for once I was across the border
and I write a song for you and let it sail the lake
to say that all is real though it feels like fake.
First
Rain
© 2000
Nina Wilhelmina
At
the thirteenth drop I was awake. Noon today isn't so bad then, at least
while all else has failed I still get the rain. Small cypress outside
wriggled like a terrier
a nd there was a singular anger from the part of the felines. It was
eight in the morning down there at your bay and the choking apartment.
I wondered aloud, what were you doing -- bedtime was just slightly over
was it so hard for you to get out of slumber
as is always my case, this October?
I've been waiting for this rain all my life -- and the lives before,
if there is such a thing
-- and you know I still am making yet another stupid mistake,
haggling for something I had never wanted in the first place
and for the one thing I should have been content in having.
So the rain came hesitating. Like the tropical sky's crying
but unsure what about, uncertain how come.
Lots of memories it has forgotten, the history
of steaming lakes and the draining of waterways -- such is life, such
is being
-- something that has its seed a million years back
always comes as if it is a surprise,
as if an all of a sudden.
I'm still in bed. The rain is still washing down
dust over my roof and
cats are still angrily shivering. I want so much to write you a letter
but nothing comes up beyond hello -- but somehow something convinces
me that
whatever I have to say
you already know.
So I just watch the rain from here
and download your presence from the funny kind of air
-- something that will certainly take forever
considering how big the gigabytes are
if you are to be a file!
Although
I Don't Wish for a Return
© 2000
Nina Wilhelmina
Although
I don't wish for a return, past still lives
haunt the premises. Sometimes they are so near like
their breath is breezing upon my nape -- warm
tears old as sin, salty ancient yearning
and things littering history. Like portrait paintings
from the olden days, bits of memory are
floating around the corridors of my mind.
Still life involving a dark blue vase and sunflowers,
cats that looked cunning and haircuts, dated
-- although I wouldn't hope for a retro,
living them once more is kind of fun
-- knowing that these are of a time
which I cannot rewind.
But
Night Itself is a Fugitive
© 2000
Nina Wilhelmina
To
hide within the night is what he had in mind
-- he hoped for a cover, a sanctuary in the dark
trying to make himself invisible to the hunters
attempting to make them lose track
-- the enemy's agents: his very own jackals
-- the ego and all.
But
night itself is a fugitive, it forever tries to hide
in the darkness' belly, identifying caves in every
particle of air, where it could enter
and hope for sunrise to have it delivered
from the ordeal of being pursued by itself.
The
islet opens for the one on the run
is never to be found at places for a solitary confinement
-- he better hides in broad daylight
among the crowd with the similar fright.
Haze
© 2000
Nina Wilhelmina
A
little bit of sadness, a little bit of fury
A dash of madness, a bite of being helpless --
Oh, come on now, that's a fudge!
Like
jewelry around my fingers
I wore my love and yet
I did take him out when I went to the toilet.
So what matters?
The
Closest I Got to a Prayer
© 1999-2000
Nina Wilhelmina
The
closest I got to a prayer
sunshine fell upon my leer
Never a believer in miracles
This was to me reckless.
Silver foam at the lake's face
headed upward, a long thin lace
The sky caught its head
fastened it to a cloud
Like a kid to a party
it dressed so shabby
Putting my wish there
it hijacked the thing and glare
something I did not care
An opus in the air written
by Ludwig, the German
as deaf as a newborn kitten
The letter M sailed the water
-- Maybe? Might, Misery
any tail it could get later
before the sea it does wither
To that melody of Beethoven
I added what came out of the oven
A picnic by some natural spot
pilgrimage, trail of life in a knot
May it rain I said to the spirits
or else I'd blow up the premise to bits
The wish was having some fun
it lunched on an optician
The day got post-meridian
then the sun crawled back to its den
The closest I got to a prayer
God was nowhere near.
Solitaire
2
© 2000
Nina Wilhelmina
1
I thought it was something privy
Being alone when mist came down on me
Thick masquerade it was, for anybody
But not enough to conceal the envy
Want to be the fog itself, never me
Want to simply gone without a trace
At a definite time like it was the case.
2
Eyewash you can have as much as there was
Not that I'm generous, I'm only the richest
I can always make one my own, like homegrown grass
I lit my own cig too, always -- so, thanks
This thing's going to kill me, or anything else would
-- but it's my own, never a substitute.
3
He never listened. Never gotten anything like an ear
Crying for death so high and all I got was a fever
No tear, was that his problem? Such an attitude he had!
I knew he was deaf when I realized
I didn't even need that sedating stuff --
I could rot and got eaten alive, see if I noticed.
Blood came out like a dyke just gotten a big crack
-- numb, I watched like it's not me, it couldn't be --
it was a fictional bitch on TV.
And all through that, where was he?
Where was death that I asked for, so hard?
He wouldn't give it to me. H
e just wanted me withering away with every new day
-- a creative punishment, really
but I expected a better treatment
-- after all they say he's God and has something called mercy.
4
Emptiness is some baggage I don't want to lose
I would even buy it a ticket on a bus.
A relief and a painful world upon my shoulders
At once it means nothing and all that matters.
