In lieu of a poem--my favorite crepuscular vantage point--a poem in itself. (Please use headphones at high volume.)
new old kid on the blog, with an occasional old or new poem written off the old writer's block
Friday, September 25, 2015
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Why Some Poets Have No Business Calling Themselves Angels
Oblivious to all
That’s ugly
On the face of the earth,
They call forth heavenly
Strains of pizzicato, expansive
And graceful picking
Within a modicum of space,
There where
They dance stark
Naked with demons
On the head of a pin.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
On the Refugee Problem Besetting the European Union
Dear brothers
In a common cause,
These teeming masses
Of supplicants besieging
Our sacred borders
Seek nothing
Save a sanctuary where
They can rest their weary heads;
Their plight does indeed cut
Us to the quick—pray
Let us show compassion,
Home in on each and every one
With heaven-sent teargas, plenty
Of angelic cudgels and lay
Their worries to rest before
The final, merciful kill.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Orgasm of Greed: All or Nothing
Jack of all trades, master at abating
All save avarice, no need
To squirrel all the precious fun—
Just work those nuts off silly
Neutered all the way
To no kingdom cum.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Approaching Knowing Night Birds from Afar
Strange we should be so taken in
By warm, childish cries alighting
On our shoulders on the wings
Of a sultry summer night,
Only to have them turn palish
Cold without our knowing it,
Grey silent owls taking flight.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Banner Year
This was another one
Of those years
That had something
For everybody—
Even the homeless
Have-nots had the usual
Copious shares of nothing.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Young She-goat in Well Still Wet behind Ears
Hearing her
Owner’s frantic
Yells for help and before we ran
To raise her and she romped off
To dry in sun-drenched meadow,
She was down there a drowning
Blatting bobbing waterlogged pandemonium,
Dog-paddling round stony ring of death accompanied
By chorus of cacophonous frogs stoically croaking
In deadpan disbelief.
Monday, August 31, 2015
A Childhood Lost, Just Like That
That classic Greek landscape you left’s done
A disappearing act. You recall
A just man like many long dead saying
It won’t be here when you get back
With you still homeless,
Twice an immigrant.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
On Piscine Poets out of Water
--for Huuklyeand Cinquor, il miglior fabbro
Don’t piddle precious time
Sounding your position out—
Your next line is always
Easier to swallow
If you don’t know
You’re hooked.
Don’t piddle precious time
Sounding your position out—
Your next line is always
Easier to swallow
If you don’t know
You’re hooked.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Melanoma
All you bigoted zealots rejoice! Whatever
Blemish defies washing away keeps
Sinking further into the skin
Till it turns purple, drowning
In its own unfathomable joy juice.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Natura Apocalyptica
Astounding—
Under the umbrella pines the crowd
Of revelers moved ecstatically
By the buzzing of its own
Voice does not hear the mass
Of cicadas busily burying it.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Manunkind Unrattled
It’s time to dispense with the usual
Time-consuming formalities
And tell you right off that
Just as you live unfazed and breathe
In your man-made stench, so
Shall you expire before you know it.
Think about it. In the meantime,
Kindly grab all the quality
Time you need, mensch.
Monday, August 17, 2015
The Weight
Up in the village
Watching my wife doting
On her mother sliding quickly
Downhill into oblivious senility,
I cannot but recall how
Many times she’d made
The long haul from the village
To that little summer garden
Two twisting miles straight
Down to the gorgeous
Gorge and back, a straw
Basket in each hand laden
With freshly-harvested vegetables
And hauling more often than not,
The latest of her six
Children in a sling
Across her now
Bent-over back,
And looking on all
That had to be
Done each day as inevitable
As the sun rising and setting
And never once asking why
It had to be that way.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Intangible Air of Reciprocity
The wind believes
It has an aura
As long as the pines
Long to hear it.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Straight from the Horse's Mouth: Huuklyeand Cinquor on Why Valéry Is Still Valid
In your work, dude—
This insistence on purity
Validates absolutely nothing,
For nothing is pure
And it’s certainly not
Unadulterated horseshit.
Moderator’s comments: "Hi-ho, Cinquor away!"
Saturday, August 8, 2015
One Way or Another, Wisdom Grows on One with Age
My father was old enough
To be my grandfather
And I too young to know
It made no difference.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Mendicants Toeing the Capitalist Line
Don’t breathe a word—
You can’t see it but that
Rucksack on your back
Has just enough
To carry you through
Another day,
But no need to worry—
That other beggar
With a rucksack
Just like yours
Walking before you
Will never give you away.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Phenomenologically Speaking
In the dim
Cramped light of the old
Folks’ home there was
Still enough room
For the shadows
To come alive.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Tsunami Crisis Management, Hellas 2015 A.D.
What do we Hellenes do when a crisis is over?
We go back to a life with more crises,
One life with one crisis after another,
But we despair not!
Millenniums basking
On the sun-drenched shores
Of the Mediterranean have taught us how
To perform wonders as long as we persevere
In sitting back in our beach chairs,
All the while making like a wave.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Why Little Children--Like Trees--Are Afraid of Adults with Chain Saws
under the old
growth is evermore virgin
growth growing up—
it’s telling
the world the last thing
we must do on this earth is
hurry up.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Twilight in Meligalas
There’s a promise
Of rain in the stiff northwesterly
Breeze blowing in from the gulf
Of Kyparissia, thirty kilometers away,
And the parched trees are nodding
In unison yes, yes, yes,
It’s been a good day;
I’ve spent more than half
Of my life planted here—
What more can I say?
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Faux Deus Ex Machina
On the brink—
Whatever to do?
So tantalizing
A thought came to him
As he was about to jump
To a forgone conclusion
Out of the blue.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
None the Smarter at 71
Time was I thought I could think
My way through life
Using clever arguments,
That it would be easy to imagine
A world where being
Smart made you nobody’s fool—
Hard to believe now,
How I ended up forgetting
Only life makes life’s rules.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
The Privatization of the Self
"Let every soul submit himself
Unto the authority of the higher powers.
There is no power but of God.
The powers that be are ordained of God".
--Romans 13.1
Nowadays
To make it worthwhile
For the powers
To be you have to
Put in long hours down
A dark mine shaft deep
In the heart
Of the heart
Of what is no longer
God’s country
And be forever
Damned.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Air of Acquiescence
Their slender stalks fastened
With twine to thin reeds stuck
In a brown, earthenware pot,
The blood-red carnations nod
In accord with each blustering gust,
All the while suffusing the air
They breathe
With redolent dyes
Of thick, heady musk.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Hope Dies Last
You get up
Every day hoping
It won’t be your last
And you go to bed wishing
It had been.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
The Methuselah Code
To read the signs
Of the times correctly
And to write at least
One word a day remains
No small feat providing you
Reach a thousand.
Of the times correctly
And to write at least
One word a day remains
No small feat providing you
Reach a thousand.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Waiting for the Coroner's Report (A Greek Proverb for Our Times)
In the meantime,
In the house of the hanged man,
Nobody brings up the subject
Of a rope.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Virtuoso
Think before you leap—
With each vaunting
Step you take, this
Star-studded universe
You were born into wants
Nothing better than to cradle you
Back down
To earth to dream to sleep.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Write-off
No matter how quickly
They might have been
Executed, poems should
Always be read out loud
Slowly—one never knows how
Much breath has been
Wasted already.
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