kamiel79

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Message in a Bottle

I want to say love before death words but they only dig at night they dig in the clouds a Ceylon pigeon shat on the Spanish stairs (but they vacuum the moon) I mean the message never arrives

Reading: A Found Photo by Jacques Réda

Jacques Réda (b.1929) is a French poet and lover of jazz. His poetry often conveys small and innocent scenes. I read a poem about an old photo, wonderfully translated by Jenny Feldman: A Found Photo One day the three of us out in this boat. The day black and white but clearly summer For in ...

Meditation on Thinking

We sit and breathe calmly. We observe that we are thinking and in a first, gentle, move, admit that it is a concept that will always evade our definition. We just think. The ability to distinguish it from not-thinking requires a precise definition, hence in other words we are always-already caught in the realm of ...

Reading: In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish

Today I read a poem by Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008) in a translation by Fady Joudah. Darwish was born in Galilee, in a village that doesn't exist anymore. He lived in exile in Beirut and Paris and published a lot of books. I know that he was considered a 'resistance poet' and served on an executive committee of the ...

Evolutionary consolation

[Mommy puts son to bed] Mommy, I'm so afraid. - Why, darling? Do you think I have bad genes? - Why do you think that? Girls don't want to talk with me. - But you got your genes from mommy and daddy. So? - Mommy and daddy talked to each other. Did you? - Yes. ...

Polshoogte

Over ruim een week begeef ik me met mijn dochter van vijf op glad ijs. Ze is hier in Zuid-Korea beschermd opgegroeid in een van de meest homogene samenlevingen ter wereld. Volgens de nu door het stof kruipende minister Stef Blok is hier bijna geen criminaliteit en gaan de mensen alom begripvol met elkaar om. ...

Reading: Stone by Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha (b. 1974) is a Ugandan poet who fled the terror regime of Idi Amin. He studied biochemistry and worked in a bank, but poetry was his calling. His most important publication is Kingdom of Gravity, "a searing, mysterious contemplation of exile, fatherhood and violence". I read a poem about corruption. Stone The best thing I ...

I want my words to live in a redeeming, magnificent song to worship the hole in freedom