5
Why insects are so noisy outside?
I am with me and all should be gone to bed ages ago.
I hear cats tiptoeing around the roof
My own heartbeat, my own damn pulse
Nightmares that lurk and menaces from the past
A wish for an end, and
that makes me feel at home at last.
6
I rode the dirt. For whom that was?
You? Someone else? An absurd rain flooded my bed
Leaks on the roof, like me, I bled.
7
Never before this hope
Never again too. I'm getting too old for a fool
If only I could stop unlearning
I might even like me a bit.
8
The snow fell somewhere else, half the globe away
But who got the frostbite? I did, and here
the soil was boiling. Such an ironic twist they say. What a stupid thing.
That was a cruel joke and with myself at nights I did laugh
-- There is no such a thing as a heart attack
just when it was so much in demand like that.
9
Another fudge God seems to cook now for me only
He loves me that much, really.
After such a roving plunderer
it looks like he gets me someone who could be a pirate.
When will you wake up, I ask myself each time
-- Nothing good will ever come
Nothing ever could, wishes came undone
hopes pulled in none.
Leftovers
© 1990
Nina Wilhelmina
I will put you into this doggie-bag --
the leftover of my past
I will feed you to the crows somewhere else
anywhere but in my heart.
Sol
© 2002 Nina
Wilhelmina
I'm in
quarantine. Like pyemia swimming in
my blood, poisoning, love
-- or something to it larger by thousands of years,
of you slowly sinks
of me what remains. Your words
are leatherette, nowhere
I found it genuine. And
it is not just me. It is
what you said and locked out,
what you did and neglected --
What do we share, Stranger?
You always are the sun
on my pillow, but it also means
when it rains it rains
alone,
on me while
you don't even get a facsimile.
What do you know of glacier in the corridor
of my so-called heart --
of insensate pain mucilaging on my so to speak interior,
the corolla if I were a flower
-- house, furniture.
Calorific ray
decantered back when I needed it
the most.
How do you think I am to know you care
-- paint it myself on empty air?
I couldn't possibly hear
what is never said there.
Sol
Who are you? Why
no comment?
Now that you shine I am
putrescent.
Like
Moon of Java
© 1995
Nina Wilhelmina
Like moon of Java is red and doesn't shine so bright
as the air stays still, like a lake, up there
something like sadness, or a thing with no name yet
gets a grip upon my heart,
like a swan's song replayed backwards.
The
following is an ancient writing (1999), an attempt to give words to
Rhonda Reed's musical composition based on the rainforestwind
name.
THE
RAIN
Raindrops
like in-laws' brawl. Standing there an envelope with no address on.
I am at the bottom of the ditch. I am trekking the trail of dirt. I
am fried at the core of hell. I have been a roach, a bug, a shameless
dog. Begging crawling begging crawling sinking. Yet I dared to dream
once. Yet I dare to go too far once. Once is a was. I is an am. The
rain falls down noisily down dragging me down burying me down mocking
me I am a clown. I dream of me. I dream of bleeding hearts becoming
I and me and mine. This piece is no good. It is a scar of mine being
xoomed. Dreams do travel, you know. Within oxygen. I wonder if we dream
for free. Oxygen is not for free. We inhale an ounce and exhale an ounce.
For each that we take to live we die as much.
THE
FOREST
The forest bathes in orange sunshine. I see you there. Golden angel,
sing me nonsense. Talking to you, to be talked to, how many miles, I
wonder, our voices travel? All the time I consult the sky, to see how
much of the night's eaten by our words, drowned. Now the cowshed we're
passing then the cornfields, stray cats, homes so bare we see the souls
within envelopes of bricks, as hard to break as our voices, into a deafening
silence. I try not to notice this universe they call peace, I try to
fix instead my eyes on your flowing hair, leaves of yesteryear's falling
when you try not to see the twigs broken in me. I don't mean to spit
out, you don't mean to blow up, words flow their way, ss fireflies along
the wind's path. All I want is to kill my thoughts, to be quietly me,
to hope against hope that you hear me best when my words are at rest.
But I talk of fairies instead, of ancient ghosts tiptoeing the roof,
and you say you have a tale or two, about a ghost you once knew, by
the river, here lost souls snake along, a pale shadow you once recognized
as your very own self. And our words strangle each other, and our voices
are at fight, I hate to swallow yours, you resent to catch mine. We
want us to stop. We know dawn is near. In dreams in reveries in sleepwalks,
still we try hard not to face the simple thing, our feelings. We talk
of ghosts because in the dark we can hide our souls deep inside the
night. We talk because ghosts glow in the dark when our souls cry for
light. We talk because ghosts shine in the dark while we cannot make
things right. Still, as my head rests, death becomes my blanket, the
forest bathes in orange sunshine.
THE
WIND
The
wind rushes in, saying goodbye in chimes. The cats' ears catch them,
scratch by scratch. I commit arson. My guts on fire. Thoughts are molotovs.
When I die, honey, will you mourn just a bit? The word scares you shits.
Funny, where is the cradle I just left? Sing me sadness, sing me me.
Let me fall apart, let the wind take my ashes to decorate you for free.
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First
Rain
