Altar
Our blood fiery red.
When the newborns climb up the golden hills and
autumn bestows its gifts
unto the naked rain knees
cactuses listen to
the unsuspecting footsteps of Abel.
Dawn readies its slaughter and
the evening sacrifice
sprinkles the door-posts of the west.
Suspicious Encounters
Perhaps he was an imaginary person, and for this reason, more
dangerous; I usually met him in the hallway or behind the hospital.
The first time he pretended he didn’t know me, John,” I said to him,
“Weren’t we hanged together?”— since then, I am of a different
than my true age
like what will shutter us is a detail that has gone unnoticed
and time will come when we’ll remember it.
Presidential Campaign
Well-covered presidential campaign
She said with a dry voice
Blonde media anchor
stirred uncomfortably
Latest debate results
about the winner and who’s
condemned to Purgatory
comedy of Erring parrots
repeating numbers
rigged convention
she said apologetically
baptizing the viewers in the cold
water of reality
newscast misinformed
the viewers of their collective
fortune to be citizens of the most
well-informed nation on earth
One More Chance
Your hand was on the car and you tried to stop me from leaving.
“Give us another chance” you kept on saying and I tasked you to let go of the car as I was ready to step on the gas.
I simply told you, I intended to give that chance only to myself.
And I drove away.
I didn’t regret it. I recalled of course all the events but I never regretted it.
I also asked for your forgiveness for a few things I believed I was wrong.
But I never regretted it.
I had to leave.
The next person in my life made me understand that I was unfair toward you regarding a few things.
One has to live something worse to finally understand.
Yet, I never regretted leaving. I left when I had to leave.
When something is wrong you need to find the strength and courage to leave.
And now, although it hurts, I’m gone.
I know I’ve done right.
No reason to stay in something you know isn’t what you want.
And compromise isn’t my thing.
Then the old man vanished
I don’t know where and when
he died or he ascended to
the heavens
and his companion eagle
also flew away from his side
and the violin, the most precious
treasure was left to me.
Play oh bow, play and
create a new world from
my hands in my two hands.
Oh a new race, oh you, new race
not the logos nor the song
not a sound from any mouth.
Only you exist, oh my violin
and there is only one tongue
and just one sound, yours,
which I, the player, create
and what creates the miracle
is none other but your music.
And if I’m a tree made
of chords and music
and nothing more, one sound
and one breath and one song
exist inside of me.
MORNING STAR
Oh lustful morning star
how you surrender to the day
in the inundation of light
before you blend and freshly
spread the footprints of the night.
And more than the moon you calm
the darkness while you shine in secret
like hope that with a mere caress
defeats the blackest thoughts.
Oh how alike to dreams you are,
double-edged and slowly fading, flickering, alas,
betrayed by night and even
by the day’s bright, ruthless light.
Mirrors
You left behind you
the mirrors into which you met
their ugliness, and the closed door
concealing their injustice,
once noticed.
Where do these animals go
why do they still breathe
what do they contribute to this beauty
save their excrements?
Do they deserve to live or
should they be helped
to do the honourable thing?
The mirrors into which you saw
their ugliness, you left next
to the boiling coffee pot,
next to the severed umbilical cord
as proof of the uncertainty
of future days.
Can you now connect
to the inglorious past,
during which
you dreamed to save
this world?
Pale Spirochaete*
The scientific books had well
prepared their blood thirsty images
the doubting girl who smiled secretly
beautiful the joy we received from her lips
our forehead shook softly, persistently
as we opened up that it would come in
the craziness in our heads and lock itself inside
and now our life becomes the strange, old story.
The logic and our emotions becomes luxury
burden we give to any sane person
we retain the impulse, our childish laughter
the instinct to rely onto the hands of God.
His creation is but an atrocious comedy
He, with the eternal good intention
managed to pull the curtain before our eyes
oh comedy, the awe, the dream, the smoke
and the girl I went with was beautiful
during that winter evening long ago, when
enigmatically laughing she gave me her lips
while seeing the fateful abyss closing in.
excerpt
A short while later, a tall man came to the kitchen door. Salvador
greeted him and the two men talked quietly together for a few minutes.
