Category: Uncategorized

Opera Bufa

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Fourteenth Hour
In silent moments I often mourn
the vigor of her hair standing
against the wind of an early May morning
before the phony freedom comes
forth with all its equipment
orchestrating the next tune
in a celestial dancing hall
free-spirited birds accept and
embrace it openhearted
animals accept and curl up in it
free flowing winds receive
and espouse it yet the stimulating
truth far from acceptance
and adoption by caged man
conditioned in willful ignorance
such as morons deserve and He
graces him with freedom as it is His
to choose a path other than
thorny shortcut of sweetest
sin that defines profound absurdity
When Ecclesia’s ghetto
markets the word and tosses it
to fanatics who down its
virulence with pleasure
in vain understanding
comedy of errors and frivolity
as I stand like Mistral asking
‘why?’ and the zealot laughs
righteous ignorance and still
hollers from the depth
of his lungs: who cares?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763092

Entropy

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Company of Stars
I know it
I come from the night
yet my soul expands in light
to get to the company of stars of the last return
the child comes from the infinite
becomes time and returns
the brightness that showed him the way
shaking
desires and wrinkles in forgetfulness
a dream that slowly also
forgets the notes
of the voyage that didn’t exist
when from the corners of the road
suddenly turning realizes
it is alone and fleetingly
grasps that destiny left him
the footprints of no one

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

Poodie James

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excerpt

He tried to raise up, but they jerked him backward down the
step and onto the ground. The clubbing began. He wrapped his
arms around his head and tucked into a ball.Two of them straightened
his body by pulling his hands and feet while the biggest man
alternated kicks with blows from a length of wood. The clubs and
boots battered his arms and legs, his torso, his shoulders. The pain
was like fire on his skin. The ache went to the center of his bones.
They let him go, then knocked him off his feet when he got up,
laughing at his contortions when he twisted and thrashed to evade
their clubs.Theywere killing him, he thought.Hewas going to die.
Suddenly, the big man was on his back and Engine Fred was on
top of him with a forearm bearing down on his windpipe. Poodie
sat up and saw the other two running down the lane. His head
throbbed. Three more hobos came down along the path from the
jungle. The man on the ground got an arm free, knocked Engine
Fred off balance and was up and running away. He disappeared
into the orchard, headed toward the river. Two of the hobos ran
after him, but came back shaking their heads. It all happened in the
space of a few minutes. The Thorps slept through it, but Engine
Fred told Poodie that he heard a scream. Poodie didn’t know that
he was capable of screaming.
Dan Thorp called the police the next morning. By then, the
hobos had hopped a freight. Poodie could not identify the thugs.
The bruises on his face and body took weeks to heal. Thorp put a
lock on the cabin door. The attack was the worst thing that had
happened to Poodie since his mother died. He lived it over in his
dreams night after night for months. Years later, he still awakened
in fear that the men would come back.
Alice Moore looked up to see Poodie James’s face floating just
above surface of the checkout desk, a stack of books next to it. She
had never seen that face without a smile. She looked at the books;
Howard Carter’s The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, three
books about whales, a collection of de Maupassant stories.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Wheat Ears

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Routine
Same path every morning
from the train station to the office
two blocks of a walk, three
newspaper stands and halfway
two beggars
dark sky-lobe drenching them
as they strangely multiply along
with the days going by and the index
down for another day, gold
off the mark, the price of oil dropping
what to do with the need for
exhausts and fumes for
statistics that make you wonder
are we truly making progress or careening
brakeless down off-ramps to Hell?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Red in Black

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Shopping
Th
e courteous store employee
smiling and always flattering
showed you two dresses
a red one with revealing cleavage
and the other, a snow-white
that covered your voluptuous breast
but falling exquisitely over your body
it demanded everyone’s attention
the employee kept on flattering you
and I signalled to you
the red was my first choice
and the white falling gracefully on you
to the delight of the employee
both, I said —
the red which complimented
your beautiful cleavage
and the white that reminded me
the first time
I conquered your untouched body

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771713208

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume V

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Whitewash

As the years passed, by chance, no intention meant, they replaced

the white of the marble with whitewash, certain white,

of course, more blinding, more outside what was needed.

