Shower Feels
I’m in the shower
Touch me, water
Rays of power
Throw me over
It’s ecstatic
It’s so wild
Bathtub, back it
Up, rewind
Release the tension
Down it rains
I know this pleasure,
In my veins
My mind now asks
What did I do?
The feel, so vast
Has come from you
Parable of the Parable
I’ve got stuck with it
since the first day:
the absolute parable
of the tulip
in the vase
slowly opening its petals
from early morning until
dusk when it folds them
with a soft stirring
and becomes blossom again.
The same yesterday
and the day before.
Fully bloomed
and then close to sundown
a blossom again.
An easily accepted parable
of perpetual rebirth,
perpetual adolescence
the tulip in the vase. Indeed.
On the fifth or sixth day
I noticed
signs of tiredness because
of the blooming and folding
some signs of dryness.
Luckily there was nothing
to be concerned with
and for this I was surprised
on the seventh day
when no blossom or flower
appeared while
the breathless petals
spread over the table.
Then, the poor flower is gone
its preaching is gone
the whole parable too.
Yet, if nothing else
I’ll keep this
new parable.
Big Procession of Priests and Commoners
A procession of priests and common people,
all the professions represented,
parades through the streets, plazas, and gates,
of the famous city of Antioch.
At the beginning of the impressive grand
procession, a beautiful ephebe, dressed in white
holds up in his uplifted hands the Cross,
our strength and our hope, the Holy Cross.
The pagans, who were so arrogant in the past,
now shyly, timidly, and hastily
walk away from the procession.
Far away from us, far away let them stay
(so long as they do not renounce their error).
The Holy Cross advances. It brings
consolation and joy to every neighborhood
where Christians live in reverence and joy:
the devout come out from the doors of their houses
and in full exultation bow before it,
the power, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.
It is an annual Christian holiday.
But today it is celebrated, look, more elaborately.
At last, the state has been delivered.
The vilest, the detestable
Julian is no longer a king.
Let us pray for the most pious Jovian.
Aphrodite
Oh, if I could raise
my arm a visor over my eyes
as you entered our room
a flashing Aphrodite as
nature has moulded you: naked and
I was awestruck by your beauty’s
might noiselessly pushing me
into the erotic light
books describe and
dead go through and
I came to my senses
your sensuality’s effusion and
your alive fragrance aroused me
to begged for your wild beauty
Manolis Aligizakis 