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?
He needed to dismantle the walls that kept others out. He needed to use words to heal rather than hurt. If he was able to accomplish these three objectives the new Joel Hooper would appear, he thought; or, maybe the real Joel Hooper would surface for the first time. Whatever it was, it would be quite a transformation. After a light lunch and some very thorough horse grooming, Tanya and Joel saddled up their mounts and led them to the warm-up arena. Over the last few months, Joel had been reminded that saddling up was much more than simply throwing a saddle on the back of the horse. First, Joel brushed the buckskin. For the show, Tanya had told him to pay special attention to brushing the gorgeous black mane and tail of the buckskin gelding. Then, he placed a riding pad on the horse’s backs, and over that, a show blanket. It was only then that the saddle was placed on the horse’s back. Next came the boots, not Joel’s but the horse’s. First, Joel placed the bell boots on the front feet of the horse to protect the coronary band, just above the hoof. Then he added the splint boots above each of the bell boots. Splints boots were intended to protect the area between the knee and the ankle. Moving to the rear of the gelding, Joel fastened the skid boots to protect the horse’s fetlocks from burning as they come in contact with the ground during the sliding stops. It was only once that the pads, blankets, boots, and saddles were in place that Joel loosened the halter and gently positioned the bit in the buckskin’s mouth and quietly moved the bridle into position. Joel had been wearing his spurs for most of the morning. He had come to love the sound of the rowels jingling as he walked. Despite his early years on the ranch, Joel had adopted an urban attitude toward spurs, seeing them as something that was harsh and unnecessary. It was once he had returned to the ranch and worked the horses with Harry that he quickly came around to the reality that spurs weren’t the weapons as others had seen them. Rather than weapons, the spurs were tools, and the last thing he would want to do was aggressively spur a horse.
It Was a Beuatiful Night The beautiful night reflected in your eyes and in your songs, that sweet night in your old songs night full of stars, exotic night. The only love in your loneliness so beautiful so evocative became passion in your heart in the loneliness of your heart. Ah, your old songs which sobbed ineffably sweet modestly hid they talked of it. Ah, your old songs sad like secrets of love like sad silent flowers.
Hallway Seemingly dim hallway indiscernible time at the far side of darkness the clock screams something you don’t hear meaninglessness vague faith you carry as if to guide your steps to the light though you only need to open your eyes wide and face it which will be your greatest achievement
Tyne held her hand and coached her to breathe through the spasm. Before the contraction was over, the student returned with a middle- aged nurse Tyne recognized from her time on Obstetrics. Miss McMurtry immediately took charge. She lifted Jeannette’s gown and gently placed the fetascope on her protruding abdomen. No one spoke or moved while she listened intently to the baby’s heartbeat. When Miss McMurtry raised her head, Tyne detected a glimmer of concern in her eyes. Jeannette must have sensed something, too. “Is my baby all right, Nurse?” She gripped Tyne’s hand. “I want my husband. Oh, Tyne, can’t you get him? Where’s Dr. Kendall, Nurse? Is he here?” The words tumbled out of the distraught young woman, her eyes darting back and forth between the three nurses in the room. With her free hand, Tyne stroked Jeannette’s forehead. The skin felt hot and feverish. She tried to keep her own voice calm, but her heart was thudding in her throat. “It’s all right, Jeannette, it’s all right. I’ll go see if Guy is on his way. You’re in good hands.” She glanced at Miss McMurtry and could tell from the expression on her face that something was wrong. “Dr. Kendall is on his way, Mrs. Aubert. He’ll be here any minute.” Miss McMurtry nodded to the student, who began moving the bedside table and chair out of the way. “We’re just going to wheel you into the delivery room. It won’t be long now, dear.” Tyne gently freed her hand from Jeannette’s grasp, and watched as the two nurses moved the bed towards the door that led into the case room. She took the opportunity to slip out to the nurses’ station. After ascertaining that Guy Aubert had been notified that his wife was in labour and almost ready to deliver, Tyne spoke privately to the head nurse to obtain her permission to be with Jeannette in the delivery room. “Yes, Miss Milligan, I’ll give you permission to stay with your friend because I understand you are now a graduate. Congratulations.” The young, attractive head nurse smiled at her. “Thank you, Mrs. McLean.” As she turned to leave the desk, she noticed someone walking towards her. A young woman, so much like Jeannette Aubert that they could be taken for twins, approached timidly. “Excuse me; I overheard someone call you Miss Milligan. Are you Tyne?”
