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