The Lovesick Taxidermist

I was like a taxidermist, trying to give the appearance of life to something that was dead inside me. The truth is, of course, I was only scared. But working so hard to describe the unfathomable made me stronger, too.


22:46 hrs – Auckland, New Zealand

Whenever a new sculpture appears like a big friendly giant, the children are the first to claim it by climbing all over it, unsupervised except by the huge eucalyptus trees by the side of the road, who curiously peek over the fence.


21:46 hrs ― Hobart, Tasmania

He looks up in the sky and sees a single bird circle. So much space, and yet he imagines it not lonely up there. He wonders if the birds have ghosts, too, and where they go when they’re dead. He wouldn’t mind joining them when the time has come.


Obituary for a Poet Heretic

When he died, people wore dark colours and said nice things about him. They played sad music, which he wouldn’t have even liked, and they had his deathmask taken which made him look limp and not like him at all.


20:46 hrs – Chongqing, Zhong Guo

Everybody’s got a voice and even if you kill them you can’t take that voice away. Even the rain flowing down the gutter and on the street and from there into the Yangtze and into the sea, knows that. Our voice goes with the rain to the ocean and touches everyone else.


19:46 hrs – Thimphu, Bhutan

The monk bowed to the abbot. The abbot bowed to him. What he wanted, it wasn’t time now to turn to the monastery. His work was on the street, in the villages, with the people, not with Buddha. The monk said he didn’t want to stay.


18:46 hrs – Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

She took it lightly, unlike the guy from Key West the other day with the deep baritone (hard to understand) who hung up on me after a coughing fit that made me imagine he looked like a crazed, bell-shaped Hemingway.


17:46 hrs – Port-aux-Francais, Kerguelen Islands

Visiting cemetary. Next to my gramps lies a German guy with the name Bernhard Herrmann, which sounds like a dog barking. „The most southerly German grave“, it says, and the year is 1940.


The Serious Writer and His Penis

“Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it”, said D., a red head with an imposing chest eyeing his cock. The serious writer, his past fogged by reckless existentialist thought, recognised the Nietzschean rudiment and smiled knowingly.


16:46 hrs – Baku, Azerbaijan

Noticed a young man, checking himself in the window of a shoe shop. His black oily hair. Prince Caspian perhaps. Looked for his sword. Saw his eyes were pruned prisms. Rightful ruler.