One and Zero

River of fire

Christianity, Islam, Buddhism ... dust in our eyes
wails in our ears, poison in our mouths,
daggers in our hearts.
Let us sit on the bank of the river of fire
and share our knowledge of water.
And when we get bored, let us baptize each other
in the air, for soon we shall become earth.

By a Picture

For years now
I have known you by a picture which
your hands had painfully approved:
head-cover
over coal black anemone,
sad, young and milky white
chador or skin – the same,
to which picture I added in my mind
the voices of the silent sea that best adorn
your lovely lonely face
smiling from the distant shore
I-wish-you-were-here.

Night

Night is queen, queen.
Queen of heaven,
O night, queen are you.

Light is the exception,
For you had no inception;
It was always, always you.

Candle burning like no other,
Lucifer, Luna or Sun,
you could smother all,
but pinned all on you.

I feel wonderful today

I saw her coming from the opposite direction,
unknown, and yet perennially familiar,
and felt like saying “You are wonderful”,
trying at the same time to disrupt
the physics of a chortle with a smile
that threatened to erupt into laughter.
But all I meant to say was
“I feel wonderful today.”

CrucifiXed between Hunger and Lust

I turned my head to the right and saw
Hunger enter a Bakery, her hair in long
braids carrying the sleeping soil and
the waving grass of the fields,
her clothes bearing witness to the aftermath
of Sodoma and Gomora.
“Father, deliver me from this hour!”

Her unsightly misery threatened to invade
the conscience of customers and employees.
She was begging for an eye-to-eye contact
which would give rise to sympathy
and sympathy to something to eat
If they would only look at her.
But they pretended they didn’t.

No more than three minutes had passed
than she turned back to haunt the streets again.
The redolent warmth of the premises,
the savoury aroma of fresh baked bread,
cakes and croissants were too much for
an ulcerating from want stomach.
“Father, remove this cup from me!”

I watched her tattered clothes flatter and vanish
like thieving crows around a corner.
Then I turned my head the other way and lo! Lust
came into sight, curvy and smooth she was,
well fed but not bread, hence more desirable.
with the hips and breasts bursting at the seams
of her skimpy dress; her look melting iron.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Truly, the world is a stage, set up only for mine
to hunger and lust at the same time:
to race the hours for bitter bread
and blind my blind eyes for want of sweet bed.
What good is erection without the cross?
or the fangs of affection without some loss?
---------------------------------------------
Printed in Thanal Online

An Ordinary Day

It was an ordinary day.
What could I expect
On an ordinary day?
Enlightenment?
(Garlic is good for the heart.)

The sun was rising as I wetted my feet
In the liquid sheet of diamonds.
In the shallow waters of the shore
A little crab was exploring my toe.
I could crash the creature in its morning exploration
But decided I was magnanimous,even bored,
And let it go about its business.

At that moment I felt an icy hand take hold
Of my chest as if someone was intent on
Plucking my breath away from my body.
Then it all went away.
As suddenly as it had started.

Tormented

In a city fair and beyond compare,
the women’s summer lays its scented flesh –
thighs, bellies and wobbly breasts – all bare,
exposed to testosterone suns in despair.

IN MEMORIAM: MANOS

In retrospect, you looked so funny
with those streaks of black and brown
shoe polish
on your poverty-burnished cheeks,
clenched teeth and mock anger.

“D’ya want me to shoot ya with yo gun
or cut ya with ma knife?” you growled unconvincingly.

It pained me to let you down.
You were my best friend, but I was thirsty.

“Let’s get a drink first,” I gasped.
“And a piss,” you grunted.

We ran to your place to quench our thirst
and empty our bladders.
Then you dragged me to your room,
opened a desk drawer and pulled out
a small diary.
You gave me a conspiratorial look and flipped
to the page where you had stashed
a ten drachma coin.
It flashed in my eyes like the silver moon
at which I howled in envy.

You had already started to save for your passage
out of misery, out of poverty – to America.
I suppose you gave the same look to your shipmate
before you jumped ship twenty years later.
I knew you always wanted to play with the real Cowboys
and Indians – I wasn’t much of a challenge for you.

Your promised land wasn’t easy on you at first.
It pitted you against dishwasher jobs –
mostly in burger joints.
The American dream was not for you:
too much fat and salt
gradually gnawed on a frail heart.
But you persevered, knowing that Texas wasn’t far
from California, that you could always wear
a Cowboy hat at work.

