POEMS-1
Thursday, May 04, 2007
Heeling ... the soul
A wry smile studded with tiny
wooden pegs.
(How do they taste? I wonder!)
He pinched one peg out,
fixed it on the heel
of a shoe
and hit it with his hammer.
Thud! Thud!
One in.
Count: two, three, four, five.
The shoe is ready, heeled.
Cobbler, can you do the same with my soul?
Can you heal my soul?
Of course, I can, the cobbler said.
He swooped me up in his brawny arms,
stretched me on a cross and ...
Count: one, two, three, four.
Four nails.
Vinegar taste.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Bower
My aching blue buds my sinews empower
when you are not looking,
when you are naked sleeping
up there – to launch me into your misty bower.
Think not that I must climb the turret tower,
or fret at openings barred with wrought iron grille,
for I can blink to naught all hindrance at will
and nest upon your balcony sill –
a groin-glowing eager bower.
Blast my desire for you, little flower!
as you innocently roll from side to side,
for ever in my dreams a maiden bride
and to mischief at dawn always a bower.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, February 16, 2007
Your Hands
I’m jealous of roses and jasmines
of their lingering fragrance in your hands
and of everything you touch and make or do
with your ivory semaphores of love.
Let your fingers spend your heart’s treasure
in prodigal bouts through my hair
and, in closing ranks, run down against
the stubble of my cheeks.
Hold me there, bound by your opiate charm,
until the raging winds of desire bring this hull
of a body to ruin – forever trapped
in the barrier reef of your eyes.
---------------------------------------------
Thursday, February 1, 2007
An old photograph
Despite the blur and lag of forty years,
this photograph of women five –
the four in black and gray
and just as old as hills with caps of snow in May,
and one, the young, inclined her bel esprit to hide –
brings back a lot of memories and tears.
With crochet hooks and needles long in hand,
they sat on wicker chairs across my home
and knitted yarns and gossiped as in band,
“O my, isn’t she a cow and he a gnome!”
about an oddly looking couple under public gaze,
but never meant to offend a soul in fulsome praise.
And I, a boy engrossed in prankish play,
would sneak behind their backs to cut with shears
I used in art – to their subdued dismay,
the yarns squirming up from sluggish skeins
to slothful digits wrestling hooks and needles
for slip knots and cast ons and stitches.
Until one summer day the young
caught me in the act and spoke in bitter tongue:
“Our lives are yarns or threads and prone to shred
while weaving patterns by Design
to which all must needs one day resign.
Even the bad and the good and the worst and the best
can not evade or skirt this High and Nigh Behest
entrusted with the Fates whose task is time impressed
(to goad people to their timely bane).
Now, if you a boy as pure in heart as pain in the @ss
insist on your portentous play and us to harass
the Fates will surely follow suit – alas!
and cut our threads before our time comes.”
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Transformation ... at Lust
Flesh, she –
fullness, roundness.
Contour's the culprit, the serpent.
Bloodshot desirous of flesh,
I kneel like
a Camel
and she rides and, lo!
I'm transformed,
a Lion.
I devour the journey up
to a lush, wet oasis.
Satiated at journey’s end
I'm transformed again,
an Eagle.
Blind to her geometries,
I soar
to claw-frosting heights
until vision succumbs to contours again,
and am desirous of flesh,
a Camel, a Lion, an Eagle again.
--------------------------------------------
to be publisbed by ken*again in summer 2007
Sunday, December 03, 2006
The Mosaic of my Shattered Ego
When I think of you chained
To someone else's happiness,
The twinkling bells of light,
Fastened to the sable mantle of the night,
Rain on earth their evanescent tears.
If you were mine,
And mine alone ,
Everything would fall in place proper:
The mosaic of my shattered ego.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, November 27, 2006
You and I
Dear Adriana – old lady from the days of yore –
In rain or shine, you and I and many more
Live to toil over many a work and chore:
You peddling flowers from door to door,
And I bound the meaning of words to explore.
Some day, dear Adriana – be it far or near it matters not –,
The ferryman shall carry us over to the other shore,
To the land where pain is pain no more,
But a garden resplendent in shape and form
Where words are flowers that never rot.
-----------------------------------------
Revision of "Translator in Low Spirits"
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Come, O Night!
Come, O Night!
Through the eyes of the Tiger bright.
Chase away the sun’s lingering scent
From the crown of forests canopied high,
From the dales’ deep-rutted spine,
And lay your sable mantle over town, city and sea.
O Night!
Once we could hear the silent gallop
Of your stately Hrimfaxi.
