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Aye, though I lack the goddess's commitment to intervene for me with spears
And no gentle bard shall sing of it so all should judge heroic what was done,
And thus none may live against such odds, and I neither, and no glory shall accrue,
Still I must ask -
My Penelope, Desdemona, my Emma and my Rosa, or Lilith and Salome,
My unknowable one, my more than a ghost but far less than a wife:
Where can I slay 108 suitors to win your hand? How many must they be,
Before you say enough, sated, and cry me into your bed?
What species of cat must I slaughter and fashion into coat,
And how many must they be? What incomes shall I sweat to earn?
What treasures must I steal, What premiums charge, What rents collect
To refract light in symmetry through a rock cut for your love, and yours alone,
Or to make the flowers into literal showers, a ton of them from a leafblower?
What will it take? What poem would suffice, what theorem must I prove?
What bridge should I build, what moon discover, what dragon ride?
Which of my ears would you prefer as a gift?
To stir in your mind an idea of a man you cannot help but with undying pleasure mate?
No, no! It cannot be impossible, and yet even be it so,
I cannot ask it otherwise, long as the feeling carries and tosses
And makes me live again.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
'til the last moment of recorded time.

A tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

Anna
has a glorious big mouth
drinking beer by the river
watching the lights float
playing at not watching each other
her bowlips, red
tapering for hours into irregular points
so that neutrality is a smile
I could lose my tongue in it
If she were not married
If I were not too
And if she were the greater monster
I would make the first move.

Veronika
Shark's bite, shuts her jaw
in a pledge to allow
no solace to her pain
let alone - to let another
taste too closely of it.
She could push my shoulders
and have me on the couch
if she were not dreaming
of the hero yet to come
Or still recalled the one I was last week.
Were she alone on earth
and had nothing else to do
Still I'd have to be the greater monster
For her to make the first move.

Remember, Professor, You Were Drunk When You Told Me To Go There.

What was this talk of poets, open mikes, Cavafy and the wine? I came armed
With a folder. Professor, where did you lead me? Did I get the day wrong?
I saw a gathering of the Limnos tribe, a hundred islanders on folding chairs
Waiting for tiropites and barbeque, everyone over fifty, and not a one I knew.
John Cats for Mayor on the wall, women in their so-many jewels, modestly worn,
All the men somehow inherit the sea-cragged faces of their fathers, mulling,
Though half of them have made their lives working indoors, here, for family,
Good people, hard-working people, feeling that time will always be this,
A time of relatives, and for greetings they speak still of the Jesus, Arisen
Who returned from death three weeks ago, knowing inside that they will not:
We are Greeks and thus Greeks are. They need not seek another meaning;
They seek, they do not seek. They seek. They do not seek. They seek.
Here now, the old man shall still them with his guitar.

*

The Neolea (The Youth). At Avenue, on Thirtieth Avenue. Astoria.

Yes, they are still Neolea, still in kaffeneia, still with sculpted hair.
They watch Olimpiakos, Bonnaventura,
They clutch sunglasses and cigarette packs.
They make tight-outfit Peacock displays.
They squeal! and speak of Real Estate;
And they hunger, silently, for Plateia Eleftheria, Korridalos, 1997, the Greek bubble, taxis,
Still the old airports, Astoria to Mikrolimano. Peristeri beckons, past the doormen
Another night seeking. Like all nights, the someones, they seek; they do not seek; they seek.
Until they blink, at "the dawn's rosy fingers" amid the concrete blocks.
Most days they work. Then, now. They go to Yoga. It's all good.
I'm great, thank you.

*

(revision)

Where can I slay 108 suitors to win your hand?

Aye, though I lack the goddess's commitment to intervene for me with spears
And though no gentle bard shall sing of it so all should judge heroic what I've done,
And thus none may live against such odds, and I neither, and no glory shall accrue,
Still I must ask -
My Penelope, Desdemona, my Emma and my Rosa, my Lilith and Salome,
My unknowable one, my more than a ghost but far less than a wife:
Where can I slay 108 suitors to win your hand? How many must they be,
Before you say enough, sated, and cry me into your bed?
What species of cat must I slaughter and fashion into coat,
And how many must they be? What incomes shall I sweat to earn?
What treasures must I steal, What premiums charge, What rents collect
What light refract in symmetry through a rock cut for your love, and yours alone,
What flowers throw in literal showers, a ton of them from a leafblower?
What will it take? What poem would suffice, what theorem must I prove?
What bridge should I build, what moon discover, what dragon ride?
Which of my ears would you prefer as a gift?
To stir in your mind an idea of a man you cannot help but with undying pleasure mate?
What man must I be? Why am I not he?
No, no, no! It cannot be impossible, and yet even be it so,
I cannot ask it otherwise, long as the feeling carries and tosses
And makes me live, and hurt, where I was so unobjectionably dead.

