Forgetfullness With my loving heart I got to know you, wild forest. I drank your secret fragrance in the kiss of the wind. I waited to pass through you in the moonlit night when the airy ghost went through your branches. I got to know you during my erotic nights, wrinkled sea as if the forehead of contemplation, my thought went over you like a caress and your bloomed edge with the fragrant seaweed would always invite me. My erotic nights got to know you my beautiful flowers diaphanous, shaded, colorful like lighted signs. The heavy dew, a kiss and golden fluff appeared on your eyelids tightly shut in darkness. Now, bestowed onto the light of denial and altered, you show me that I may lose my mind’s path. Are you truly what I knew well? My beloved flowers, the silvery sea, thick forest full of pines?
As Night Falls In depth, there is always a secret impulse, indescribable, from ancient farewells, from far away silences in cold rooms, but as the night falls again, the panic returns. Evil is incurable, and the roof of the house is horrible threat for the ones who forget.
Succession The sun doesn’t think about your hesitations – it wants you naked and it takes you naked until the night comes to dress you After the sun there is repentance after repentance the sun again
Cherubs Your eyes get immersed in the aura of a Cretan and your masterpieces not semblances of men or of women but reflections of angels in a mirror. Just idols of cherubs archangels and seraphs with wings which open and close like a mysterious fan in front of the splendor of a sublime likeness and a stalactite of your love descends to moisten all dryness, to quench all thirst. Your love, oh great Cretan, for man, for life, for God. Here the line between the spirit and flesh becomes so indistinguishable so tragically vague here the aura of man and the shadow of god fuse into a ripple of gray air into the sadness of a beacon tears freely cascade and overwhelm the afternoon heat love songs unheard off before tears that become absolution of a thunderous encounter between a Giant and a man who has dared Death many a time a man who seeks to reach higher.
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.
…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.
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.
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
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.”
Manolis Aligizakis 