Now, all is an endless drone from Trojan horses
Which race through the bituminous arteries of our brains
Spewing their treacherous load from lungs of iron.
O Night, womb of Day,
Light-footed and gently flowing!
Subdue the edges of the mundane,
Dissolve apparent multiplicities,
Deliver us from the tyranny of the sun
And in your wake reinstate the kingdoms of fire!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, November 12, 2006
To the People of Modern Greece
Divided you fall and die a slow death day after day.
United you shall live, live decently.
Unite and they shall cower at your strength!
Unite and they shall sow the whirlwind!
But wait …! Who are THEY?
Be they the men of office YOU install
To positions of plenty-to-eat-and-plenty-to-steal?
Perhaps those with the gilded mitres and pastoral staffs,
The champions of bigotry and obscurantism?
Perchance the heinous, blood-sucking leeches, our
Institutional money lenders?
No, no my fellow Greeks.
Look inside you! There prowls the enemy:
YOUR ignorance, this invisible worm
Which your political & religious leaders
So meticulously feed with “free education”
And indoctrination.
How to unite then, if you don’t know how?
How to unite to set yourselves free, to prosper
To have a true Democratic governance?
Alas, there is no answer to this question:
“Greeks” and “unity” are contradictio in terminis
Points antipodal on a vicious circle.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Oh Night!
Oh Night!
Are you with us?
My love says you are come;
She lit a candle to prove it.
I can feel it;
I can smell it.
But I cannot see you, Oh Night!
It’s so dark; I cannot see you.
Will I ever?
Oh Night!
Are you with us?
My love says you are upon me;
She set me on fire to prove it.
I can feel it;
I can smell it.
Oh Night!
You are upon me, so ravishing, so ravenous!
I can see you now.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Fallen Angel
You gambled, pursuing a dream, and lost.
You hurt me by breaking your vows,
And now I must punish myself by punishing you.
I will cast you out of this domain,
To the netherworld of dreams
From where you shall rule my nights:
A fallen angel,
But an angel to me nevertheless.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Translator in Low Spirits
Dear Adriana – old lady from the days of yore –
In rain or shine you and I and many more
Live to toil in pain over many a work and chore:
You peddling flowers from door to door,
And I bound the meaning of words spoken and writ to explore.
Some day, dear Adriana – be it far or near it matters not –,
The ferryman shall carry us over to the other shore
To the land where pain is pain no more
But a garden long and wide as far as the blind eye can trot,
Where words are flowers that never rot.
published by ThanalOnline
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The Book of Judas
Three days before the Passover
My Master sent for me to say:
“Judas, I bid thee search the market for
A Book unwrit and cloth’d in red.”
“Where in the market, Master, and
What inscription this Unscripture bears?
And pray tell me to what end
Thy bid compares.”
The Master laughed and raised his hands
to touch mine throbbing neck in loving care,
and to ears propensed to obedience
whispered thus – seeing not, but ever aware
of eleven spiteful looks of burning glare.
“Beloved Judas,
on such forward and guileless lips as yours,
little angels test their airy wings
before they descend on punic scripts
that hold people's minds in eclipse.
The Book is in the care of Uriel,
A vender blind and ear lobeless.
Ask him if he the name of the Lord ever sung,
and he to thee his outer garment shall impart,
the left pocket of which is committed to conceal
the Book; and the message Uriel shall speak.”
Thro’ the dimmed Jerusalem market stalls,
deaf to the din and clatter and calls,
I searched for Uriel whose nipped ears never tire
in the service of my Master’s desire.
“Who’s Uriel?” I asked a boy in rags and in fingers fast.
The boy raised his grubby digit and pointed
to the stall of the market’s biblioclast.
And there stood the man whose visage I searched.
“Hast thou the name of the Lord ever sung?”
I asked Uriel in manner rather urgent.
He rolled his cloudy eyes to the sky strung
with pins of shimmering light and
handed me his garment in acknowledgement.
Then, he spoke thus:
“Thirty pieces of silver, Judas,
thirty Shekels of Tyre,
are yours to receive
for a kiss to surrender thine Sire.”
-----------------------------------
George Trialonis (c) 2006
Published by ken*again Fall 2006
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Must I?
To create; that is our banner.
To create, for we shall die.
How sad this knowledge is.
Hope is hidden in a lie.
Human Law
A little flower is sick:
The bees are kept away
By an overly protective hand,
But neither the sun, nor earth
Can sustain alone
A life so simple and so short
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Reinventing the Wheel
The Pyramids are standing upside down.
There are millions of possibilities in there,
When I say “I am neither here nor there.”
Requests for proof will let you down.
Author E-mail: gtrialonis(at)gmail.com