*

Katerina Gogou and The Loneliness

Katerina Gogou, 1940-1993, poet,
Pioneer of Exarchia, bonafide movie idol.
A few weeks ago I was stung by her poem,
“I Monaksia” - “The Loneliness”.
Now I feel as though I know her. I never knew her.
She was a permanent revolutionary, always anarchist,
Trained as an actor from childhood.
She became a leading lady, in the movies, and later gave up on it
To set her poems to eighties techno.
Must we all make sensible decisions?
It was innovative, if that’s the value that counts.
She’s been described as a wild animal.
By all accounts she grew apart from the domesticated
And finally killed herself, age 52.
Now you can see her perform on Youtube.
I've been captivated by scenes from a movie called
"I Parragelia" - “The Order,” as in: for a delivery.
In this case, a request for a song, with fatalities.
I wish I could find the whole movie.
But I found her bones. That is,
I discovered her tomb, in the Athens First Cemetary.
That is, rather, I found a picture of it, online –
Behind that plaque, presumably,
Are her bones.
As this is the fate of almost all Greeks, in Greece,
Anarchists and unbelievers, prisoners and revolutionaries,
I shall assume it;
That her bones were dug up, seven to fifteen years after she died,
Dusted off, and put in a box, now behind that marble wall.
One plaque in a grid. Who visits?
I fear to know too much of you.
Do not rest, Katerina - haunt them! Haunt the bastards!
Chase this earth into another one!

Bournazi - Ayia Varvara - Kokkinia
Touba - Stavroupoli - Kalamaria
Astoria - Melbourne - Toronto
Chicago - Cape Town - Beirut
Detroit - Alexandria - Smyrna the Lost
Ports and Restaurants on the Arctic Coast
To all of them, these are the words that Katerina spoke:

The Loneliness...
Does not have the dismal color in her eyes
Of your girlfriend floating in the sky.
She will not ramble, aimless, lazy
Shaking her gambs at concert halls
Or inside the freezing museums.
She is not your yellow pictures of “good” old times,
Or the mothballs in grand-ma-ma’s chests,
Purple ribbons and strawhats.
She does not spread her legs and give strangled squeals,
Gazing like a cow, with rapid sighs
And matching lingerie.
The Loneliness.
She has the color of the Pakistanis, this loneliness.
And she shall be accounted, dish by dish,
Along with every broken fragment at the bottom of the stairwell.
She stands upright, patiently, in line:
Pittsburgh – Santa Barbara – Red Hill
Touba – Crossroads – Calamary Point*
Below any color of sky
Her head sweats.
Now she ejaculates, screaming, breaking windows with chains,
Occupies the Means of Production,
Puts the Torch to Private Property!
Now she is the Visitors’ Hall, on Sundays, at the prisons,
The same shuffle-in-the-yard for convicts and revolutionaries.
Now she is sold and bought, minute by minute, breath by breath
At the slavemarkets of Earth – here, nearby, is Kotzia,
The square where men are traded.
Arise in the morning.
Awaken to see it.
She is a Poutana in the ruined houses
A German nightwatch for the soldiers
And the final, final,
Endless kilometres of the NATIONAL ROAD – CENTER CITY
Lined with the trapped flesh from Bulgaria.
And when her blood congeals
And she can bear no more
Of her kind being sold out
She dances the Zem-be-ki-ko barefoot, on the tables
Holding in her stiff-blue hands
A well-sharpened hatchet.
loneliness
The Loneliness, I say to us. Of ours, I tell.
It is a hatchet in our hands
Above your heads: watch it turn, watch it turn.

(THREE FACES OF EVA - RANDOM EXCERPT)

NOWHERE - A VERY DARK PLACE

A scream. Eva, completely covered in disgusting black centipedes, writhes in agony.

CENTIPEDE EVA
(screaming)
I'm fat! I'm evil! I'm empty! I'm useless! I'm nobody! I'm soulless, I'm rootless...

A second Eva appears - the RADICAL, dressed in black, hair neatly pinned back.

RADICAL EVA
You just need to get out into the world - do some field work.

A third Eva appears - the YUPPIE, office suit.

YUPPIE EVA
Anthropology. Good, good. So where are you in a year - if you're lucky?
(smiling)
PR, web design, consulting-

CENTIPEDE EVA
I'm afraid!

YUPPIE EVA
(overlap, arguing with Radical)
-advertising, event management, human resources, career counselling, content provision, telemarketing, packaging, sales, news, life insurance, smart boyfriend, low-fat car, teach Sunday school-

RADICAL EVA
(overlap, takes on Yuppie above Centipede)
-Prozac goddess, Paxil, whore for money, low-fat burgers, sauna, sun studio, plastic surgery, doll without a soul in a designer church, sensible automobile, high-income boyfriend, prefab opinions-

CENTIPEDE EVA
I don't deserve a thing! I never knew what it was to love!

YUPPIE EVA
(to Centipede)
You really must control these outbursts - being pathetic is so ugly!

RADICAL EVA
(to Centipede)
You know what your problem is? You don't even know what you want.

YUPPIE EVA
Go ahead and run to Greece. You'll find out, sooner or later. If it's not too late, by then.

^ Portions of that are uncomfortably familiar.

Thanks for the poetry.

Project Willow » Mon May 27, 2013 6:04 pm wrote:^ Portions of that are uncomfortably familiar.

Ha, me too.

You're welcome.

Well, if you're associating my modest work with Duchamp's, I can only like. Or are you going to leave your meaning in the air, as was his preference?

I'm going to leave my meaning in the air. Here's another bride for you, though.



Kinda-sorta goes with the Duchamp, funnily enough.

...

Well, maybe not. But still. Long tracking shot!

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Your poetry sucks Jack.

...

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And there is one who dared answer a koan.

Very daring one, she.

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Hammer of Los » Sat Jun 01, 2013 9:40 pm wrote:...

Your poetry sucks Jack.

...

As it's coming from an expert, I'll agree.