http://kurdistan.life.nu
ignorance
i’ve never been to turkey
not even on a package summer holiday
and not in winter either
when are the almond trees in blossom in urfa
is february full of brass on imrali?
as you can see i’ve not the foggiest
i’m not some sort of martyr
i’ve never been arrested by the turkish
police or been stuck in front of the crescent flag
in some sort of blind man’s buff
i’ve never had nine defence lawyers taken
from me prior to a case never been
forced to eat khaki or bubblegum
i’ve never poured petrol over myself
and put a match to it or delayed
the speed of light with cold sodium
perhaps i just ought to belt up
and not get involved in something
i know nothing about
perhaps what i’ve seen on telly with
my own eyes is wrong perhaps it’s all
just a lousy b film with screwed-up subtitles
perhaps i ought to accept that turkey’s a
constitutional state a member of nato like denmark
perhaps all that torture’s just hearsay
perhaps my heartburn and the bad taste
in my mouth is just a hangover plus aspirin
or getting it all wrong or
simply ignorance when all’s said and done?
demonstration
on feb the twenty-second
danes can’t get their pizzas
the cucumbers are mourning the citrus fruits are wearing
masks the artichokes are standing on their heads
the greengrocers have shut up shop
the celery’s silent
feb the twenty-second
the kurds are demonstrating for a homeland
10 questions for bülent ecevit
are anemones naive?
is it naive to want to speak your own language?
is bastinado naive?
is it naive to want to live in your own country?
is electric shock naive?
is freedom naive?
is barbed wire naive?
is fighting against repression naive?
is death naive?
is it naive to want to write poetry in your own language?
ars poetica
i’m really sorry about all this
in the middle of my retirement
in the middle of the snowdrops
but seeing that all the younger poets
are obsessed by ivory and darkness
there’s nothing for it
there’s no way out of
coercion and repression than indicating
what’s between the lines
it’s got something to do with
the straw and the camel the heart and death
and when it comes to it with poetry itself
i’m really sorry right in the middle
of the ‘geister’ trio to disturb my readers again
with this preamble about freedom
apo’s confession
i hereby declare that my ex-wife
murdered olof palme
i also admit that i am
responsible for martin luther king’s death
i furthermore confess that i was behind
the assassination of john f. kennedy
my final confession is that i committed
the double murder on peter bangsvej
internal affair
abdullah öcalan’s picture
is off the front pages
that photo where he’s a white blindfold on
his eyes like a tarot card: two of swords
after another week has passed
his name’s still to be found on page nine
among the articles on pyromaniacs
in early march his after-image
is still etched on the retina
like a negative amongst the snow flurries
finally he only burns like a
turquoise in the heart like a spring
that blossoms in the conscience
abdullah öcalan has quite literally
become an internal affair
expert on turkey - key twelve
should i rent a hotel apartment
in alanya for example with direct access to beach
sunny as a pheasant’s wing?
or should i rather try
a cruise in the marmarra sea
round the emerald of the prison island?
to bolster if nothing else
turkey’s economy
to increase the tourist income?
or should i just make do
with these few words in a poem that will
scarcely affect the rate of freedom stocks?
poets of the world...
why the hell write poems?
i know the answer: the red autumn lakes
and the untameable urges of the heart
but also out of a sense of duty and
necessity for paradoxically enough
to defend freedom
not freedom in itself and par excellence
its abstractions its mute ruby crosses
its tiny spasms of the soul
but to defend freedom from
being exploited and used
socially economically and nationally
so if you write poems about kosova and
i write about kurdistan and poet x
about sarajevo and poet y about tibet
(maybe just a break from all this
hackwriting) then the final result is
all the small words written into a larger poem
the pkk game
if you throw a one they are called partisans
if you throw a two they are called terrorists
if you throw a three they are called guerillas
if you throw a four they are called murderers
if you throw a five they are called freedom-fighters
if you throw a six they are called criminals
in this particular poem i threw a seven
contrat poetique
the contract is for at least
thirty poems about repression
no pussy-footing or appendices
no artificial moonlight
no entrophy or redundancy
just craft pure and simple
fine if written down in a book from
china house without cherries and silk
or on a simple homepage
no make-up and no gloss
like abdullah öcalan’s face
in the media when captured
the öcalan gambit
i wonder what abdullah öcalan
is doing right at this moment
wednesday march the seventeeth
on this irrelevant st. patrick’s day?
does he still eat his soft-boiled egg
read the day’s newspapers
or study batsford’s chess openings
to find a suitable gambit?
does he still receive visits from his defence lawyer
exercise in the prison courtyard under heavens’ highlight
or lie in the intensive ward
is he actually still alive?
http://kurdistan
where is kurdistan?
