Everywhere I Go

 

everywhere I go is beauty
trees illuminated
street lights glowing in the darkness
I want to run up to strangers and kiss them
but there is too much noise
men kill each other
I’m sick and tired of seeing sad faces
stop that bastard machine
everyone is God and Holy
a spike is ripping at my throat
I smell a fragrance of a rose
everywhere I go is beauty

Oeral wêr’t ik hinne gean kom

 

oeral wêr’t ik kom is skientme
beammen ljochtsje op
strjitlampen gloeie yn it tsjuster
ik wol nei frjemdelingen ta drave en se tútsje
mar der is tefolle leven
mannen fermoardzje inoar
ik ha skjin myn nocht fan treurige gesichten
stop dy rottige masine
elkenien is God en Hillich
in skerpe neil klaut nei myn strôt
ik rûk in rook fan in roas
oeral wêr’t ik kom is skientme

Only Rare Things Create

 

When love creates
When tenderness creates
It is the greatest of all sounds
When man and woman create a baby is born
When fear creates anger is born
When loneliness creates despair is born
When business creates hype is born
When newspapers create politicians are born
When art galleries create money is born
Cemeteries don’t create
Museums don’t create
Hospitals don’t create
Prisons don’t create
Power don’t create
Only love creates
and it is the rarest thing of all

Allinich seldsume dingen skeppe

 

Wannear’t leafde skept
Wannear’t tearens skept
Is it it bêste lûd fan allegearre
Wannear’t man en frou skeppe in poppe wurdt berne
Wannear’t eangst skept lulkens wurdt berne
Wannear’t iensumens skept wanhoop wurdt berne
Wannear’t hannel skept hjitte hei wurdt berne
Wannear’t kranten skeppe politisy wurde berne
Wannear’t keunst galeryen skeppe jild wurdt berne
Tsjerkhôven skeppe net
Musea skeppe net
Sikehûzen skeppe net
Finzenissen skeppe net
Macht skept net
Allinnich leafde skept
En is it selsumst ding fan allegearre

L.J. DeVries about L.J. DeVries. Spawned in 1963 i tell them i am a ‘ flowerchild’. Honestly that is a two-bit lie. No hippie times for me at grammar-school and college. No, madam, sir. First it was punkrock, then heavy metal and grindcore and finally the ugliness of blackmetal. All with such intensity that music is one of my sources Tony Moffeit points out as necessary to become an outlaw poet. Another key source is the discovery at an early age that the answer about what the hell is going on can only be found in books. My timeline in that perspective travels from the Bible at sunday- and grammar-school via Steinbeck, Hemmingway and Amis at college and Dante, Milton, Hamsun, Saramago and Fante in adulthood (to name but a few). Mid-twenties the devil himself urged me to become a writer. Believing I could manage the short-story Lucifer led me into purgatory. I failed. Miserably. Had to. To learn. I quit writing.

Then came Allen Ginsberg. Around the 25th anniversary of Woodstock I zapped into a documentary about him. And with him came Kerouac. And other Beats. And more poetry, ancient and modern. And the devil again too. This time rather to my avail. This time not sending me into the flames of hell to devour my words. More a satisfactory companion. And I didn’t have to sell my soul. I had to change religion. So i read the Outlaw Bible. I got to know of Micheline, Patchen, Moffeit, Sandburg, Bodenheim and Whitman (amongst many many others).

My writing is not academic, is not learned, is not conform. It is about what is going on and going down. It’s about the next layer. To frighten them. Sometimes it’s full of shit. But who cares. As long as it feeds my obsession and the wildchild in me I am happy as a ‘one eyed cat in the fish store’.

Right, let’s conclude this intro. With a snippet about language.

My mother tongue is the ‘frisian’ language. A minority tongue from the North of the Netherlands. When I write I do so in the ‘frisian’ language. Poems are (sometimes) published via a frisian literary magazine; www.ensafh.nl. Then I translate the poems into english at the same time deconstructing and reconstructing the whole damn thing. And the horror the horror, it shoots off into a new dimension i.e. new universe as Moffeit calls it. The other way around I am challenged to translate Micheline and Whitman into my mother tongue. So long you bums ! Signed; L.J. DeVries. Burgum/Friesland/Netherlands.