Without, you're a prey to yourself Poem by Henk van der Waal

without, you're a prey to yourself, a fist that clenches round a bunch of drawing pins, a disruption of rhythm, a botcher of now, a ladder without end, a religion without counterpoint

without, you couldn't care less, bitterness lodges in your eye, pity
gives way to revenge, passing omits to give a caress to the free thing that stands out in you

without, simplicity rusts, doubt leaves fat finger-marks on the icon
roaming your head, love fails to give you a house, your body's no more than a barrel of rubbish,

heaps of hunger framed in muscle

whose only advantage is that it makes one await light to found
the utmost inwardness in you, heat to stir you deep inside, earth to bury what's most precious in you -

which she can do by pulling you from the roar of the possible
which she can do by picking up fallen stones for you from heaven
which she can do by sunbathing nude on sand where death washes up

which she can do if she can be


From the series ‘She's Like That'