Mutiny

We sail through a sea of blind rage,

filling our sails with a wind of blind hate.

The crew is tired and the skipper disappoints them by reminding them to trim when they trim,

to prepare to go about when they prepare to go about.

Our morale sinks in the gutter as the spray from the sea soaks us,

Our companionship fades as we shiver in the cold wind.

There is a strong desire for mutiny on deck,

to hang the skipper on the mast with the Genoa line,

to fix him a cross with the spinnaker.

‘Skipper, the crew needs a good word, some good news, some humanity’

 And the wind grows stronger,

The waves like a wall approach from every side

surrounding the boat like a ring

for a moment all is quiet and we look at it before we start working the lines,

with our hearts overwhelmed by a sense of doom.

I do not want to drown in these waters.

I do not want to fill my lungs with rage or hate.

But my mind slipped overboard and drifts away,

my hands tie the knot,

my arms winch the struggling body.

And the drunk…

How eloquently put, how many beautiful words you know

Your words make no sense

And the drunk laughed and sung with a loud steady voice

Such is the truth,

one more wrinkle in the drunk’s face,

one more white hair added to many,

a burned eyelash by a cigarette lighter brought too close to the face by the unsteady hand.

And the kids played with hulas all morning, laughing and crying and laughing and crying looped under the watchful mind of their mothers.

Today there is no school,

no mentoring,

no advising,

no homework,

no lunchboxes,

no pencil sharpeners

no smell of coffee on the teacher’s breath. Just endless pairs of motherly eyes and minds watching…

This face is full of

clam cell lines,

beach shore lines,

traces of time shifting through the morning light that doesn’t touch the corner of the bar.

Such is the truth,

such is the logic lost in a sea of dejection,

glassy dreams,

hollow hope,

fake smiles,

nice words,

tidal waves of jokers beating you straight…and the kids played with hulas…

And the drunk made wrinkles and burned eyelashes.

C22

Your mouth is dry, your sweat evaporates and the rays of the sun pierce your skin
As you walk through this illusion of a forest the soil underneath your feet turns to sand
As you walk through this anhydrous place your eyes tell you that you are plagued with waterfalls
Your eyes tell you that you walk through a belligerent oasis
Your eyes tell you what your senses know it is not entirely true.

The vultures search for you
The vultures search for your children
The vultures search for your grandchild
They search

As you walk through this illusion of happiness
through this neon road
you can sense the darkness falling like a cloak
covering your eyes
so that you do not see the dagger of misapprehension.

I am your savior
Says the voice
I am the one to alleviate your thirst, to ease your pain from the knife in your ribs
I am the oasis in your desert

‘I am you savior, I can alleviate your thirst, heal your wounds’

The vultures’ death eager eyes search for you,
your children,
they eagerly search for your grandchild in the womb of the daughter
they eagerly search for the daughter in the womb of her mother

If only your pain never ends to feed their unending hunger.

And the deluded pilgrim asks when praying

For the pain to stop
For the vultures’ well being

In a paranoid dance macabre how can a god answer both?

(shh!
They search in the womb.)

Breathe deep

They made the amorphous soldier a General and gave him an army.
I am in this parade and I watch him riding down the street.
He stares back at me with his decadent smile and his white viscous flesh and glazed eyes.

Do not come near me
Do not breathe on me
Your breath caries your rot and the smell make me vomit

The amorphous General led an army of corpses into the hearts of the living

I grow tired of hearing the same stories with different words and different characters, but the plot remains the same.
I grow tired.
I grow old and I lack the strength to fight.
I lack the strength to point the finger at those who feed the army of the amorphous General with the decadent smile and the viscous white flesh ridden with maggots.
He torments me when I sleep.
Every time I lie on my back I see his face approaching in the dark and I can smell his rot in his breath and I wake up screaming.
He led an army of pestilence into the souls of the living
On his skeleton horse
He waits for me to fall asleep, he waits in the dark, he waits for me.

I grow tired of the young and the old telling me the same story
the same plot remains.
I believe I do not grow tired of them but rather I grow tired with myself lacking the will,
lacking the strength to fight,
I feel ashamed that I cannot find the courage to point the finger at those who dip their bread into another’s salty sweat and clotted blood to feed the army of the amorphous soldier whom they made a General
and gave him a skeleton horse
and in the middle of the night he visits me,
positioning his viscous face millimeters away from mine,
tormenting me with his nauseating rotten breath waiting for me to scream
and then he steals the sound of my tearing voice and builds a whisper

“Welcome my blade coward, and die a million painful deaths
Welcome my blade, COWARD
and DIE
A MILLION PAINFUL DEATHS”

Don’t trust the captain

I’m on a path

Like you I’m on this road
There is no light

Seven moons hang low in the desolate sky

We wait for the morning sun,
The bright light of day to ease our tense senses, we stand there waiting

None came,

The moons disappeared and
seven purple suns claimed their throne in the desolate sky

There are the screams of horror
I have no fear
Like you I feel no fear.
Only horror.

