27th of November A new order on the wooden door of the cookhouse. We had agreed on frugality. Saturday passed with a tin rusted moon. A dog-cloud chews on our sleep. We always have a headache on Sunday. Smoke rises from within. Smoking is a pretention. We eat, sweep, sleep. The blind man keeps vigil gropes the air with his hands.
28th of November Deck of cards with no numbers the unarmed Jack the Queens chew naphtha we left a word behind the inversion nothing but an overcoat buttoned to the neck.
“In what way is he different?” Padraig’s knees, as he sat on the wooden chair, touched Caitlin’s momentarily. He turned to one side and crossed his legs. “I can’t imagine Finn ever changing.” He said this to reassure Caitlin, but his voice held little conviction. He recalled the wrinkles and the grizzled hair, the tired eyes and the wasted face. He remembered the bitterness that Finn could not hide on the night of the homecoming party and the violent anger on the day he ordered Padraig out of the house. And Padraig heard, as he had a thousand times, Finn’s deep voice saying, “I’m not only ailing, Padraig. The truth is, I’m dying.” He had lived more than a full year since then. “Finn should have died a long time ago,” Dr Starkey told Padraig. “But that old warrior doesn’t know how to quit.” Sadly the doctor shook his head. “He won’t be fighting death much longer though. Not now. He’s taken too much punishment, Padraig. The referee’s about to stop the contest.” “How much longer?” Padraig asked, instantly apprehensive. “I am not the referee,” Dr Starkey replied. “By my watch the fight should already have ended. Personally I’d have stopped it long ago. As it is, I’d give Finn days now, rather than weeks. Certainly not another month. Even with treatment, if he’d ever agree to it. Which he won’t, of course.” God won’t let him die yet, Padraig thought to himself, his apprehension mounting to panic. He can’t. I have to complete my mission first. I have to save Finn’s soul before God destroys his corrupt old body. “My father is a sick man.” Caitlin’s voice brought Padraig back to the present. “I can sense it now. Perhaps it is something that has been going on for years, like the erosion of land by the sea. But lately it’s begun to show. And his personality is changing.” “In what way is it changing, Caitlin?” “I… I don’t rightly know, Padraig. I don’t know. Perhaps age has at last caught up with him. Perhaps he sees death coming and he’s frightened.” “Do you really think so?” Caitlin thought of the painting on the wall for a moment, her concentration fixed on the tallest of the three black crosses. “No,” she said slowly. “It’s something else.” “Do you know what it is?” Caitlin thought she did. “It’s as if he is being threatened and doesn’t know how to react.”
The Image the dogs bark in the night the deep shade of the trees the morning chirp of the skylark the song of the water flowing from the spring the reward, the only one, for the exhaustion the laments the wounds of those who the storm caught those who the conniving spirits tyrannized those who felt painfully of course all the hues of both the colours and feelings the cawing of agony and the soft whimper of the dove let us place the flowers where the beast stood let us drive the true lovers of truth to the benevolent artesian wells let us swear that we shall never die
Sin You asked whether it was right perhaps a sin, you said, that you and I have met in an uncharted plain in undefinable time in the certainty of the void and I smiled saying I would prefer Hell when I would be reborn to choose again the same path of joy and pleasure with which your beautiful body satisfies me
Wandering Adolescence In the game of wandering, man came to get to know the time he plays and gets contradicted the truth is shattered something impassable escapes in the flow of eternity’s quantum races are unmapped colonies the passing of time leaves them in the decay of distance. The body that commenced with the youth always looks at the same moon as you near, the water change route no one knows where they are headed as if we step backward. Each season has its ego each season is but a shipwreck in shallow waters the descendants of the sea and of the sorrow of empty roads betrayed by their subterranean cells look behind as the dust whirls and in front of them the ghostly light full of inventions floats like the mythical echo of the miracle.
…most were ordinary-looking housewives of the gossip circle, and of course, a few were the ones usually found in the aristocratic bars and lounges, ladies with housemaids and black chauffeurs, with small bedroom dogs and a gigolo on the side. Hermes always looked down on the so-called upper class; a degrading and pathetic life, he thought they were like snakes. Those people had all the money they needed, with their luxurious cars and drug addictions or similar kinds of crap, and they blindly followed whatever is “modern,” a certain mania to do as the foreigners did, just to be part of the trend. According to Hermes, this way of living did nothing to improve a person’s life. He didn’t belong to the idealists and skeptics, either, who ignored reality and lived in the clouds of their isolation with the hope that the world would change on its own volition on some fine morning and everything would just be splendid. What he wanted was a major change in society, a change that would make the commoners’ lives better and the upper class more decent and more confident people. What else he wanted to help achieve was to unhook the populace from the iron fist of the church that had grasped the people’s lives and orchestrated their comings and goings according to the dogma of an eastern religion that forbids them from letting go and adopting a freer mindset, Hermes believed was the inherited treasure of the Hellenes. That was the psycho-spiritual hold the church had over the lives of people, which exerted such power that no one ever had stood opposite to, from the days of their liberation from the Turks, beginning of the 19th century. However, how that could be possible and which method could be applied to get the desired outcome was unknown to Hermes. Yet he hoped that that would appear to him at some time in the future. A smile came to his face as if he had already been affected by such a change. He walked as he disembarked the ship. His uncle, Demetre, was among the others on the dock, lordly as always, waving his hand. Hermes beamed a big smile and walked to him.
Lyra Winds sharpen their teeth onto the willingness of fruit with their red lips like next day’s dawn boys raise their arms high up to the rosy contour of the moon’s breast
Thoughts You wished you had accompanied her You wished she hadn’t gone loneliness turns into muffled jubilation Perhaps better this way You have no one to report to No one to come home to Others, you must find on your path You wished you didn’t have to go through this junction of your life, yet This is a lesson for you And for your departed lover
I take something and place it somewhere else. I don’t know why perhaps I don’t like something; seconds later the cloth; then the paper which screams a whisper when its position is changed. Does this imperceptible sound perhaps expresses discomfort or relief for this new relation of the soulless to infinity? or perhaps the subject longs for its old place? A small imperceptible movement a glance, a spark of light and look, the internal-self springs out and moves freely in the abstract now. Then something as an erotic murmur is heard or a little whining of an unfed dog. matter will act as such, I say before my own silence takes control of me.
Manolis Aligizakis 