Blood Most people don’t understand whether the sun rises from behind the mountain or is shot out of the pistol’s barrel it always burns you. For this so many of our dreams remained unrealized inexplicably happiness was laid in the display window of the department store and loneliness was again eulogized in churches, while as the years went by him, the one with the severed arm, kept on other people’s discolored walls, truth always decorates the cement, one word written with fiery red letters: blood, blood, blood.
Mixing complacency with self-confidence hysteria with passion he won nothing in his involvement with people. Only a repetition of methods and ultimately worn out words that simply fooled him to believe that he existed beyond the motionless appearance of his shapes.
…and ailing mother before she’d let her last breath go up in the air of a stifling hospital room, in old wrinkled bed-sheets, white and pure as the fire of Purgatory, cleansing, purifying, absolving all sins, and others had to go to the front line of defence in one border, there where the souls try to find a single justification for the lunacy that harasses people when they firstly grab the rifle and shoot and then they think that perhaps they should talk to those infidels on the other side of the border, yet these were the moronic ways people did things these days and these were all within the parameters and conditions of life in a big country like Spain and in a big city like Madrid while this afternoon I and my wife were sitting on the sidewalk table of this small cafe where we had a bite and enjoyed our regular glass of beer for me and a regular glass of red wine for my wife when I raised my eyes and stared at the grandiose Atocha which brought to my mind that blonde woman yesterday, on our way from Valencia, the pretty blonde woman sitting opposite me and my wife, that pretty blonde who constantly had her feet between mine and occasionally moved one of them against mine, as if to tell me she was here and somehow she had to count as an important part of my day to which I paid attention as the opportunity allowed me and as if not to disturb the peaceful afternoon while we were travelling at the speed of 310 kilometers an hour on the famous high velocity AVLO train of the big RENFE Spanish train company. Then the unexpected occurred when the ancient Minoan goddess appeared, Ariadne incarnate, with her black curly hair falling lower than her shoulders, with her dark skin complexion, the olive oil skin complexion, with her black eyes and full lips which suddenly gave me goosebumps, she appeared from the right of my wife and walking in the most sensual way she made her way to the table just three meters in front of me and on my line of vision towards the Atocha Train Station; this woman of average height, well lined body, obviously a body that had experienced all the possible erotic pleasures from the soft and delivering to the rough and wild apexes, from the slow and long moments enduring consummations to the fast and fiery encounters which leave nothing but exquisite delight to every inch of a woman’s…
Close your Eyes: All Your Old Life Will Parade in front of you For Memas Messinis When I was passing, unsuspectedly on a gondola, someone called me. “Hey Hellene, hey Hellene…” He was standing behind the iron Gate of the grassy courtyard of Saint George of the Hellenes, next to the canal. “Hello to you too,” I said, “what brings you here?” “I’m dead,” he says. “Well,” I said, “blessed man, you a Hellene why did you die here? Why didn’t you go to die there, in our soft, homeland soil?” “I would love it” he answered. Besides, one night, Natalia from the Laggon, told me so, you remember her, the girl with the golden breasts. She took me aside and said: “take me away from here, I can’t live with the bastards, You, see, her mother was from Smyrna. However, the other one, the blonde and beautiful harlot kept me here, the one who worked at the pigsty of Fretseria. She would passionately sing up to the evening, the song “Even if you are far away” that sweetened my lips and broke my heart.
Big clouds in the dusk, lonely and sunlit. Amid the dark blue, the walls seemed made of an orange gleam. A small balcony over the sea, the ropes and the masts. We delayed with the merchants, the copped scales. The dead were lying naked in the valley and covered by newspapers. Two small lights shivered on the hill. You could wait again in the olive grove and listen to the barking dog, in front of the barbed wire and the two metal armchairs, searching the space around, with that controlled confusion for a star or a thorn that hurts all in the same way.
TO MY WIFE My dear wife, I don’t have to say how much I’ve always loved you. If sometimes we contend and row in turbulence and turmoil living, it’s because I like upheaval and long for rougher seas. Love without some bitterness lacks sweetness, gives no joy, so keep your stern composure, leave me my troubled mind, and know that now and then too calm a sea brings vertigo. Dear wife, though I don’t tell you, you know how much I love you, your laughter but your anger too, and if another woman turn my eye, know that my heart and, yes, my ugliness belong to you for ever and some more.
Capricious Eyes bright as capricious sun doting on children time dodgy when you try to stop the clock feelings pass like clouds while you paint your masterwork tears hot as unplanned lock of lips learning its pain there are dreams in spectrum of poetic virtues penned dare your way onto another mountain ledge coddle another day’s sigh death is a pale horse but you canter forward with glaring light
“Bobby won’t give you a minute’s anxiety,” Emily said, “and neither will Katie. I don’t think I can be so confident about that little monkey, Susie.” “Strangely enough, Mom, it’s not Susie I’d be worried about, it’s Katie. She’s sweet and gentle but I also think she may be easily led. We just pray she’s led in the right ways.” Millie put her needles and unfinished sock on the coffee table in front of her. “As far as you and Morley are concerned, she will be.” She started to rise but sat back quickly with a hand grasping her abdomen. Tyne sat upright, ready to go to her aunt’s aid. “Are you all right, Auntie?” Millie’s face had paled, but she relaxed and forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes, I think so. Just a stitch in my side. I’m fine.” She reached for the coffee table, but Tyne gently touched her hand. “Sit for a minute until you feel better. I’ll wash up the tea things.” She collected their cups and plates and carried them to the kitchen. As she ran water into the enamel sink, Tyne said a silent prayer for her aunt. And suddenly she realized there had been something different about Aunt Millie recently. She didn’t have her usual spark, and it was obvious she had been losing weight. Tyne dried the dishes and hung the tea towel over the bar on the oven door, all the while berating herself for being unaware of changes in her aunt. Had her nursing skills deteriorated so much that she didn’t notice something so basic about one of her own family? Where had her attention been? Was she so absorbed in the children’s needs that she hadn’t looked beyond them to the senior people in her life? Maybe it was time she returned to work to brush up on the things that used to be second nature to her. One thing she knew – from now on she would spend more time with Aunt Millie than she had in recent months. And Rachael would have to step up and help with the twins. And maybe, just maybe, that would also solve the problem of the amount of time she spent with Lyssa.
As crafty as logos is so it hides the secret of survival. It hides between its lines who wounded your heart who dirtied your stars; logos will become a false witness that you’ll regain the reflection of love. It organizes your defence and your exoneration since you sacrificed the secret of immortality for a momentary meeting in heavens, and it makes you forget your daily diet with an imaginative verse of a poem: ephemeral, raw. You announce with chosen antithesis: I’m content with momentary poetry. Leaving behind the loss you search for new techniques to hymn eyes and other eyes for as long as yours remain open, you say: I still have work to do.
Aquarius With the star of deluge pinned on its lapel and having put aside the bag of rambling it unearthed the viscera of desert half in the wind half in the light. Suddenly water drops shone on the weight of its tiredness and filled the sun with passengers
Manolis Aligizakis 