Midnight
Incessantly I define beauty within
a boy’s missing tooth or a girl’s laughter
painted on a canvas of miracles
staring far to the horizon where
epochs originated in blue and
the twelfth hour resurrects
lascivious intensity rocks in
a delicate sway
of palm tree sympathies
dwelling in the center
of its valley murmurs vanishing
as some lustful night mesmerizes
with imagined touch of orchid lips
whipping the back of a bearded youth
and I hammer the lone nail on the wall
for the expected frame of this painting
that I hope to finish standing on a promontory
though He pretends to aspire to something
as He throws down the next
unwanted flattened breast of
the old woman and the wilting
penis of the old man to complement
the stamina of luscious hours
between a war and an unwanted
peace the absurdity of orphaned limbs
crying and staring into the gleam
of my sunlit verses or their sharpened blades
naked melody of two notes
or two deflated breasts as
a limp penis turns asking
‘why?’ and the chanting Eucharist
irreverent and spiteful
seethes: who cares?
Manolis Aligizakis 