News of your death at the age of fifty five sailed in
with your son – he looks so much like you!
You were buried with a cowboy hat and boots.
I’ve always thought this part was for me, but
I cut off the Grim Reaper at the pass
and got away with a bypass.

Time rounds off murder

Time rounds off the edges of all murder;
it smooths the heinous details, bleaches blood
and leaves only shadows of numbers
shadows of fire, shadows of pain.
Time tames all
and lays all to rest –
innocent and victim
on the banks of history, like
smooth, rounded off pebbles.

Out of season

The fire tipped feet, the fresh
red on young girls white skin,
and the amply exposed flesh
have made me, much to my chagrin,
a teenager again, for good reason,
only now, alas, I’m out of season.

Andronice

Andronice, conqueror of all men.
You have outlived them all,
those you needed most –
husband and seven children, all boys.

Andronice, not a brute force of nature,
but simply nature: juicy
prickly pear.
Thus you weave your invisibility,
Your ever-presence in this world,
Your immortality – woman.

In the end what remains is your
ageless black-kerchiefed face
from behind rain-streaked window
panes,
sad face for ever a widow.

The hibiscus tree

Its size, small.
Its bole, straight and slender:
The hibiscus tree at the edge
Of my morning call for poetic inspiration
In the little square,
Tolls its blood-red bells
To stir the silence in my green vision.

BULL

Poseidon’s brilliant bull scored bull’s eye
with the Trojan cow queen Pasiphaë
who bore the beast, part man part bull,
as punishment condign upon the king
(king Minos the son of Zeus and princess Europa)
who sought Poseidon to fool
and Crete to rule.

Amazon Hunter

He put his foul mouth to one end of a hollow cane
And puffed a gust of wind from his lungs …
Statistically infallible marksmanship
And a poison-tipped dart conspired to interrupt
The play of a little monkey
On the lacy shores of the forest in the sky
And sent it tumbling down,
To lower and lower branch
Until,
Lifeless,
It hit the hard surface
Of all that hungers and thirsts and cries.

But a sin was not committed, in spite of his foul mouth.
A day’s honest work was done.
He scratched his bare behind, as he did after every kill,
And slinged the monkey over his shoulders.
Little hairy arms dangle, keeping time
To the hunter’s pace quickened by heartbreaking
Cries unseen but all too familiar.
What delicate fingers!
Sweet little eyes! Shut.
It fell asleep in the heaven’s mortal embrace.
He is going to put the baby to bed.
Yes, he is.

It's a string entangled tale

It’s a string entangled tale not this or that ear-
catching smolt of myth,
e.g. the part man part bull issue of queen Pasiphae
pinched from the eukaryotic soma of Minoan Crete,
or the daughter cells of myth,
e.g. Theseus-Ariadne, Daedalus-Labirynth, Ikarus-flight …
et cetera, et cetera,
but the genus of mute impulse for myth,
this fresh-water, unifying by division
unseen process
which rolls in with the replication of man’s ghost signature
and by polarization and attraction split-spurns the alevin man
to upstream bipolar fish-tail kinesis –
a mitotic adventure entailing ultimate division
and a roiling desire to return to Mother.

The Venetian fountain Bembo

The little green town-spot known by the old as Coube,
on the north side of the Cornaro Square,
marks the back end of the Heraklion market
and is by silent consensus a station for relaxation
(also for comfort),
especially after a good night’s sleep
on the complacent cot of myth.

It is dotted with buttocks inviting brown wicker chairs
and wrought iron, round-top tables – the set up
for brewing a slothful frame of mind
and all-purpose Greek, not Turkish, coffee.
Actually, it is an open air coffee shop
in the shelter of speechless trees
fanning over grey heads and conversation.

The handsome currency of morning shade,
courtesy of a modern building across,
wags invitingly to pensioners and pigeons
to peck at peanuts pending from the State
and current off the floor.

There stands the Venetian fountain Bembo,
with its mutilated marble statue in recess.
The head is missing – lost in the quick sand
of partisan politics.
The right hand is gone – (rumors of a ghost hand
torching Peloponnese are ablaze.)
Only the sarcophagus for basin remains – gapping
for water … and flesh.

