Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/

Alcoholism

I, holding a lamp, was going down the stairs; I had

to discover who I was, what I accomplished in the past;

yet, the house was still standing, although we had once

pushed the walls down to make room for the one who

was leaving;

crippled men played my fortune in a card game,

at the far end, Jesus of the drunks was passing each

night along the foggy streetlamps, and I followed

the killer wiping his footprints in the snow, since

by now I knew; the woman, when I tried to hug her

made a light gesture and went into her door

leaving me outside.

       Oh Lord, please allow me to be dead and drunk.

       Only leave the stars which were friendly to me

even in the streets where they were shooting. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Hyperbole
And I evoked the Great Spirit
when I saw the woman dressed
in the softness of her skin and
when I felt her children’s soles dancing around
my trunk I was a delicate
fairy in the arms of the wind
before the axe of white man took
my life to warm up his loneliness
man who sighed the sadness of absence
and I said
I was never a bearer of negation
only partner of the child’s laughter
innocent curiosity of the open window
I stood amid the giants when
my gigantic wings couldn’t fit
in my room’s enclosure I spread
upon the harmonious melody of the waves
the forest owl crying on my limb

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763424

Bertolt Brecht | Εγκώμιο στη διαλεκτική

The Gift of Imperfection: How Flaws Make Us Whole

2^nd of November

Today Mitsos received a letter from Skopelos.

Antigone writes “the island autumn

is full of small yellow lilies;

poor Mitsos, you don’t remember those

          small lilies;

you never liked the botany class”

Mitsos wiped his glasses and read the letter again.

The discarded Introduction to Botany.

           is laid next to him, on the rocks.

He smiled, took off his glasses, didn’t wipe them.

I want to write a poem about Mitsos

not with words

but with small yellow lilies.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

Twilight
Rough darkened terrain, footings
of wisdom reflecting bygone
years in immensity
what would you like to smile about?
from myriad pleasant images
migrating like caribou
from north to south and a lone
Inuskshuk standing with a
faint smile balking under difficult
years contending with wholeness
of undressed vistas and endless
hues cascading or whirling upward
with seed husks and precipitate
until nothing remains but
pneuma and a treasured logos
woven through eternity’s shawl

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763033

H Monika Ertl εκδικείται τον Τσε – Monika Ertl vendica il Che

Άγρια τριανταφυλλιά

Preciousness of the Folly
You should wonder
that this tumbling world
locked up the depth of things
and threw the key to the ocean
the generation of the Neanderthal returns
from the spiral of icebergs
visions of decay
still exist in the memory of nothingness
dark stars floating over underground stoas
preciousness of the folly
recycle
the cosmos expands in its winter sleep
the miracle doesn’t care
like the guard who’s asleep.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6