away we go paros bound; shoot through economy class, coach straight into business, stride on in and fuck it: even the luggage takes a table.
and of course it’s all fun and games against the tide and the nausea kicks us all in the gut and we toss the sesame bread rings we ate just minutes before.
arrival and everything is as you left it and not at all as you remember it: wasn’t the tavern on the beach? weren’t the buildings whiter? barkers less persistent? “Hotel cousin? Where are you staying? Come with me!”
in greek, in english, the language of commerce and despair share the same grammar.
Category Archives: words
arrival, greece, 2011
it’s a set of emotions that tumble: you’ve been before but it’s all strange all over again. between the years, joining the eurozone, imminent bankruptcy and the life inbetween: booming infrastructure and frozen wages. spectacular vistas interrupted by unfinished bridges and tunnels. Athens is rife with graffiti, mistrust and resignation: things have always been this way to some extent where the rich abscond and plunder through the resources of a country densely packed with the poor. pockets of ethnic ghettos form within and on the outskirts of the inner city and resentment seethes as the native population refuses to acknowledge their own complicity in the economic situation of the country: everyone’s out of work but they’re also enjoying a frappe in the platia while they bitch about the latest influx of pakistani’s.
half regret
if you were to do it all again, what would be different:
i would have done it all again but with fists and rage and sensibility
i would’ve done it right and made no wrong turns: i would’ve been unstoppable.
i would’ve been a cop, a detective, a us marshal, a professor, a poet.
i would’ve died protecting a judge, died stopping a robbery, disabled because i tripped down a flight of stairs in the projects.
i would’ve died clutching a bottle, would’ve spent many nights alone staring out into empty streets long abandoned by youth.
i would be here all over again, but with nothing.
so no. i wouldn’t do it all over again. i would leave it just as it is. with their hugs and shrill laughter and her gentle touch. i’d leave it just like this despite everything i could’ve been.
proverb 39
there were dreams, streams, screams. here we were, where was i. in the distance, like a mirage, like the heat that scorches tarmac and long dead river beds. there i was, a phantom of regret, of desire, of peace.
“and a mother’s hand is the single most beautiful thing in the world because it eclipses the son and brings him forth into the world before night swallows us whole.”
chrysalis
it’s all about forgetting: avoiding to forget, struggling to forget: days zip by and suddenly i am here, where was i? where were you? how did we get here? how did you end up over there? and although you never left my sight you’ve gone and come back, you visit and flutter away, you leave me, over and over, only to return, shockingly different, wonderful and just that much more stranger than we had begun.
to meet you again
make a mission of it: curiosity killing cats, avoid boredom at all costs: but do not thrill seek, do not squander: do not mock those weaker than you, do not be sucked into wormholes, literal and figurative: this life, this life is a wonderful ecosystem always on the brink of flying apart because of its internal volition: feed on chaos, make order out of it: always remember: you’re the stuff of stars but there’s four hundred billion suns waiting to meet you again.
with you, of you, for you
with you, of you, for you, for me, from me, from the you in me to the me in you. round and round it goes little ones, this is how it works: words churn, turn, squirm: always look for the right one, learn to live with the wrong one, and somehow in the middle of it all: live, breathe, look, listen, go and come back.
doubleback
there is no doubling back, only doubling down:
a larger wager for greater stakes with thinner margins
of error, for error, fraught with error
the mistake is the wager, the mistake is walking into this casino
when you could be on that boardwalk, engulfed in sea spray
wishing lemons into limes, cherries with laughter,
one perfect crystal moment for all the madness inside you
with you in mind
turning over you in mind with sunlight,
night past, the worst of it somewhere else, the beginning
here, in your hands, tiny fingers, grasping, reaching
out, cupped in my outrageous largeness, here little ones
something new, something along the lines of, along the cracks
“my old man used to say…”
time, you fucking animal
a i see them all wither away like stop motion photography, the setting of the gray, the wilting of skin, the time lapse of bones into dust.
i see this and see this and cannot run away, my precious loves, my mother, my father, my wife, my children, my skin, my eyes, my life, gone, slow-fast, in an instant, an eternal forever, just like that.
time, you fucking animal, why cant you leave us alone.