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Urgent
Telegraph.
Urgent
{You grew old.
You felt dizzy.
You forgot them.
The noisy nightly gatherings,
the sweaty sensual glances,
the accidental touches,
the Saturday all-nighters,
the smell on the skin,
the sighs before the dawn,
the propagated boredom,
the slow repeated loops.}
The memories of a lifetime they are slowly fading.
They are losing their color like overexposed pictures.
They are memories regressing
from thoughts
to scuffs
and aging peeling scars.
Telegraph.
Urgent.
Everything has been packed
Vertigo
I just woke up. It’s 2am.
The night is too cold. It displaces any happiness.
I hear a bang.
Is it a gunshot?
Wasn’t the war over years ago?
The bang enters my thoughts.
It displaces my migraine. It blurs my vision.
3am on the highway.
I am walking on the sidewalk.
I am wearing a white shirt.
It’s spotless.
It has no wrinkles.
But my boots are black. Muddy.
I put my thoughts aside.
I wear my boots.
I go to the Headquarters.
The General is shouting while drinking zivania.
His order is to locate where the noise came from.
I start my patrol from the first watching post.
The change of guards is in front of me.
The soldiers are complaining.
The dinner was again uneatable.
The dessert was apples, “Grade A”.
Full of worms.
My uniform needs ironing.
But hey, look at my boots, they are shining.
[That night, a soldier committed suicide.
He did not leave a note.
Everyone pretended to be sad.
Yesterday, the cool dudes were making fun of him.]
From U Street to Courthouse
It was late.
The clubs had closed.
The taxi wouldn’t take me to Virginia.
There was no Uber back then.
So I started walking home.
I found them in an alley.
I stopped. It was awkward.
They were eating a darkened type of flesh.
They were drinking milk with honey.
They were dressed in white shirts
and double knotted ties.
Ties like the one that my teacher wore
while preaching what he claimed to be the Truth.
They looked at me, they ignored me.
Two rats were fighting over a pizza slice.
Something sat on my shoulder.
It told me it was time to leave
and never speak of what I’d seen.
What’s happening?
Something is kicking my stomach.
< You tramp, wake up! >
Said a policeman.
He found me sleeping in the alley.
{You deserved it, you idiot}
[Ignorance is bliss and acceptance is more peaceful.
The knowledge is true, the truth is not that easy.
I darkened the vision to really see what’s right.
I escaped to only find it behind an empty page.]
Escape
Where I was born,
everyone felt entitled to torture me, to laugh at me.
And so they did, wherever I went.
Friends that I knew and strangers,
neighbors as well as relatives,
employees and salesmen, classmates and teachers,
priests and decorated officers.
When I grew up, I left.
I left and forced my skin to peel.
I forced my face
to morph into something acceptable.
From trying too hard
the language got confused.
The pants became a tailcoat.
The shoes turned into sandals.
The belt was weaved elastic blue.
The hat was sewn in nylon.
The watch was made of steel.
Despite of all the changes,
despite of how many years passed,
I always longed for returning home.
When I finally returned,
nobody knew who I was.
They thought I was some stranger.
They spoke to me in English,
and said in Greek among themselves,
What a strange man, it’s better if he leaves.
{OK, this is sad.
But dude, you are strange.}
Nothing (a)
Before we even start
I know you will surely leave.
So, it’s best not to become a thing
Let’s be a nothing,
Another fleeting moment after a sleepless night.
But, when you are bored and about to leave,
Please
keep the rays of light at dusk the day I found you.
Keep,
Please
the scraps,
the thought,
the need,
the script,
the one that said you needed me,
you thought that I thought you needed me,
you definitely did need me.
Nakedness
We fell and rose,
and fell again.
You and I,
him and them.
You and them,
with me and you.
We bathed.
We cleaned the naked scene.
With alcohol.
We scraped the dirt, the sweat,
the human scent.
We cleansed the ripened stench of what occurred.
Those that changed what was to come ahead.
So many naked bodies came along.
Some we knew.
Most were unknown.
Now they are all gone.
We really did forget them all.
And time goes by.
And we, we live alone.
We live in weak bodies.
They are deaf and small.
We slowly grow numb.