Rustle Rustle of the lemon-tree leaves as you passed under them and the flowers shivered touched by your hair which stirred the wind a conqueror among them and I followed you taking of their fragrance and yours that challenged the lemon tree flowers and I couldn’t tell apart the fragrance of your body from the aroma of the lemon tree buds
Argo Ship weaved on the abyss of our hands ship lost in the angelic sound of two hasty arms. The North wind engaged when we emigrated to the shores of the universe holding in our arms the Epitaphios and the Athesterean.* Who with his finger showed us the royal manner of the horizon?
In a male voice férfihangon The charm of the poem is sung in a voice of a male, you can play the strict rules out, if the outlaw’s honor allows your name to populate the high ground. You search above the world, looking for your own reins, my million formulas are falling into space, dizzyingly – between verses, only your DNA remains and my signature in the lumber room, eventually. Your magic spell, your master phrase’s gone away,
slide into the world with your sweet lap, don’t confuse today and yesterday, you grow in the shadow of tomorrow’s gap. Magnetic charges in the old stars’ brim, wildly, between the rules they are driving you only notice the softness of my skin when my generous pleasure is backbiting. I multiply my charms, vigil must be kept over the deathbed worn, my eyes deteriorate between two hugs, in my arms and you will be nothing but my prey by dawn. I burn the stamp of fools on my skin, the twitching of the heart is often a lethal waddle, DNA has washed away its new code name pin, although you were a born titular, a role model.
same job that has bought his life out. When he sits in his office he feels like another piece of furniture or even like the cheap print on the wall. All this for a salary that keeps him and his family fed, but has kept him forever hungry for all the other things in life which he has missed out on. He has lived this life for thirty years of five days everyweek in the same office and the same crummy hotel room. His life is like a wound up machine, well-oiled, well-serviced to do as expected of him; a machine that uses little energy and that produces a bit of something for the people above. Five days aweek away from home and two days at home with Emily and his daughter Jennifer, who has grown up without a dad and Emily, with a husband on call, with a life in pieces, in increments, like an eyedropper giving a drop here and a drop there, enough to keep one seeing something of life, but not enjoying a real life. Many a time he has wished for a different job, a different life closer to his family, but it’s too late now, too late for change. Retirement is coming soon and he looks forward to that. He gets ready monotonously, like a robot doing things as if wound up, like a wound-up little man that kids play with, with his brand new batteries every day, the same routine, every day the same sequence from getting up in the morning to going to bed late at night. The TV, his opium, there to keep him company; the TV close by, but his wife and daughter and everything else a human being likes to have close, always far away. In his office he doesn’t even say good morning to the receptionist, who has been his smile-of-the-day kind of a person. She’s surprised when he doesn’t talk to her on his way by. She knows something heavy sits on his heart; she has noticed over the last few years that this man is just an automaton and the softness of his heart—the heart she remembers from the first days she met him—is just not there anymore. What a job can do to a person is amazing, but it isn’t her place to ask him about it or to do anything about it. She knows that’s where his wife comes in—when a man has something heavy in his heart. Dorothy also knows she isn’t his wife, so she let his wife worry about it. But does his wife care to know what sits heavily in her husband’s heart? Dorothy has never met Mrs. Roberts. It’s about nine o’clock, the usual time he dials the number to reach home. “Hello there, honey,” he says, when Emily answers the phone. “Hi Matthew. How are you, today?” A question asked for the millionth time, and here comes the answer, repeated for the millionth time. “I’m okay; how are things at home?” “Everything is the same,” deep in Emily’s heart, she wishes things could be different for a change.
V They gather like blown magnolia leaves: primitive perseverance, they come forth at the forest’s edge with muffling words where an imposing seer reaching to the ceiling of the blue sky a woman with a prostituting voice sinfully stands up front. Silence cuts through the hardest flesh and fear pierce sight, the seer chews three magic leaves, shrub’s undulating curse suffuses, as she utters strange words a mesmerizing sentence: meaningless words dressed in passion; words killing dreams under the half-burnt oak; the omega concept listening to almost half-truths bewilderment and nascent faith appear entering in all grandeur, like a phantasm. Behold, the Troglodyte’s first church is morphed. Behold, the religious bureaucracy appears.
Manolis Aligizakis 