Late Deep Sleeper

lux in tenebris lucet

 
What’s with you, trouper? 
On stage

You made many a move 
To draw the curtains,

But the sun’s still 
Waiting in the wings. 

Trickle-down Economics Broken Down By One Of The Haves

It’s this way you see 
His ledger rife with minuses, 
Two plus two never making four, 
This good-for-nothing no-account 
Too poor to know the score he 
Put a double-barrel up his sinuses, 
Nothing made sense anymore. 

Reverie

           “The Jasmine” 

Whether it gets dark 
or light 
the jasmine stays 
always white.
  —George Seferis 


remember

wherever 


jasmine

flowers 


absent

mind


makes

sense


all day,

all night.

"In The Beginning Was The Word"

—for my A and Ω, Eleni—who knows me better than I do myself 

Why is it when I at last 
Give in and grudgingly promise 
To translate a few of my more 
"Knotty” avant-garde poems 
For you, my not-so-comfy with English 
Better half, half-way into them I get 
That nagging sense you think 
They were all Greek to me too, 
From their promising beginnings 
To nowhere in particular 
In the end. 

"There's A Sucker Born Every Minute"

—attributed to P. T. Barnum, American showman 


Believe it or not, 

I read somewhere that 
Some land snails can 

Lift ten times their weight 
Up a vertical surface; 

So if you were as strong as that 
And sucked just as well 

And weighed in 
At one hundred-fifty pounds, 

Hauling one thousand five hundred 
Pounds of suckers would more than likely 

Drive you straight up a wall.