according to the atlas’ pink shadows
it’s that square which is j4
not mentioned by name
just a word in the index
among other code names
from the kurds themselves i know
however that their homeland’s
yellow topaz is in asia minor
even though it actually exists
it does not even so
or it only exists as
http://kurdistan on the inter
net homepage or in a
collection of poems as http://kurdistan.life.nu
newroz
the kurdish new year comes late
beween car tyres and bonfires in the streets
it’s celebrated by police in
armoured cars
and by soldiers searching
cars at all approach roads
and in the mardin province by deporting
four journalists from reuter’s
the kurdish new year falls like quartz that
splinters against turkey’s southeastern corner
state
straight from the shoulder
i couldn’t care a damn
about kurdish headgear and folklore
i’m not prepared to learn hakkari
or sorrani at a pinch i might
some day read the diwan
chain dance in 3/8 time
you can stuff it as far as i’m concerned
the kurds can dance all night long
with cheesy feet on their bidjar carpets
i’m not a kurd mentally,
emotionally or pediatrically
the kurds can make mincemeat of each other
out of holy inspiration without my intervention
or my poems’ as long as it all takes place
in their own sovereign kurdish state
modus ponens
please excuse me
i can’t manage any more
high-gear poems right now
not even from my own hand
my own ivory tower hand
my own computer hand
i’m forced to make use of
a pattern code to use a topical
idiom as an act of solidarity:
if abdullah öcalan is persecuted
then he will get a death sentence
abdullah öcalan is persecuted
he gets a death sentence
he gets a black fleur de lis
communique
i would just like to emphasise
the fact time and time again that i know
practically nothing about kurdistan and pkk
that i probably know more about http://kurdistan
or @ pkk than about kurdistan
that my knowledge has mainly been gleaned from
homepages websites and lexical searchings
(even though i once actually shook hands with a kurd)
consensus
mdt-tv has just blacked out
in brussels under the twelve stars
why aren’t the kurds transmitting from their
own red-and-yellow station any more?
because the world society (i.e. nato)
is about to bomb serbia
and needs the acceptance and consensus of turkey
collection
(in aid of the kurdish fight for emancipation)
sodalin and halmblod: 10 øre
ø p maller: 8 billion kroner
jesk sangetysløger: 7.50 kroner
bolighuset alvi: 10,000 kroner
inu bank: 25 øre
grondfus: 7,000,000,000,000,000 dollars
kurd show
(all proceeds to kurdistan refugees)
hosts: lane jehonsen and elo stephensen
the following artists have performed free of charge:
thamos hilmeg pillesen and palmark
køm sjigren the camerata doltan choir
machiel cørae sis and kørstin
senna solomansen chros mynh diki and ses fønger
the power of words
and what about words
will they last
or are they just words?
hot potatoes in the mouth
coins under the tongue
something to choke on?
we know it oh so well
in the beginning was the word - and finally
i add off my own bat
the word can be repressed and misused
but it can’t be murdered
tortured or beaten to death
words you could say last
unto eternity resting on their laurels
words are immortal
home run
from turkey to syria
and from syria to russia
from russia to italy to
russia to italy once more
from italy to the greek
embassy of balsa wood
from nairobi’s sunstroke
back to turkey’s security
petit
note what’s written in small letters
behind the frontpage headlines
that’s what really counts
whether the font is times or courier
for example: two thousand kurdish villages consumed
by flames petit under an ad for opel astra
notice that the lettering’s small
as when dealing with life insurance and policies
bad luck
bad luck for öcalan this
good friday that smells of paraffin
the news bureaus that have bombed him
ibehind the letters of serbia
abdullah öcalan has almost been
consigned to history like some four-leafed
clover pressed between two pages
conscience
myself am almost getting a
bad conscience am tempted rather
to write poems about larks and malachite
than the kurds’ fight for freedom
maybe i should press the escape button
erase http://kurdistan from the screen and the mind
and then surf out across the net’s frozen star
espalier to other electronic realms?
choice
in the turkish elections in april
such a such a number of turks voted
the virtue party lost seats
the ultra right made gains
ecevit’s party got 22% of the vote
141 kurdish partisans
chose death on the irak-turkey border
abdullah lionheart
there’s nothing wrong with my heart
it’s red and yellow like kurdistan
not weighted down with a padlock like
richard’s or öcalan’s with drugs
and alchemy that’ll make it stop
before its time and the ransom and the trial
announcement
i hereby declare this summer open
and cut the ribbon for the month of july
on behalf of poetry i proclaim
that the lilacs are burning with magnesium
i declare on behalf of the press
that the case against öcalan has begun
i state this on my own account and that
of internet and my own publishing firm
press photo
the usual tricks
the picture is highly under-exposed
as if taken in hell
the camera angle obliquely upwards
is he on thalidomide you think
a wrong raster that makes
the skin look like an attack of acne
or perhaps apo really looks
like that after three months’ stay
with the turkish authorities?
whitebox
whitebox brightbox lightbox
trial and error box
where truth cannot
be hidden behind the
bulletproof plexiglass
whitebox brightbox lightbox
where turkey shows
its own shame in
the dazzling white light
trial and error box
whitebox brightbox lightbox
trial
ten minus ten and counting
the judge breaks down in tears
a veteran threatens with his artificial leg
four lawyers boycott the lawsuit
ten minus five and counting
the prosecutor appears as the judge
photos and medals are presented as evidence
paper pellets are rolled in the courtroom
ten minus one and counting
we have lift-off
we have a death-sentence
we have an e-mail to allah
klaus høeck
translation: john irons
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