Missa Bestialis

…awakening from sleep
they all travel home within me
and I always travel toward them
home between here and there –
since man can’t stay put
but why can he not remain in one place
for his home is everywhere –
or is it not?
our dead march: fish with no scales
to the silence of the and augment of peace
I am looking at myself and again I discover the miracle:
biped… astonished I drag my feet
within me silent long crowds
quiet scream and this mute oddity
all words sound false like shattered glass
any verb breaks into pieces
(your burned skin your thin line of the nose
death’s mold on bones)
what else will you give us Lord? moving locusts
crawl underneath our skin
penance of millennial sins:spiky nettles
plumb balls ashes and spindles of hemp and
school desks and choir and crowd and applause
and listening and inquisition…

Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

Marching Paeans

The stars go crazy and spume
like the soldier who had
an epileptic attack during the
exercises. Was it true or a pretend?
However he didn’t escape the exercises
by going to the camp hospital.
We shall never escape if we get sick or die.
I wanted to say this to the man next to me
but he kept on singing marching paeans.

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Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, Selected Poems

IV
Decimated from all the magic spells
which proved to be wrong
I fall, I get injured and I climb.
my vase that contains blood and kidneys
falls, cracks and…
sh sh sh … stop crying
and pay attention on how the body
of that man moves as it pours
its precious fragrance onto
the crevices of time
and look at how what
we call curls with a c to indicate
heaviness, how light
they fall on his forehead.
Although burnt up I retreat
trying to escape from the circle of his attraction
while the miracle in the middle
still dances to its future rhythm.

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Introspection

Theta
On the perfection of human wholeness
I practiced my religion and
I hymned eternity with odes
I took my slow footsteps
on the sunburned sandy shoreline
on which all my youngish lessons
I learned.
Sometimes I hunched like
a glorified soldier
and other times
I brandished the ego’s tools
ready to raise them high
to the sky, where my dreams
craved to reach
I practiced my religion
on the wide smile of hibiscus and
on the red reflection
of the body’s pain and joy and
I violated the virgin’s hymen
sometimes I laughed in satisfaction
and other times, I secretly cried
my moments appeared
pregnant with wisdom
and the weight that burdened
my consciousness was
that I had forgotten
the softness of the rose petals and
I was focused on
the momentary ego-driven joy…

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