← v21n2, Fall 2022
Poetry · Volume 21, Number 2

Human

1

I heard a human

Praying with a word.

I saw how

A human killed a human

With a word.

2

Human is a hunt.

Human is a voice.

Human is a mensch.

Human is two.

Human is a human who doesn’t know how to know

What it all could be,

What could all become

Human.

Chasms, monsters, trials.

The place where their trace is lost

Lends them a name.

4

Human č.

That’s what they called them.

Better that than human number.

Human č is satisfied č.

5

Human rarely flies,

Human more often hunts

Flying people.

If a human isn’t free,

If they don’t know what the sky is,

They are easily trapped

In the promise of freedom.

6

Human is a shadow

Thrown by a letter.

The letter goes everywhere.

The shadow doesn’t leave

The cave.

7

A human fearfully protects

Their mysterious self self SELF.

A happy, too happy human.

The self is a closed stone eye.

If a human’s eye opened,

They would fall through it among the stars.

8

A human is a builder of illusions.

In no time in

No name no they are not

A human is at home nowhere,

Least of all in the human.

9

Characteristics of the human’s gods:

Ridicule

Self-destruction

Forgiveness

Inadequacy of their miracles.

10

Milk turns to ash.

History to oblivion.

A deer eats a weed

In the garden

Of the dead mother

Of another human.

11

Death is odd,

The days even,

When a human opens their arms

Ready to embrace one world.

12

A human is not.

A human is.

How much clever nonsense

To make a human think not think

They did not live

Onward onward.

13

There is a crack

In everything (even in this quotation).

The human hopes

To slip through it one day,

Leave the human.

14

The human kisses the sky,

Blesses the water,

Goes through the air through the earth.

There is no end no peace no human

For the human.

15

Can a human be r?

A human cannot be a wound.

But r?

A black crow carries r

Into the black sky.

What about the human?

Revolution. Rut. Republic.

16

The world begins at w.

Something is whelped, it writhes,

Becomes wrathful and wily.

The human loves something.

The human cannot manage without something.

17

I bear the unspeakable.

I’m human.

But why?

But for what?

18

My comrade on the cross,

How I would love

To free you of thoughts of limbs,

Turn you into a pool,

Into the milky carousel

Of the perfect human.

19

War alphabets formed them.

They are a lover of perfect systems,

The opportunist human of ours.

How vapid

How safe

How slight

How sad it is

To love the unattainable

On special cards,

In mocking words.

20

At last, I saw you,

Despite everything,

Hugged and kissed you, my human,

Even accepted you (not without resistance).

After all, I am no more than a human myself.

If I didn’t accept you, I’d still be human,

So now I’m a human who isn’t human,

Because only when abandoned am I truly human.

21

Between masculine and feminine

There is no difference, only rest and pain,

Inhale, exhale,

Sigh again etc. etc. etc.

Until finally,

In time excluded from time,

A blind hope is born,

Human.

22

The only thing

That a human

Nowhere never

No no, they don’t understand,

The only thing is not

The end the beginning

The beginning the end of the human.