Do not trust the ragged old man who claims
‘I’ll take you to a place, uncharted water, uncharted land, I’ll take you’
He is the captain, a boat full of me- and you-like people.
He is the captain, I see him laughing on that wheelchair bumping on tables in the diner and running over our feet.
Do not trust the rugged man on the harbor.
There is only suffocating horror underneath the dimmed light.
No vegetation, a desert, echoing remnants of a tree scorched under the eternal light of the seven purple suns.
I catch a part of my thumb through the corner of my vision as I lift my arms and bring my hands to my head shutting my ears desperately trying to stop the sound.
Pointless.
In a jig we dance, on this path, you with me.
There is no rope tied ashore,
there is no boat no more,
there is no hope of ever returning
and the realization brings me
horror.
No fear
With you

Calypso Deep

I have that wandering soul,
You’ll never know, how much I love to hold on a feeling so dear
It burns me like a fever
I have that soul that roams.
It gathers no moss but weighs a ton.
I have that soul immersed in the waters of the breathing sea, I never loved waters as much as I love this sea with all my being, the only home my gypsy wandering soul can claim. Oh how much I try to hold on that fever that stings me.
My dry mouth, my thick saliva in the hot Mediterranean summer. I can never love such a heatwave as much as I do this one. The people on their balconies and their verandas shouting underneath the sound of dice and draughts.
I move with the checkers, I move with the stones, I move with the men.
I move.
Like the sea that breathes.

Once the cicadas start singing so does my heart.
I will always be that child climbing the pines to catch them and my palms, my arms and legs will be filled with scratches and resin. Oh the smell of that resin, perfumed me, baptized me the lover of midsummer breeze from the cool sea to a land in heat.

I have that soul that wanders on deck when schools of swallows leap as my bow reaches them fast on a stern wind and I feel so privileged.

Shh! the wind whispers: These waves lament a loss of hers so great and she is so many of them.

Such is my hunger for more of those times under the shade of a lemon tree. The fat drops of rain on my head, sweet tears of a magnificent sky, volcanoes on that lava glass body, this is not a sea it is a uterus, it gave birth to my soul. My tormented wandering gypsy soul that was kept in the cold too long, to no avail. Was beaten with sticks and stones, attacked with mortar, every single day attacked and clawed, mauled. You fuckers, every single day, to no avail. Because I am more, I am giant, the child of Between Lands raised in the Calypso Deep. My bare feet walked on the belly of my mother, my toes were anointed with her blood, my hands held tight on the sands of these shores created by the bones of my kin, my skin was etched by the hot pebbles made of her mid-day cries for me.

I am giant, the son of the Hinder Sea, she is not a sea, she is a uterus, I was born and raised in the Calypso Deep.

When she is calm,
Oh when she is calm,
I have this quiver right here, like a migrating bird I feel the need to wander. I get that need to walk the roads and sail the seas.
But she is home,
she is all,
she is me

My gypsy heart in flames

There are so many things I could say
I could talk about the clouds hanging like a blanket on the top of the mountain range
You can see fringes of them galloping like mad horses towards the city
I could say how your eyelids open up like daisies in the spring and within them they reveal the turquoise Mediterranean.

I have hidden treasures within, my gypsy heart in flames.
Tear drops
Amalgamated heartbeats and clockticks and windhowls and cracking firewood
Little pearls dissolving in vinegar held in a china glass resting in the hand of the empress…

There are so many things I could say
I could talk about the sound of the heatwave in the cement jungle
The sound of your lonely footsteps on the cobwebbed streets in La minore pianissimo
I could say that the sea has many blues and the deep dark acrylic one scares me when I place my face close to it wondering what’s coming from beneath to grab me.

I have a bundle of toys veiled within, my gypsy heart in flames
Sweatdrops on my brow
Little pearls dissolving in vinegar

I have so many phrases to choose but they don’t mean a thing
What matters most are those that do and so it is

Now that we are certain that they lied to us
Now that we can see them lying to others
Now that we know what real is and how these unbenevolent fools are convinced their unethical ways are just and right
Now that they baked colic bread and try to force it down our throat
Now that winter rests in the beginning of the summer
Now that spring came and went without a flower leaving us bitter
Now that the ones who gave birth turned their back on their child

Now, my gypsy heart in flames, I love you more than ever.