We become unwanted, old,
with wrinkled arms
and flaccid hands.
Telegram.
Urgent.
“I don’t have your toothbrush”
I am a coward
Our bodies were still naked when you said
that gloom and doom
always looked good on me.
Then,
you wore your red.
I wore my black.
Our shoulders touched.
Goodbye
/ Goodbye /
Your feet walked forward.
My feet headed backwards.
Our backs met again in the desert.
My black faded to gray.
Your red faded to pink.
Our shoulders turned to smell
if the skin still had love to give.
Your lips on my ears,
Gloom and doom always look good on you
Your hands took off my belt.
My fingers took off your shirt.
Your fingers found my fingers.
Close by,
a sandstorm was passing by.
Three white horses were chasing it.
An SUV was chasing them.
A dinosaur was following it
inhaling burnt gasoline.
Behind them all,
the truth was approaching riding a black horse.
Our eyes stared at the thighs of the horse.
They were bleeding.
The truth saw us. Saw through our lie.
With no lie to hold on to,
there was nothing left to do
but for our eyes to look away.
The seconds became minutes.
Τhe minutes became the scheduled
one hour and a half of our encounter.
By then, the white horses were run over by the SUV.
The dinosaur smashed the SUV.
It wanted to find the gasoline.
The gasoline killed the dinosaur.
Its insides erupted.
The truth examined the wreckage.
It concluded that it was too late after all.
The lie had spread.
And while the desert wind was moving
across the dunes,
our bodies swapped clothes.
Our feet walked in opposite directions.
Our shoulders knew
that they would never meet again.
All that was love had finally
evaporated from regret.
All that was left was the truth.
The truth that I’ve always been a coward,
a coward to tell you,
I love you
to hold you tight and tell you,
Please, stay with me.
{Finally, the truth!}
Words, they stick
Words, they stick on the skin; they mark it.
They scar the lining of the stomach; they melt it.
They injure the face; they scar it.
They called me names.
Names that made me depressed.
That made me believe
I deserved (deserve) aloneness.
They made me run away, hide.
(I keep running away and hiding)
They made (make) me seek
random encounters.
Encounters, temporary,
that depleted (deplete)
my inside,
over and over,
till there was (is) nothing left
inside me to give.
And my life,
My loveless lonely life,
I have spent it in fear,
trying not to
be what they called me.
My life,
I have devoted it to becoming perfect
so none could judge me.
But I failed (always failing).
All this pain—for what?
A Story
An old man has a story to tell.
He used to be a bull.
His wife is wondering.
It would have been nice to forget
what they made her believe she needed.
Their grandchild is stoned.
He says that he just wants to flow.
He demands not to be burdened by any purpose.
He is thinking of naked bodies while he sleeps.
Tomorrow, they will shut the doors.
They will secretly burn all their emotions.
They will place them in Egyptian Canopic jars.
Apparently, the priest declared it.
It’s official.
All earthy pleasures are forbidden.
They are the source of all the evils.
Later, they will sit on the veranda motionless.
The afternoon sun will be scorching hot.
It is summer after all.
There is no point in striving for anything.
They will lay there.
They know that losing is ok.
Up in the mountains a wildfire is burning the forest.
A deer caught fire.
It leaps in the air.
It is looking for oxygen to breath.
To survive.
The oxygen,
the very thing
that will surely burn
the deer to death.
One sided
It's time to let go.
I want you to keep holding me.
It's time to say goodbye,
I want you to linger a little longer.
My time has run out.
I want you to stay.
Stay with me.
Stay a bit longer.
Tell me you love me.
Even if you are lying.
Pretend you need me.
Even if you despise me.
Tell me something romantic.
Even if you think I'm not worth your time.
The time I can have you is only an hour.
The time I need you is a lifetime.
The time you want to stay
has long passed.
And you are gone.
And here I am.
I am trying to find some meaning
in this one-sided love.
{You idiot, enough, MOVE ON!}
Yeap
Sipping coffee.
Thinking aloud.
Projecting a notion.
I write it down.
A drop of sweat on the forehead.
A scratch on the nose.
A zit on the cheek.
A fly on the cake.
And ton of nonsense.
Is this supposed to be poetry?
{Finally, you got it.}
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