The Smile of the Unvanquished

my mind is a blank - a dry riverbed with its staple of gangrened phantom limbs. growth has gone obsolete in the proximity of that frigid and ungainly behemoth. deep in the smithy of my impatient and bristling heart, my still-born sword will arouse again from the flames of life, but not today ... today belongs to oblivion.

Mijn geest is blank, blank van ijs gedumpt in een droge rivierbedding. Niets gedijt onder die logge en frigide kolos. Van ergens diep in de smidse van dat ongeduldig en ziedend hart zal uit het vuur ooit weer een zwaard oprijzen, maar niet vandaag... vandaag behoort aan de vergetelheid.

beleaguered by a sumptuous exposition of goods and chattels, liable to abrasion of time and climate, drowsy in puny self-indulgence outstaring the stately vacuum of pomp; a stalemated afflicted "life" ripples to squander. and people you know best, knowing by heart the chapters of your open book, they will indeed never turn their back on you and suffer you gladly, an itchy scab. though, your expedience is franchised to a swap transaction, lite-version. a patient sighs relieved that he may still get hold of a consultation despite their hurdled succinct agendas. finally, no longer insanely dashing onto the centerpiece of tempests galore, neither carrying stubborn resistance nor bowing artful as taunt, bane reaches its conclusion. swindled into joining the calamities promoted to accomplice of this beast depraved and cruel; resigned like a leaf torn loose from the canopy, windswept readily to nowhere.

a sad soul listens to the rain pattering against the door. the litany of the shrieking wind carries a melody of hate and knock out any trail of thoughts, while wood works and walls protest with catatonic pertinence that match the mellow stillness of this loner whose eyes ache under the strain of warm hopes and brilliant mental exploits, sailing to perdition. open sea: the body of water cavorts with the seething lust of the gale, they turn and twist in vertiginous pitches, their heaving collapses in droning rumbles, excreting white horses running afoul towards the pristine shore of a land hunched in a frozen woe. in all its exaltation, the sea emerges as the deeply furrowed face of an elderly man, in pain and struggling to breath, smothered as he is in the foggy gray curtain of an unkempt beard, while hours or seconds pass by in an eerie limbo that is deafening in its all-encompassing silence. the individual opens the door, his cries bring no tears, his shouts...

Morning: the sky looks docile and gently blue, almost of a pastel timidity...some mauvish-greyish clouds like celestial pendants to WWI wrecks littered around the temperamental waters of Orkney lay scattered as in a pose of self-introspection... silence governs the air, bushes wave erratically, like a girl possessed by a jolt of mad cheerfulness.... the sun pours a liquid gold veneer over the scenery, covering the world into an autumnal brass.... Ach, it moves on... From the window, draped over a bleak wall cemented unto the distancing horizon, a garguantuan beast of dour and ashen spur, scurried past, dissolving to a faint reminiscence of its former might. AND NOW... a blinding flash of sun light sweeps over the land; a fusion reaction of summerly jollity and horror reigning the isle for a instance till the clouds hold their severe dark gathering once again, and it chucks doon... violent, irresistible lashing rain, swept by the eternal, never abating wailing wind from arctic inspi...

they walk in the morning with hunched bodies in thin supermarket cloths, barely in control of their shivers; their heads full of waning delirium. the frosty air makes them edgy, their movements are floundering, like a broken record idly wheeling past the production of any sound. their blunt eyes and sordid smiles hint on dead souls stamped with the rictus of idiocy. the glory of dawn ignites and shames the waste of consumerist barracks and temples of intoxication, while weeds between cracks, spilled leaves victim to seasonal tides and guardians of lanes revel in melancholic dignity before the bustling writhing traffic sinks them back in the clouded background. now they loiter in rank smut corners of subways, pentices and against lamp posts, at home in wafts of acrid urine, bakkeries of vomit and stacks of variegated dumping, their dialogues unfold in a series of grunts, monosyllables and shouts, interspersed with hoarse laughter. they glean the world with muted...

We all live for the future, but sometimes death puts a stop to it. Perhaps and sometimes it is no different to someone walking along a flower bed but one single flower among that shiny crowd of he deems extraordinarily fascinating and beautiful. He cuts it off the stem and takes it home. There, he fills a glass, puts this flower in it, flower and glass goes on the kitchen window. There is more than a good chance that flower survives her natural life span. Or he puts it to dry between the pages of an old nature book, which is handed over from generation to generation ... Maybe there's an analogy for man and woman, this homecoming in spite of being stripped from its roots of life, and we call that special reserved place beyond the horizon, Eternity . Thus, whom to mourn if true, the living or the deceased?