ENGLISH
Listen to the painters (2003)
The quiet beach (2014)
A free body (2014)
The bus is late (2015)
Osorio 1 (2015)
Tour dogs (2016)
Up to eleven (2019)
This is the day (2019)
Medicine (2020)

NEDERLANDS
Gelukkig (2010)
Bericht uit Beijing (2011)
Denk ik aan Johnny van Doorn (2013)
Jouw zomer daar (2021)

De dagen hier zijn niets
de ketting van m’n fiets
een teentje waar een voet op stond
een beetje in de zon gezond
naar de blauwe lucht gekeken
die schapewolk geen boek gebleken
duf drankje op een dakterras
een boodschap in een plastic tas

De krant?
de tour?
de rest?
geen moer

Het glas nu leeg
het hoofd nog dol
en ook nog een of ander
hart op hol

Die nacht als in een droom vergleden
en dan? weer zien? misschien? een ander heden?
ondertussen wordt er heel geleidelijk geleden…
ik ben hier en jij verleden

tijd

is relatief

En toch,
het opent perspectief
ikke dinges
vinje lief

Jouw zomer daar
en de mijne hier,
maar lang niet slecht
zo’n allereerste kier

6-2-9
the cat drank wine
but will that be enough
before making love
to a porcupine

5–2-8
the dog ate cake
or is he lead by the nose
shouldn’t get too close
with a rattle-snake

4-2-7
here’s hog heaven
I’m heading for the bog
gonna kiss a frog
on cloud nine

ten

eleven

> back to Some Lyrics

Almost everything I have
used to make me feel ashamed:
my job, my flat, my friends,
and my name
the bicycle I got from my brother
the presents I got from my mother

But now that my father is hanging on,
hanging on five tubes,
and now that his hoarse mouth
speaks of adieu,
my shame squats in a corner
now my shame squats in a corner

He died the way he drove his car
calm, controlled, correct might be the word
looking bravely at the road
jumping the lights he considered to be illogically absurd

Absurd, how everything I still wanted to say
has slipped away under the wheels of time :
the presence of my mother
the bicycle of my brother
my father in his suit . . .

And so I say adieu
with everything I have
and I’m looking at the road
calm and controlled?
correct

(Based on a poem by Menno Wigman)

> back to Some Lyrics

I speak of thoughts that cross my mind:
the world is chaos, unconfined;
she moves around, and round she goes
like flames around a firehose

I never thought that I could sleep
among firm flocks of sheepish sheep
and yet I’d join the sick poor souls
to wake and watch the world go whole

Medicine . . .

What do I want in these sickbays
primed with monitored medals?
How does it feel to be losing your health?
If I put new spurs on my boots,
expose my profile
reeking of facebooks, twitters, and death,
pampered with sneers and smears of bullshit lies
coughed up in criminal companies,
arsonic arcades,
ballistics’ statistics,
bureaucratic cesspits,
war rooms?

Medicine . . .

I would rather throw my body from the chair,
tied to a table in a fastfood diner;
rather go shit my pants
in front of family on prime-time tv
rather laud rotten vegetables
with hobnob fries and make-believe pie
rather,
stuffed like a cooked goose in France
dressed as a sitting duck in Disneyland
hung on a nail in Christie’s
sliced extra at the Worldwide Bake-Off
taught how to ski jump with Eddie the Eagle,
resurrected in 1988 somewhere on Calgary Hill,
than come down roaring
in a blaze of violence,
filth,
and villainy

Medicine . . .

> back to Some Lyrics