Immortality
And I swore before the blurry eyes
of my kin to cleanse their lot with
the heartache I inherited, I promised
to search in their dirt for my immortality
I was to paint the bulbs of the earth black
and again, to insert them into the soil
so they would sprout up like new
penises to enter hungry mounds
and to feel the ecstatic mixture of pain
and joyful cocktail of drugs
that put my consciousness to rest
to these, I swore standing opposite
my kin’s secret grandeur
when they begged for more,
such flimsy was their self-esteem
and in their ridicule, in their viscera
I came to know
the lone glimpse of optimism
leading them to their self-destruction
Manolis Aligizakis 