Johannes S. H. Bjerg


Six Palimpsests

   1.

by the loud screams ocean coa gu lates

                          all the red in my hand

                                     turn and do the right
                                                                         oyster born

             and we who sleep are doors

                                               nothing of this in hardening presence 

                                  the frost giants here in the crack

      her ey

                                        ainst the wall out his che
   
                                                         't know who fell into fi


   2.

                       not that I or the cow

               in the other hemo             graphically sane and imp

clay and one heart less

                              the centre the fuga the hand

                                            liver and then

                                                                  taking in bricks and the painte

             pplause like steps on in          sects

                                               perhaps not doom but a puppet

                          2/3 spoon the rest

                                                   lemme ave it


   3.

it has arms let's make handles

          terms coming to                      the hut near the woven kidney

                           again never to                    flip it lay it down the puppeteer listens

                    to make the connection sturgeons and gravity

                                            let it roll        's the table with your eye

on Christmas day the war films the violins

                                   and aside              note his darkness is female


   4.

                            so your mouth holds space

there's an e    cho of black milk inside the dogs
 
                                              übringens from light to light he walks 

         the wind closed the window just enough for it to howl thus making the house its instrument

gloom aber what are you without a face                                                        st

                                                  arless enough to make it past

                                                                              horse horizons I wrote intending a city dies this
                                                                         night
 
                             his knife and then under 

                                                                      leaving the desert to


   5.

                     trans                  late your fa           to a road gone

i c u then cut out eyes from news     pap       ers                from the socket no wo    man

                                               around Christmas
                                               clever people see
                                               m hell-bent on no
                                               t seeing Christ in
                                               anything; not eve
                                               n in a cup or a ci
                                               gar's ashes

             wi       th       out       ceasing a prairie :: who are we when we don't weep

                                              your face a road
                                     gone from the newspapers
                                              unwept
                                                  like frogs

                                                                       nothing of this will become your hand


   6.

connected with cosmos should be enough

                             your cup
                             fill it put
                             it down
                             and forget it 

                             it doesn't know
                             you

                                             it's growth and Faraday's horse ate

            from fog to fog          a shrinking language for his smoke-thin fingers

open your word to a stranger            a vaguely inhabited plain almost named

                                    and it stops in the middle of

in which circle of ennui do the damned go aimlessly about retelling every little thought they have to the deaf?

Johannes S. H. Bjerg: a Dane who writes in Danish and English simultaneously and mainly haiku and haiku related forms. 1 of 3 of the editors of Bones - “Journal for contemporary haiku” , and sole editor of “the other bunny - for the other kind of haibun” and “One Link Chain” - a blog for solo linked verse and haiku sequences. Has published several books: http://january-stones.blogspot.dk/p/books.html
 
 
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