By: Hans Lucht
GONE
This forest is haunted by you
your long white body on the bed
the muddy fields’ brown
patches in the plane’s oval window
like a patchwork quilt the giants
threw away as they walked on by
A movie reel suddenly starts running
with a sound like a rattle, rich
yellow light flows from
the one bedroom, coffee’s on the pot
a raw draft flows like a liquid
along the panels, report from the grey
world, it begins again with every
single page you turn in the
comic book, every Depeche Mode song
every stinging line of speed
Every stupid horror movie you watch
with your boyfriend in the theater
Isn’t it strange how you forget
people until you suddenly see them
in the subway? That when the pain
subsides pleasure takes its place? My keys
are gone, your name is gone
but not your quick steps on the stairs
CHATEAU NEUF (FIELDNOTES, NIGER 2016)
I never answer when they knock
on the door after midnight
I like the mornings best, just sitting
at the roadside, drinking coffee
going over today’s agenda with Sammy
listening to snippets of interviews
trying hard to forget the little bloody
face through their legs, the boy
that lay dead in the street outside our hotel
We walked by silently, ashamed
people stood over him smoking and talking
The death of a child is an element that
emits so much radiation everything else dies
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
We’re doing well, but happiness is bored so easily
it says what happens now? The little fights you lose anyway
the dumbbells’ clank, clank, clank, gray clouds gather
over Vesterport as if they too admire great physical strength
the deeper meaning of life walks by with begging eyes
sale on protein drinks with blueberry flavor, a cold bucket of water
in the face, the almost unimaginable irony of the treadmill
the days’ whispers, the days’ tenderness, the days’ je ne nais sais quoi
dreamed I was raking in gold nuggets with both arms
say what you want but greed is so pure and artificial intelligence
is still better than no intelligence, I know two things for sure
the owl’s eyes is the most beautiful thing in the world
and the heart’s equation never adds up, we just owe more and more
Hans Lucht is a writer and anthropologist working in Danish and English. His ethnography, Darkness before Daybreak was awarded the 2012 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. Lucht has received writing grants from the Danish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Foundation. Lucht is also a writer for the computer game franchise Hitman. The poems belong to a larger work titled SHINING TRAIN. Recent poems have appeared in The Scores, Interim, and Cathexis among others.