Then Salvador pointed, and Ken heard him say, “This is the man I told
you about. He is the man who has been sent.”
Albert waved Ken toward him. “If you’ve been sent, you’d better come in.”
Ken shook his hand and entered the kitchen.
“Who sent you?” Albert asked.
“It isn’t a who; it’s a what. An idea sent me and the idea starts with
one human being asking another human being for one hour of his life to
listen to a story, and the story is of a man you may have some familiarity
with. His name is Lorenzo de Medici. Are you familiar with him?”
“Yes I am.”
“I want one hour of your life.”
Albert sat at the kitchen table, quiet and composed. Even his eyes were
still. His hands rested motionlessly on the tabletop, his fingers curled
comfortably inward.
Ken sat, took off his watch, and placed it on the table where he could
see the time ticking away. He told Albert his understanding of Lorenzo
de Medici’s life. He drifted away on his words, just as he had when he had
made his speech at the Columbus Centre. He lost himself in the intensity
of the moment – rushing down the white water of ideas like a kayaker
tumbling down a raging river.
“There are parts of that story I wasn’t familiar with,” Albert said, when
Ken had finished. “Where did you get your information?”
He told Albert about his birthday trip to Florence to see the statue of
David and how on another birthday his father had given him a beautifully
bound book of Michelangelo’s letters to Popes, kings and princes.
The letters, he told him, described his relationship to the Medicis in his
own words.
“So you are an artist?”
“I am a painter. Michelangelo was a sculptor who was made to paint.
I am a politician who is made to paint. I have a job to do, and I have a
mission to carry out that has to do with the people of the Arctic and the
soul of a nation. We in Canada wander around very confused as to our
identity. Our subjects of conversation are the weather, Quebec, and our
identity. I have found the soul of this nation, and in the process, I found
many wonderful stories and many wonderful symbols. At the same time,
I discovered hell on earth – hell is what is happening to those people. I
have been asked by the grandmothers to please tell the world about this.
The first thing I want to do is tell you about it.”
“Why would you want to tell me about it?”
“In Michelangelo’s time there were Popes, queens, and princes. There
were people who could sponsor great ideas.
excerpt
Sam thought about the trajectory of his own career, the comfort
of his retirement, the adventure of his new work on the bench. He
wasn’t sure that he could trust words to say what he felt. He offered
his hand to the big man sitting in the coppery sunshine on the
stoop of Poodie’s cabin. Engine Fred grasped it and smiled.
“I talk too much,” he said.
As Sam backed his car around and headed down the lane,
Engine Fred shambled up the path through the bunch grass
toward the jungle. Poodie hefted the three boxes of reds into a
stack next to the cabin. He would put them on the wagon and take
them to Ralph Gritzinger at the market. With his apple money,
ten or twelve dollars a week from newspapers and bottles and what
he made stocking shelves and doing odd jobs for Gritzinger, he
was all right, he thought. He had a place to stay and people who
helped him. The YMCA let him swim laps in the indoor pool now
that the city pool was closed for the season. He wondered what
would happen to a man like him in another country, another time.
What would the Egyptians 4000 years ago have done with an
undersized deaf man whose talk was hard to understand, who
walked badly? Would the Pharaoh’s master builders have wanted
him to work on the pyramids? Maybe, he thought, if he was lucky.
Most likely, he would starve. He walked out into the field where
the orchard used to be and turned to face his cabin and trees. If he
was from a nice neighborhood in town, wouldn’t he think the
cabin was too small, too run down and dirty for anyone to live in,
with no running water and no bathroom? If he were an Egyptian
slave from 2680 BC, wouldn’t he think that living in such a place
would be a blessing?
He was blessed, he told himself; a lucky man. He would hate the
jobs the school for the deaf wanted him to take, fixing furniture,
repairing shoes, inside all the time, stuck in a routine. Poodie
thought about how hard most folks in the valley worked to pay for
their houses, buy their cars, raise their children. He thought about
Dan and Ruth Thorp losing their orchard and their house.
Manolis Aligizakis 