BIO
Dean Pasch is a visual artist, poet and filmmaker – born in England, he has lived in Germany since 1980. His poetry has featured in Mannequin Envy, Niederngasse, Tiferet, Quill & Parchment, and in books – ‘Chopin with Cherries’ (Moonrise Press) and ‘Woman in Metaphor’ (Natural Healing House Press). He has also presented his poetry and visual work in a Los Angeles tour, including readings at Moonday (VillageBooks) and Beyond Baroque. His pictures have been used for cd covers (Tamir Hendelman’s ‘Destinations’ / Resonance Records) and book covers (‘Savage Sunsets’ – poems by Adrian C. Louis / West End Press) About his work he says: “I am drawn to the idea that being-ness is revealed by its disappearance … that invisibility is a metaphor for silence … and that silence is another way of holding one’s breath for a good time to breathe.”
Narrating Dads and Feelings
We walk to the station,
trying to connect.
Our words do not mingle but rather miss
each other, the way a slow watch fails
to bring us to the train on time.
You stop, before reaching our destination,
bending to rub a pain in your legs.
Impatience creeps up on me as I wait.
Witnessing your decline, I freeze a little.
You have a body breaking down,
eyes don’t see what they used to,
and your eardrums fracture sound,
the way fading daylight robs leaves
of their greenness.
Our love?
It’s so much dust,
blowing in a rotting teeth
boxing ring,
where the real fight
was cancelled long ago.
We are spectators of a contest
with no contestants.
I don’t know you.
You look at me
and I throw back an intolerance
I would not tolerate in another.
My expectations hit your eyes like splinters.
I want to know you.
Love, for us, is a drought
longing for rain.
I wish it were a trail of heartbeats,
yours and mine, entwined.
We part.
My fingers meet your arthritis.
Your shrinking back turns,
shuffling off with feelings
unspoken,
and wishes, unfulfilled.
Dad – Love, for me, is a texture
I’m trying to weave a life from.
It’s an eye contact –
Wet with longing
and dry, for no good reason.
New Beginnings
Within pulsating heart of molten red
Within vibrating mind of frozen red
A fading joy fades amid smiles shed
Weary shivering tendrils of thoughts black
Weary ravaged roots of a motion black
Dampen the path in this tear trail shack
Absence of colour nurtures hungry grey
Absence of light buries dry shoddy grey
Muddy Waters lightens this desolate day
A purity polishes balanced white
A purity seeks truth in wild white
Infinite azure floats on sad respite
Oh sapphire sorrow challenged to cope
New beginnings in blue embrace lost Hope.
To Smile
There are pin-pricks in eternity,
where sound is taste
and ears begin to see.
Here I show patience
a space to be free.
Irresistible flames kiss me,
unburdened of dread.
Moths focus on fiery beds.
The lived drop of a tear
and an imagined embrace,
each inhabits, in a child’s mind,
the same believable face.
My shadows are rainbows fading.
Their colours are anchored
to newly born flows, forever
reaching out to another.
The last star waits
for disappearance to end.
I light a candle and pour a wind.
It blows through me,
into night-time’s absence
of sun.
Evaporation of wax
extinguishes the me that was,
and the me that will be
melts amongst this
that I am.
Into the room of waiting
I lead a memory of camouflage
(and vice versa):
a buoy for an existence that sinks,
beneath waves
of the invisible.
With daytime moon I uncork myself.
Patience smiles patiently,
through déjà-vu spectacles.
I remember
and I am.
I forget and I am.
Let me dust myself.
Let me see myself.
I do not seek mystery,
it hunts me.
I would rather be a branch of leaves,
rustling sometimes
in a breeze,
catching sunlit fragments
of molecules, like composers
catch notes for melodies
inside ideas.
I am not a philosopher.
I juggle emptiness.
I find questions I never ask,
and bury answers
I never seek.
When I cannot see the stars
I look for one thing.
On these nights I turn
to silent lips
and ask them
to smile.
*****
