Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

While the unlikely duo of Hank and Lona had been parting company, Jennifer and Volodya had also stood in the shadow of the exit sign once again making their goodbyes.
“Lona offered to take me to New York with her,” Volodya told her, “but I refused…”
“Of course,” Jennifer replied stiffly. “It would mean yet another border crossing and you don’t want that, now do you?”
Volodya’s face creased in a huge grin. “That’s not the reason I refused, my amazing woman,” he said.
He was teasing her, she realized. He doesn’t know what thin ice he’s skating on.
“She said she will contact me when my painting is sold. Ech, but I don’t think she will—if the painting sells for more than she paid me, then why would she let me know? She’s a business woman, right?”
He took Jennifer’s hands in his, kissed them, hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and walked backwards through the automatic doors still holding her gaze. Then he vanished into the humid Montreal evening.
In Vancouver, it was obvious that some of the baggage had been inspected yet again. Jennifer saw almost a full roll of sticky tape covering the top of Chopyk’s suitcase as if the bag had not closed properly after the Customs had poked through it. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. One student missing and three artworks smuggled. Whatever happened, it had been the trip of a lifetime—though just not a lifetime she would care to repeat.
“Whoever goes through first should look for our bus,” called Chopyk. “Probably the driver will hold up a sign.” It seemed like yesterday when she had been the first one through the gate at Sheremetev and the adventure had begun. This time, she lagged behind, reluctant to face the world. Carefully, she propped her things up on a baggage cart. When she finally passed through the sliding doors right behind Linda, she noticed someone waving, someone with black bristly eyebrows and an armful of flowers. The man was not waving at Linda. It had been so long since they had been together, and so much had happened to her in the last three weeks, that she almost did not recognize her estranged husband.
“Michael, what are you doing here?” Despite herself, a full, warm feeling dispelled the black cloud, if only for a moment.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

HEAR ME OUT

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Caterwauling*
Do you know what it means, my love?
I won’t tell you.
I’ll let you discover it on your own.
How long you have for me?
How long will my hands explore your body?
How many different paths shall I mark on your body tonight?
And how much more of your body will remain undiscovered that we’ll work on later?
And when we’re done with this planet shall we go to another star?
When shall I find out about this?
Will you ever tell me?
Will you ever tell me the truth?

  • The call male cats do to attract the females close to them.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562946

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763807

Orange

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Desires
Wilted, fiery carnation
red colored hope painted
by the sun’s endless caress
two empty soup bowls
two empty wine glasses
the cicadas’ conflagration
life full of desires.
Thirst, so much thirst and
not a single fountain.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3746001#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750

The Qliphoth

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excerpt

“Habeas corpus . . .” The bulk of Buttivant is behind him somewhere, praying
in Latin. Which becomes other tongues, thick and throaty. The sonorities
go droning on and on, right through his heart, his thorax.
The chair starts sliding into a horizontal position and at the edge of his
vision he can glimpse Mister K. wearing a microphone headset. His voice is
oddly flat, his fists are clenched.
Lucas can only look up, into the black hole overhead. His inner ear is roaring
with an echoplex of distant detuned voices, drowning in mutual overlap—
Westway music room / dub reverb / his father roaring at the nurses /
mother bawling out dumb classrooms in her sleep / dry voicings in damp cottage
kitchen / the swirl of tidal chatter / digit digit / the quibbly nowhere men /
let us pray /nuke the luke, boys… Images flicker through the air, but he can’t
quite shoot them down with his eyes, they’re too fast. The black aperture overhead
is trembling, enlarging slowly.
His skull has become a flickering moviedrome.
The room was a cardboard theatre of stiff crude figures, those people were
all fat puppets, several worlds are on collision course. His yellowing voice
makes an annunciation for the benefaction of hot virgins: “I’m a projectile
vomited at random stars.”
Foggy light fills that dark aperture. Is that a pair of human heads silhouetted
against the rim of the circle? Luminous mist swirls into the chamber, he
glimpses Pauline and Nick, siamese twins chained into their cannibal kissing
act . . . Why won’t they wave, wave him up on beams of approval, but there
they go gorging each other, he’s trembling, bumping around down here, trying
to rise above himself, he can’t help it.
But another face is up there on the rim, beckoning through snowflakes,
ashflakes, extending a slender arm, loosening her veils, releasing her golden
torrents of hair for him to ascend. He’s tied to this launch pad, which is burning
him with its icy latticework, to watch Katie’s eyes glowing as her hand lingers
around her breasts, between her thighs . . .
The essential Lucas, released from the drab fluff of his clothes, will become
an illumined being, a flood of liquid light, fluxing to the nearest transfiguration
of the flesh, to that female object, but the smoke, the smog thickens, fattens
its odour as he begins to rise into it on this massive unsteady jet of power.
The smoke clears . . . A nazi valkyrie has overcome his girl, has become his
mutant wolf-girl, half-hiding her fat cock with a dented helmet, he’ll have to
levitate right through herm, through sweetish larvae and the swollen muddy
polymorphs and their flicker of limbs . . .

