Christian Van Limbergen in Meligalas

Well, there I was in Meligalas' upper square having an early afternoon tsipouro with one of my brothers-in-law when I looked across the street and saw what must be every elderly bicyclist's idol—the one-and-only Christian Van Limbergen slowly pedaling his way into the Guinness Book of Records but I didn't know who he was until I shouted out and invited him to take a seat and have something to drink. Twenty-two years of biking around Europe while picking up seven languages and racking up 600,000+ kilometers is no easy feat—my 9000 in four years seems pale in comparison. So, as we used to say back in the late 60s—keep on truckin', Christian!

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Living with Sleaze

Tut-tut, now no tacky

Remonstrations—

We all know 
Truth is words lie.

Like it or not,

It’s our one and only

Natural habit

Tat.

Moderator’s comments:  Whoever said punning was cheap and vulgar should take a closer look at how punningly Cinquor incorporates into this droll, little poem the British noun “tat” tastelessness by virtue of being cheap and vulgar, rather than its American counterpart “tackiness”—I say bloody good show, Cinq.

Two Haikus (in the Museum Garden)

1.

Empty chairs:

the statues have gone back

to the other museum

2.

No wonder

they had no business

being there

The Stars and Stripes Forever?

In his latest column on behalf of that fiery Promethean missile of intrepid internet journalism known as Weekly Hubris, we find our trusty reporter-poet investigating his adopted country’s long ongoing obsession with bad news, violence, guns, death, Hollywood starlets, unnatural beastly sex on farms run by human animals, Hitchcock’s incredulous cock-and-bull stories, booze, cinematic rage on four wheels, bland third-rate male movie stars transmogrified into bamboozling politicians, insipid television commercials, tobacco roads, Wrath against The Redman aka The Deflowering of Virginia West by Manny Feist Destiny and many more American themes parked down by the river of no return.

RIP, Patrick Leigh Fermor

Last Sentence

Fantasy

of the dance, day

breaks and waves

be light, this earth

that covers you,

father.

(from Sentences, 1976)

NB: A great man, a great writer, a great philhellene—

A great loss.

Nowhere to Go

still poems

impasse sings

Poems

Distracted by the unexpected

Arrival of cooing, nest building

Mourning doves in our twinned

Cypresses, I set down

An anthology of Poems Inspired

By the Life and Work

Of William Carlos Williams and try

Excitedly to capture

The moment that is about

To fly away until I hear

A soft whooshing sound

And turn to see that

One has landed and is now

Looking for twigs

A scant few feet away.

NB: A companion piece to this poem can be viewed here and the photograph which preceded the poems here.