Five are company…

I just wrote a few more poems or lyrics, if someone would write a melody on it – it would have to be a very sad one though…

Visual Poetry - The Blue Magician (Text und Grafik: Martin Dühning)
Visual Poetry – The Blue Magician (Text und Grafik: Martin Dühning)

The Blue Magician

One day I saw a girl with long blue hair,
A shade of blue, I had only read about in storybooks,
She was a magician of music with many powers
And she ruled beyond the rainbow,
In a country of high mountains and hidden energy.

Oh, I wondered, if it did exist, if magic…
All these simple-minded philistines have cheated me
For nothing all my long life,
The truth is that there is a depth in nature
That cannot be gagged with Philistineism,
And that I never met her in all these years,
Maybe it was just my own little misfortune,.

I always mixed with the wrong people,
And in another life, I could have seen
The fairies themselves dancing, from close up,
Not just in distant dreams, in my frail, old age.

* * *

The World

The world is too big and yet too small, stale,
Too far in the universe are the stars, rarely scattered
And too weak seems our longing, to grasp them.
We cannot pick the fruit of love,
Because it languishes only in our dreams,
We cannot walk the paths of life,
Because they are littered with daily stones.

Only our greatest hopes and fears
And the little lament that reaches the heavens
Make us audible,
So that from time to time a blackbird
Flutters by to visit our lonelyness.
And it twitters of little peace, a far kingdom
And the mighty angels beyond the cloud arch,
And we sigh deeply and watch it for a long time
After it fluttered away again.

The world is too big and too small
And we, down under, are too helpless
To do anything about it.

* * *

Intrinsic Life - Visual Poem (Grafik und Text: Martin Dühning)
Intrinsic Life – Visual Poem (Grafik und Text: Martin Dühning)

Intrinsic Life

We live improperly, inside ourselves, we live
As being just compels us, struggles all within
And yes, it doesn’t bring fulfillment,
Sometimes,
But it never lasts and it is always imperfect
Just when we bask in all the happiness
That doesn’t fit,
Grieve, piously, it sometimes even spares us
Fate and then enforces other destinies in
Silent moments – when we fall asleep.

* * *

Lauchringen, 2020

Lauchringen is a cruel little place,
Breeding blocks out of the gravel soil,
With fool’s clubs and shopping malls,
Soulless mates, lacking sense for art,
Blue-skinned smurfs of shallow mind,
Having a purse instead of a human heart,
The one which they sold to mighty Dutch-Mike,
Cause they never were really Sunday childs.

So they say, they are living a fairy tale:
Especially when they cut down fruit trees,
You know: Red apples could be poisoned!
And there’s nobody left to tend orchards.
It has to be – cause story requires it.
Dutch-Mike became their beloved savior,
Isn’t a small lumberjack in Black Forest anymore,
Nowadays he’s investing, prosperous business man,
Spending SUVs, concrete blocks and golden straw.
They have plenty of it – and his business sense.
Business is soul’s true treasure here, even on Sunday,
They have silenced their priests often enough…

Once upon a time things were different:
I remember my family, friends once lived here,
In evanescent memories, before suburb came.
Life was really no fairy tale for us.
But it’s been a while, since all died or moved,
And brazen people replaced them in my neighborhood,
Hans in Luck makes his money in Switzerland,
So you don’t need to impress the blue fairy,
You just have to be nervy enough today,
If you’re a blockhead, just commit!
Anyway, Schatzhauser’s firwood has withered,
And the good Lord went away.

Lauchringen is a cruel little place,
Breeding blocks out of the gravel soil,
It’s not really a fairy dale,
Sure, I never was a Sunday child and
Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

* * *

Thoughts in May 2020

I wish for a homestead with roaring pines instead of traffic,
Where I can watch the squirrels playing on the branches of dear old trees
Outside my window – instead of metal avalanches and concrete deserts,
And where sweet swallows fly silently into a deep blue sky,
Instead of noisy airplanes day and night, taking away my peace and quiet,

I wish for a world where profane profiteers are not in charge,
But deep souls of nature, artists and the friends of mankind.

Sometimes I think God is sending us a message, a hint,
A serious pointer, maybe even a menace,
But they do not understand him, they just do not want to;
Like lemmings, they keep pushing towards the cliff
Until it’s too late,
Until it’s really too late,
For all of us.

* * *

Über Martin Dühning 1493 Artikel
Martin Dühning, geb. 1975, studierte Germanistik, kath. Theologie und Geschichte in Freiburg im Breisgau sowie Informatik in Konstanz, arbeitet als Lehrkraft am Hochrhein-Gymnasium in Waldshut und ist Gründer, Herausgeber und Chefredakteur von Anastratin.de.