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

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Kisses

She whipped her soul so much
that finally she got used to the whipping
and asked for it.
She always believed in her ability to raise herself
yet there where so many worms under the rind
of kisses and the decision not to change.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L1TJNNF

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II

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After the Fire
When morning came a great silence was left among
the smoky ruins.
The firefighters who battled the fire during the night
were tired and asleep in their sweet submission and
some with a smile of a vague and futile battle.
Only he alone, was not asleep. He even avoided sleep
without knowing whether he was the victor or the defeated,
guessing only vaguely that perhaps, indeed perhaps,
the only victory was his decision to understand which.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562968

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851M9LTV

Introspection

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Prophet
His prophetic pneuma, his sense of eternal freedom, the endlessly creative mind of the giant who stood before a catastrophe and saw decaying humanity. He sensed that a future benevolence appeared before his eyes, before his prophetic vision, while he had his eyes closed. He saw the new race of men and women who stood opposite the morality of humbleness and against the well-fed bellies of priests and deacons, and he saw the creators of immortal boys and girls. This was his epiphany and his fate: life played like a drama, like a historical stage show of the pneuma with its delirium and tragedy, with a catharsis from the first moment, he realized that it was his freedom to think and to create his immortal Übermensch

https://draft2digital.com/book/4118210#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763777

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

NINE
Finn MacLir lay in a plain wooden box in the dark, still winter of death. He wore his navy-blue fisherman’s jersey and trousers and his best black boots. Harry and Ted Robinson, the undertakers from Lisnaglass, had laid out the body and, with Michael’s help, had carried the heavy coffin down the stairs. It stood for three days on trestles in the sitting room where the sofas and chairs had been pushed aside to make room for it. Mother Ross and Finn’s twin daughters had held vigil over the corpse, with Finn’s closest friends in attendance. It was a quiet, solemn wake for one renowned—and excoriated—for his regular parties.
Now the coffin lay on two ropes beside the open grave where the two Robinsons and two of their assistants stood silently, heads bowed respectfully, hands clasped in front of them. Around the grave men stood in sombre suits and black ties, hats in their hands, their tanned faces clean and almost shining, like those of boys going to Sunday school. Some spoke to neighbours in hushed, reverent tones. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, shivering the short grass of the old graveyard behind the ruins of Killyshannagh church where sheep grazed unconcerned at a distance from the men assembled around the grave. A polished granite headstone bore the graved inscription, Roisin MacLir, neé Corrigan, 1858-1892. Finn’s name would be added later.
Dressed in a black suit with a knotted black tie, Clifford Hamilton stepped forward. “I have the duty and the honour of saying a few words about the man lying in death before us.” He glanced around at the faces of the forty or fifty men standing in front of him. He felt that the unfortunate Padraig, Finn’s adopted son, should have been here, making this farewell speech to his earthly father. Or Seamus Slattery or Ignatius Sweeney who had known Finn for so many years. Or the more experienced, respected Dr Starkey. “I say ‘honour’,” he continued reluctantly, “without hesitation or qualification. Because Finn MacLir was one of the greatest men it has been my honour to have known. He was a close friend of my father and my father’s family, but he was a friend of rich and poor. Whether a man was a lawyer, a banker, a farmer, or a fisherman made no difference to Finn.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

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excerpt

“Here, we can hear God’s voice in the tree tops, in the rippling waters, in the cry
of the loon. Until you can lower yourself to our level and treat us as equals, there’ll
be very little dialogue.”
Father Finten fled to walk alone in the woods. Now Ailan came to find him there.
He had heard the conversation with Keallach and decided this was the best opportunity
to confirm what Keallach had already said about the relationship between priest
and Brothers.
“I have been wanting to talk to you, man to man, not as penitent to confessor,
for a very long time, ever since we first came to these shores. You are a hard man to
talk to. I do not want your judgments and I do not need your approval. I want your
trust and your love. You call me Brother but what does that really mean to you? Am
I like your own flesh and blood, or are you just being a distant father? Because you
are older than I, does not mean I should call you Father. Show me real love, and I’ll
gladly do so.”
Now Finten felt totally lost. He was unable to speak the thoughts that raced
through his mind. Ready to explode with grief and outrage, he turned and walked
quickly until he was deep in the forest. He needed time to think.
Finten did not return for the evening meal, not for prayers or bed, but stayed
away all night. Trusting that their priest would come back when he’d had time to
think these conversations over, the Brothers decided to overlook his absence. When
Finten did return to camp after three days, he did not say anything about what had
happened. The Brothers respected his silence, waiting to see if there’d be a difference
in their relationship with him, and life went on as before.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562826

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763106

Cloe and Alexandra

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Message on the cellphone
Although the time it was sent was clear
and the confirmation
the message on the cellphone never came through.
It was the right sender
the right recipient.
But the message you sent me
a single word
I simply never got.
Why this one got lost and not any other,
the one with the pointless goodbye:
‘I’m leaving you before you leave me’ or
all other messages we’ve sent to each other,
due to a mistake of the mirror,
the ones we received back totally
refracted, we’ll never know.
What black crucible devoured the words?
Are they so dirty after all?
And I think of that hairy man
who some years ago
extended his hand and
softly caressed that woman
who met him for the first time
and with that caress
suddenly the world of that era changed.
We’ve never learned of those words.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562908

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FPRGYMQ