Oh, love me not

Oh, love me not to the brim of your heart.
What fool can deny love's semblance to art?
Love me as a connoisseur sips fine wine
Lest your sweet blue eyes turn to lakes of brine.

Birds have no pockets

Birds have no pockets, or hands.
Flight measures light, as gravity weight.
The fill of the oil lamps in wait for
The bridegroom is for the ground bound,
Dust-shrouded spirits of prudence.

It's the political pit-bull fights

It's the political pit-bull fights
That burn the forests of my heart:
In chambers Parnitha and Corinth,
The ascending Pelion
And the descending Nafplion,
All up in Green and Blue flames.

Pitiful politicians through windows
Of self-ridicule gabble in flaming tongues
Over each other’s unlabored works and days –
Monuments of incompetence and corruption.

It is the kiss of the Ephialtes in modern Greece
That razes to the ground
And raises to the cross
This country of the burning bush of myth.

Hail to thee, Hellenic Republic, hail!

Delicious Strawberries

“Delicious strawberries!” the peddler cried
I smiled, knowing he lied:
Strawberries of this large a size
are always the hormones’ pride,
I thought and pressed on my way, when
a voice in my head whispered thus again:

“Representations in sound collude with sight,
no less with smell or touch or taste
t’assail the mind and smite one’s hopes with blight
in thoughtless actions due to haste, resulting to waste.”

Interview

Interviewed by the Iranian journalist and poet Mrs. Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi. Thank you dear Farideh, for introducing me to the Iranian public.

Aggression

Don’t interpret; show the human trek!
The implicit aggression and threat in food consumption.
A bite on a piece of bread, or a bite on the neck:
I live, you die – satiation versus starvation.

This late afternoon in early June

This late afternoon in early June,
on the Craterus beach
(hail river Byzantine General
robbed of water and victory)
my field of vision, a cerebral canvas,
is aching to split horizontally in half.

The top is in flat, smooth strokes of baby blue:
sky and sea in a seamless pairing,
almost imperceptible if it were not for
the petrified dragon – the isle of Dia –
divulging to reason the Line.

The frequent whirs and drones align with the shore
to alight on the hard shoulder of the General
to my left and hatch the seasonal suitors
of sun, sand and sea.

The bottom half is livelier,
a honeycomb of gritty gold and grey
worked with the palette knife
of the setting sun on sand.

The near crackling of dice in the tinder-less
abdomen of a backgammon echoes in my brain
and I cannot catch the silence of the sailing wind.

Heeling ... the soul

A wry smile studded with tiny
wooden pegs.
(How do they taste? I wonder!)
He pinched one peg out,
fixed it on the heel
of a shoe
and hit it with his hammer.
Thud! Thud!
One in.
Count: two, three, four, five.

The shoe is ready, heeled.

Cobbler, can you do the same with my soul?
Can you heal my soul?

Of course, I can, the cobbler said.
He swooped me up in his brawny arms,
stretched me on a cross and ...
Count: one, two, three, four.
Four nails.
Vinegar taste.
------------------------------------------
Published by Taj Mahal Review, Dec. 2007

An Old Photograph

Despite the blur and lag of forty years,
this photograph of women five –
the four in black and gray
and just as old as hills with caps of snow in May,
and one, the young, inclined her bel esprit to hide –
brings back a lot of memories and tears.

With crochet hooks and needles long in hand,
they sat on wicker chairs across my home
and knitted yarns and gossiped as in band,
“O my, isn’t she a cow and he a gnome!”
about an oddly looking couple under public gaze,
but never meant to offend a soul in fulsome praise.

And I, a boy engrossed in prankish play,
would sneak behind their backs to cut with shears
I used in art – to their subdued dismay,
the yarns squirming up from sluggish skeins
to slothful digits wrestling hooks and needles
for slip knots and cast ons and stitches.

Until one summer day the young
caught me in the act and spoke in bitter tongue:
“Our lives are yarns or threads and prone to shred
while weaving patterns by Design
to which all must needs one day resign.
Even the bad and the good and the worst and the best
can not evade or skirt this High and Nigh Behest
entrusted with the Fates whose task is time impressed
(to goad people to their timely bane).
Now, if you, a boy as pure in heart as pain …,
insist on your portentous play and us to harass
the Fates will surely follow suit – alas!
and cut our threads before our time comes.”

