Winter Café
Steamed café windows
conceal disguised efforts
of old men surrounding
the burning brazier
recalling old stories
young men dream of
future girlfriends and
exploits in bushes or under
the moon’s watchful eye
and the lone postman sighs
for the love letter
he never received
IN THE OPEN
This comedy has gone too far.
Let’s put everything in the open:
I not only foresee your disdain
I also provoke it.
In the wild joy of my self-humiliation
I skillfully invite the footsteps that trample me
and from my self-inflicted wounds or the ones
you inflict on me, which I keep open with tooth
and nail, I draw an irreversible, toxic opium
that leads me to my death but doesn’t kill me.
It only cripples and
exhausts me.
Manolis Aligizakis 