There were many inscriptions and designs on the walls. These

days they whitewash everything: yards, flowerpots, rocks, even

the tree trunks, up the middle; it is an opening, a cleanness, it

smells of health the way the sidewalks and the churches shine

with a new classical simplicity, something that belongs to us.

Each evening, they place on the whitewashed fence wall

a flowerpot with carnations that gaze at the sea. On the front

step of the opposite house, Mrs. Pelagia looks angry, her black

apron is splattered with drops of whitewash as if covered

with small, bloomed daisies.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763726

Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

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Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Anonymity
We expected Phillip to die soon; I then understood
that all the eons wouldn’t be enough; while we sat
silently a voice was heard from the top of the stairway
“Phillip” it said, and again, “Phillip” without waiting
for an answer; I tried to discern who it was, but no one
was there, when I thought that that voice perhaps was
there all along, I mean it was all we had in the world,
“Phillip” it repeated as if to retain our name for a little
longer amid the eternal catastrophe.

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

Antony Fostieris – Selected Poems

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Behind our Eyes
Behind our eyes,
silent and crouched,
we look at the world out there
like through the skylight of a prison.
Behind our eyes,
we make secret plans
we aim and fire as if
behind embrasures
and when evening comes
like we do with windows
we hastily pull the curtains
and turn on the lights.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763653

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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excerpt

“Why?”
“A painting that is given is all but worthless. It’ll be up in the attic or
down in the basement before you know it. A painting must always be
well paid for and it will be up above the mantel quicker than you can
snap your fingers – and it will stay there. And another thing you need to
know – you never give wealth a gift. It’s one of the ‘middle classes’ really
bad habits.”
When Ken walked into the gallery in Kelowna, Jack Hamilton took
him into the back office and handed him an envelope. “I see you keep
very fancy company,” he said.
Ken tore it open. The premier had written that he would be delighted
to visit the gallery the next morning at eight.
At seven-fifty, Jack staggered down the steps from the apartment above
the gallery, in his rumpled pyjamas, unlocked the front door to let Ken
in, and shuffled back up the stairs. At eight sharp, a chauffeur driven car
pulled up, and Bennett stepped out. He gave Ken a hearty handshake, sat
down at a small table near the front of the gallery and asked to hear stories
of the Arctic. “I thought you were just going up there for a month or
two, but you seem to have gotten yourself lost up there.”
“In a way, I did,” Ken replied. “It’s a long story.”
“I want to hear it.”
He told the Premier about his adventures and the atrocious conditions
the people lived with. He talked about the famine and the disease, and the
autocratic rule of the church, the RCMP, and the Hudson’s Bay Company.
When he finished, he asked if there was anything the Premier could do to
help the people up there.
Bennett stood. “Let’s see your paintings,” he said.
They walked through the gallery.
“What do the red dots signify?” Bennett asked.
“It means they’re sold.”
“It looks like they’re all sold.”
“Yes, they are.”
“You must be doing very well.”
“Yes I am – I’m very lucky.”
“I’d say there’s more than luck involved. I know nothing about art but
I do like what you’re doing, especially that one,” pointing to a landscape
of rolling grasslands. “I’d be interested in owning that one.”
“I’m sorry,” Ken said. “I’m afraid the entire exhibit was sold before it
got here.”
He led him into the back office where three paintings leaned against
the wall. “These are not sold,” he said.
Bennett pointed to one of the high plateau on the Douglas Lake Ranch.
“I like that one. Where is that?”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Impulses

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Dancers
Black dancers arced sprang
and after picking their shoes
they left
in hushed tones so
they didn’t wake old man
front row lost
in dreams of a lavish dance hall
chandeliers and many
fit scantily-clad girls
smiling jewel eyed
their breasts nodding
persuasive firm
contours swell desire
tease out his hand
before black dancers wheeled
just before he fell into divine sleep

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073565