The Circle

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excerpt

The next morning they wake to a knock on their door around nine. It is another
very bright, warm morning with the sun up on the horizon, setting the sky on
fire, like the fire they shared last night. Birds of various sizes and colors fly over
the area chirping and speaking erotic words and sighs as if suddenly an abundant
peace has spread over the world, as if everyone has forgotten about the war
games and their aftermath.
Emily puts on a pair of shorts and t-shirt; she’s still under the spell of the
previous night’s excitement with the pleasure of being on top or on her side or
under Talal, and all that rocking of the boat all night long every time another
boat went by. But it’s this brightness that mostly amazes her, and she cannot
believe her eyes which are shielded behind sunglasses, not only to protect them
from the sunshine but so that they won’t reveal the secrets of what happened the
previous night beneath the spell of the waves. Could anyone live here for a long
time? She wonders when she remembers the exchange between Talal and
Ibrahim yesterday. Yes, she would love to live here for a long time, with Talal
going up and down the gulf seeing all this beauty and enjoying one another the
same way as last night. Then a new voice comes to her and encourages her with
the statement: you can be happy any place on the globe as long as you are happy
with yourself and with the man you love. The one who dreams of a paradise far
away in a dream location has never enjoyed lovemaking the way you did last
night. Yes, she could live here for a long time, as long as Talal would like, because
her life and happiness are close to this man with the sad eyes and the sweetest
voice.
Ibrahim and Mara are already at the small table at the stern. Talal and Emily
join them for coffee and toast.
“Good morning to you,” Ibrahim says, smiling.
“Good morning, good morning,” Emily and Talal say.
“How was your sleep, my dear?” Mara asks Emily.
“It was wonderful, thank you, Mara.”
Mohamed has started cruising along the smooth water of the Gulf, taking a
southerly direction. Rassan and Abdul sit back and relax while Surnia serves
them breakfast.
They travel for an hour until they come to a place where a couple of small
bays provide plenty of area with smooth, quiet water, away from the rush of
other passing yachts. Mohamed turns off the engine and releases the anchor.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562817

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

Twelve Narratives of the Gypsy

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…we’re the rivers you can’t
pass and the more
you drink of our water
the more thirsty you become
and you lean over our water
to admire your own image
and we all run like fools and
you think we’re all alike
and when we dive deep into
the bowels of earth
again a mortal like you
pulls up into the sun
come now and lean over us
look at yourself
the wind blows you towards us
and your violin raises you.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

Sarah smiled. “Oh surely, Ben, they wouldn’t ban movies in Nimkus
because they thought they were sinful. I think you’re exaggerating.”
“Yeah? Well, you don’t know them yet, do you?”
She shrugged and got up to clear the table. “Can we go to a movie
in Bradshaw sometime, Ben?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.” He got up to fill his pipe.
She could hardly wait until he went back to work. Finishing up
the dishes quickly, she shoved her feet into a pair of old runners and
went to find him.
In the yard, almost bare of vegetation between the house and the
horse stable, the dust swirled and danced in the incessant wind.
What few patches of grass remained were being uprooted by the
chickens that scratched happily in the earth all day long. She paused
for a moment when she passed the chicken house, a building as
dilapidated as the others around it. There had once been some sort
of wire mesh fence to contain the fowl, but it had long since rusted
and fallen apart. Now the chickens had free range of the yard. No
wonder the coyotes came so close to the house, especially with no
dog to run them off.
A grey tabby cat, sunning itself in front of the cow stable, looked
up at Sarah’s approach then skittered through the door which hung
on one hinge. Inside the stable a calf bawled, but she resisted the
urge to go in to see it. She wanted to find Ben before he got too far
away.
She found him behind the buildings, hitching an old tractor to
a sickle mower. She stood and watched for a few minutes before he
glanced up and saw her.
Sarah shouted above the roar of the motor, “I’d like to see Flicka.
Can you tell me where she is?”
“I haven’t time to be bothered now. I want to start cutting hay
over yonder.” He nodded towards what Dave McNeill had called
the north pasture.
“I don’t want to take you from your work, Ben. If you’ll tell me
where she is, I’ll find her.”
“Over there in the field.”
She followed his gaze to where three horses were standing near a
small dry slough bed in the shade of a stand of poplar trees.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

Introspection

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Incessant
Continuous images, commas, words and phrases, exclamation points, and endless wonder about how all this came to him. Stooping over the paper and incessantly writing next to the foggy light of the oil lamp with his guts in revolt, with his hand on his heart, his mind forever rebelling against every established societal norm, he stood, a proud man, never to succumb, never to give up on human greatness only a few can grasp and even less can fathom as part of their daily affair. This man, the martyr, stood against conformity and the familiar ghetto; this man, heroic, tragic, and irreplaceable will never seek safety, comfort or settlement away from the shutters of passion, the exhilarating apex of endlessly conceptualizing, writing his algorithmic images meant to charge the veins of humanity with new power with the tools to overcome the littleness of man and reach the greatness they deserve, which the advent of Übermensch represented

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

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

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

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THE EXILE DIARIES

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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

“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.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

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

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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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

https://draft2digital.com/book/3744799#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734

Red in Black

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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

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562962

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771713208

Entropy

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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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6

Redemption

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excerpt

…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.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4172538#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763858