Bower

My aching blue buds my sinews empower –
when you are not looking,
when you are naked sleeping
up there – to launch me into your misty bower.

Think not that I must climb the turret tower,
or fret at openings barred with wrought iron grille,
for I can blink to naught all hindrance at will
and nest upon your balcony sill –
a groin-glowing eager bower.

Blast my desire for you, little flower!
as you innocently roll from side to side,
for ever in my dreams a maiden bride
and to mischief at dawn always a bower.
---------------------------------------------------
Published by Taj Mahal Review, Dec. 2007

Your hands

I am jealous of roses and jasmines,
of their lingering fragrance in your hands
and of everything you touch and make or do
with your ivory semaphores of love.

Let your fingers spend your heart’s treasure
in prodigal bouts through my hair
and, in closing ranks, run down against
the stubble of my cheeks.

Hold me there, bound by your opiate charm,
until the raging winds of desire bring this hull
of a body to ruin – for ever trapped,
in the barrier reef of your eyes.
--------------------------------------------------
also in "Thanal Online"

Touch me!

I am jealous of roses and jasmines,
Of their lingering fragrance in your hands,
And everything you touch and make or do
With fingers divine and tender.

Touch me, heal me or kill me!
I will love you just the same.

Touch me, for I must melt
In your hands,
As pity melts the mind
To love.

Heal me with a touch to leave me
Stranded, for ever a cast away,
On the raging coasts
Of your eyes, or

Kill me by taking my breath away
As your fingers conduct the orchestra
Of my senses on the podium
Of my naked body.

Touch me, heal me or kill me!
I will love you just the same.

Transformation ... at Lust

Flesh, she –
fullness, roundness.
Contour's the culprit, the serpent.

Bloodshot desirous of flesh,
I kneel like
a Camel
and she rides and, lo!
I'm transformed,
a Lion.
I devour the journey up
to a lush, wet oasis.

Satiated at journey’s end
I'm transformed again,
an Eagle.
Blind to her geometries,
I soar
to claw-frosting heights
until vision succumbs to contours again,
and am desirous of flesh,
a Camel, a Lion, an Eagle again.
--------------------
Published by: ken*again

The Mosaic of my Shattered Ego

When I think of you chained
To someone else's happiness,
The twinkling bells of light,
Fastened to the sable mantle of the night,
Rain on earth their evanescent tears.

If you were mine,
And mine alone ,
Everything would fall in place proper:
The mosaic of my shattered ego.

You and I

Dear Adriana – old lady from the days of yore –
In rain or shine, you and I and many more
Live to toil over many a work and chore:
You peddling flowers from door to door,
And I bound the meaning of words to explore.

Some day, dear Adriana – be it far or near it matters not –,
The ferryman shall carry us over to the other shore,
To the land where pain is pain no more,
But a garden resplendent in shape and form
Where words are flowers that never rot.
-----------------------------------------
Revision of "Translator in Low Spirits"

Come, O Night!

Come, O Night!
Through the eyes of the Tiger bright.
Chase away the sun’s lingering scent
From the crown of forests canopied high,
From the dales’ deep-rutted spine,
And lay your sable mantle over town, city and sea.

O Night!
Once we could hear the silent gallop
Of your stately Hrimfaxi.
Now, all is an endless drone from Trojan horses
Which race through the bituminous arteries of our brains
Spewing their treacherous load from lungs of iron.

O Night, womb of Day,
Light-footed and gently flowing!
Subdue the edges of the mundane,
Dissolve apparent multiplicities,
Deliver us from the tyranny of the sun
And in your wake reinstate the kingdoms of fire!

To the People of Modern Greece

Divided you fall and die a slow death by the day.
United you shall live, live decently.

Unite and they shall cower at your strength!
Unite and they shall sow the whirlwind!
But wait …! Who are THEY?
Be they the men of office YOU install
To positions of plenty-to-eat-and-plenty-to-steal?
Perhaps those with the gilded mitres and pastoral staffs,
The champions of bigotry and obscurantism?
Perchance the heinous, blood-sucking leeches, our
Institutional money lenders?

No, no my fellow Greeks.
Look inside you! There prowls the enemy:
YOUR ignorance, this invisible worm
Which your political & religious leaders
So meticulously feed with “free education”
And indoctrination.

