Roy Blokker

I am often asked,
Asked quietly by myself
While the dark trembles
Like the cold expectant thing
...

The Nothing hid her silent thoughts
Behind a pair of cheap sunglasses.
She wandered down the empty halls
Looking for fresh flowers
...

The wait excruciates.
The wait is life
Between those brief seconds
Of pain and joy,
...

The disquieting quiet,
Electronics shut off,
Ambient light in banishment
Under the midnight shy,
...

The graveyard shudders.
Ungrateful dead prepare for
A long dreamless night.
Waiting for their living guests
...

There are those who did not fall,
Who now stand, hunched, weighed down,
Whose stoic resistance
To the embrace of Death
...

(for Carl Sagan)

There’s a dragon in my garage.
You can’t see him, he is invisible.
...

Put away your cupcakes,
Lock up the chocolate chips:
The hostess is in mourning –
Ahoy sank with his ship.
...

He did not believe in God, not here,
At least not God as we think of Him:
Sink or swim or dusty clod in motion
Or blood soaked screaming in the barren wood.
...

We are complacent.
We see others in turmoil
While counting coins.
We see great difficulties
...

Old man, I’m so sorry,
Your four furry feet
No longer tread the earth,
Your maddening purr
...

The murderers among us
Are simple folk
Driven by the bottom line.
Their motto is
...

Courtly men had time
To explore the world of learning
While peasants worked the land
And soldiers patrolled the borders
...

When I was a kid Mr. Black
Was the perfect name
For a bad guy.
The Fifties saw things in clear
...

I see closets of sketchbooks.
I think about my uncle's art,
Hung on walls, lain in drawers
At his flat in the Overvecht,
...

Namesake, I need to forgive.
You took yourself away from me
With no recourse
In unseen space and time
...

In the halls of the Frankish King
Transplanted to a bombed out hill
Overlooking the Waal, I stood
At the kitchen hearth, a bridge too far
...

I.
When I was a kid
Mister Black
Was the perfect name
...

The muse screams, silent, in me,
Behind locked doors,
Searching, climbing up and down,
A prisoner in a tower.
...

Opaque, hovering by
The window sill.
Light enters, vision stops.
A tickle forms,
...