How to unite then, if you don’t know how?
How to unite to set yourselves free, to prosper
To have a true Democratic governance?
Alas, there is no answer to this question:
“Greeks” and “unity” are contradictio in terminis
Points antipodal on a vicious circle.
-------------------------------------------------

Oh Night!

Oh Night!
Are you with us?
My love says you are come;
She lit a candle to prove it.
I can feel it;
I can smell it.
But I cannot see you, Oh Night!
It’s so dark; I cannot see you.
Will I ever?

Oh Night!
Are you with us?
My love says you are upon me;
She set me on fire to prove it.
I can feel it;
I can smell it.
Oh Night!
You are upon me, so ravishing, so ravenous!
I can see you now.

Fallen Angel

You gambled pursuing a dream and lost.
You hurt me by breaking your vows,
And now I must punish myself by punishing you.
I will cast you out of this domain,
To the netherworld of dreams
From where you shall rule my nights:
A fallen angel,

But an angel to me all the more.

Translator in Low Spirits

Dear Adriana – old lady from the days of yore –
In rain or shine you and I and many more
Live to toil in pain over many a work and chore:
You peddling flowers from door to door,
And I bound the meaning of words spoken and writ to explore.

Some day, dear Adriana – be it far or near it matters not –,
The ferryman shall carry us over to the other shore
To the land where pain is pain no more
But a garden long and wide as far as the blind eye can trot,
Where words are flowers that never rot.

published by ThanalOnline

ISRAHEL

Israhel! The fire which wrought
Your mighty and cruel hand,
You have rekindled to your peril
In the grove of the Cedars.

The Book of Judas

Three days before the Passover
My Master sent for me to say:
“Judas, I bid thee search the market for
A Book unwrit and clothed in red.”

“Where in the market, Master, and
What inscription this Unscripture bears?
And pray tell me to what end
Thy bid compares.” ... I asked.

The Master laughed and raised his hands
To touch mine throbbing neck in loving care,
And to ears propensed to obedience
Whispered thus – seeing not, but ever aware
Of eleven spiteful looks of burning glare.

“Beloved Judas, on such guileless lips
As yours, little angels test their airy wings
Before they descend on punic scripts
that hold people's minds in eclipse.

“The Book is in the care of Uriel,
A vendor blind and ear lobeless.
Ask him if he the name of the Lord ever sung,
And he to thee his outer garment shall impart,
The left pocket of which is committed to conceal
The Book; and the message Uriel shall speak.”

Through the dimmed Jerusalem market stalls,
Deaf to the din and clatter and calls,
I searched for Uriel whose nipped ears never tire
In the service of my Master’s desire.

“Who’s Uriel?” I asked a boy in rags and in fingers fast.
The boy raised his grubby digit and pointed
To the stall of the market’s biblioclast,
And there stood the man whose visage I searched.

“Hast thou the name of the Lord ever sung?”
I asked Uriel in manner rather urgent.
He rolled his cloudy eyes to the sky strung
With pins of shimmering light and
Handed me his garment in acknowledgement.

Then, he spoke thus:

“Thirty pieces of silver, Judas,
Thirty Shekels of Tyre,
Are yours to receive
For a kiss to surrender thine Sire.”
-----------------------------------
George Trialonis (c) 2006
Published by ken*again Fall 2006

Must I?

To create; that is our banner.
To create, for we shall die.
How sad this knowledge is.
Hope is hidden in a lie.

Human Law

A little flower is sick:
The bees are kept away
By an overly protective hand,
But neither the sun, nor earth
Can sustain alone
A life so simple and so short.

Reinventing the Wheel

The Pyramids are standing upside down.
There are millions of possibilities in there,
When I say “I am neither here nor there.”
Requests for proof will let you down.

Degeneration

Pity the nation and its people who are in need of heroes or miracles.

Modern Greeks and Meaning

Making sense of most Greek texts that I receive for translation into English is more like a Herculean labour for me. "What the hell does he/she mean by that?!" is the mental tag that I am forced to place at the end of a considerable number of sentences in the source language. Why are modern Greeks so vague in what they write (and say)? Because they lack mental or intellectual discipline -- the result of partisan politics not only in education, but also in most aspects of life in Greece. These politics have created a mindset that finds expression in contempt of culture and merit.

Poetry

Poetry? Fire burning and blooming in the recesses of my heart.