BRUXIST*
When your body was athirst
to know where it belonged
you should have come to me.
Before you knew me you knew
that on your body I’d find
others’ touches.
How could you believe
that your infidelity
would not affect me?
You didn’t know where I was
you’ll say
didn’t even know if I existed.
It doesn’t matter.
Before you knew me you knew
that on your body I’d find
others’ touches
if I exist
if every night
I chatter in my dreams
that hungered I love you
on my stolen side.
*Bruxism: The unconscious gritting or grinding of teeth in situations of stress
or during sleep.
*
BRAIDS OF FINGERS
There’s no way you can reach me
by stretching your arm
circularly.
Extend your hand back
for our fingers to clinch
where our habits
and petty egotism
can’t see with what yearning
we touch each other.
*
RELAPSE
Come dawn I slap my window.
The sun takes heart
and timidly enters the room
coyly it touches my desk
the floor, the mattress
but when unexpectedly it reaches
your nightgown
it yields and the light withdraws
and once more I need you in the dark.
*
PARADISE NOW
Do you know how many Gods fit in knowledge?
Take hold of thunder bare-handed.
Are you afraid?
An electric current will run through you
and this jolt
will turn the blood into wine
for your life to get drunk on death.
*
I INVOKE CEMETERIES
I take off shirt
and trousers.
I continue with underwear
and socks.
I strip off with zest;
I want to get out of here
I want my throat
to loosen breathing.
I mash the crucifix on my chest
I bang my head
on my signature
I forget name and surname
forget my mother
forget people I love
and my God
I do away
with all my prayers.
I go out bare-souled in the street.
On the world’s ID cards
I prefix blood, flesh and bones.
To the living foe
I invoke cemeteries.
*
TORTURERS
Torturers, kick me
in the face
stick in my urethra
burning wires
stub out on my back
your thirst and cigarettes
but
don’t for a moment think
that you are hearing blows
piercing and burning.
It’s me you are hearing, torturers.
It’s me writhing with pain.
*
NUMBER 049 BUS TO PIRAEUS
The time Asians
are pressing against the railing
for a free meal
I get on No. 049 bus
to Piraeus
reflecting on how certain countries
dump their offspring
on other countries
as though some homelands
are unneeded.
I consider my thoughts
luxurious
as the immigrants’ stench and hunger
penetrate the Athenian
air and intermix with
the pollution
as if the universe hovers
thanks to disgust.
Utterly ridiculous comparisons go through
my mind
the time human-legged pigs
crowd in rooms of decisions
full of ptomaine, neckties and pricy
bracelets.
“Bloody beasts,” I say between my teeth
and clutch the wallet
in my pocket fearing.
*
CATHETERS
One can read catheters
on the faces of certain nurses.
Catheters wrapped round the necks
of patients at death’s door
and pillows pressed
on their faces.
Such an unbearable hate
not even a dustman has felt
for the garbage he collects.
*
FALLING WATER
It’s raining. Millions of raindrops are falling
on the roof embracing by degrees
the house. My worries undress
take a bath naked
in the water’s gloss.
The fan heater strikes my legs
warmly
and down my back goes
a shiver condensing at the waist.
Winter is the season
for blankets. Our bodies
exchange warmth
snug in the intimacy
of our breathing.
The soap in the bathroom smells sweet
to bring us close.
In the neighbouring streets roam
a cello
and an old barrel organ.
The universe is orchestrated for us
lightning increases our music
to a crescendo.
Clouds have brought a strong feeling.
*
NOT I NEVER
Not I never
not
I
never.
As if by verbalizing
denials are sustained in the future.
*
PARENTHOOD IS A BURDEN
Father remembered exactly
where he holidayed
in the summer of 1954
which taverna he preferred
in the winter of 1961
what thought gnawed him
in the autumn of 1978.
Then I was born.
In vain do I ask him about 1983
1990 and 1994.
Father stopped recording them
from the time he became a father
as a parent he neither learned nor enjoyed
anything
songs, scenery, scents, tastes
everything
ran through him.
Father forgot the lot.
Parenthood is a burden.
*
THE SAGES GOT TOGETHER
The world’s sages
got
together
and we held
our breath.
Our troubles are over
we said
the world’s sages
as one
won’t be long providing answers
to major problems
they won’t delay finding
ways of rescuing us
of allowing us to survive and
be redeemed.
All the world’s sages
got
together to be
photographed.
*
A STABBING PAIN IN MY ARM
A stabbing pain is gnawing my arm today.
I must have slept on it.
Damn it that I should
have slept on my arm.
There’s nothing you can do about this pain.
I go to pick up a bag
I hurt
to write
I hurt
even lying down and perfectly
still
I hurt.
Don’t get me wrong.
It’s not that I don’t know what’s to blame.
In the past I’d break my arm
in a thousand places of sleep
carpus, metacarpus, radius, ulna
smithereens
and never did it occur to me
to complain.
However
now that gravity is heavier
now that the atmosphere is frozen
in my spinal column ice too
is deepening down to the farthest
backbone of luck
I can’t even bear my cuticles.
*
GREEK GOD
A few pennies are left in my pocket.
No woman desires me.
All my friends have vanished
and those who haven’t, betrayed me.
I had no children
nor was I worthy of having any.
The earth reversed its magnetic
field
and lost its atmosphere.
The sun fell on it
and destroyed it.
Men’s bones
have not
mouldered away
they hover as Gulag and Auschwitz
monuments in space.
My mother spat at me and died.
The water was poisoned by
billions of years of a stagnant
deposit in the earth’s bowels.
I drank it all
and yet
from nowhere I produce
a glass of frappuccino
and ask my death
for a straw.
*
PILOT OFFICER LUCAS
“Have you ever been in love?”
I asked.
“You must be
a very romantic soul,”
answered
pilot officer Lucas
with a sympathizing smile
as if a dad
was first asked
by his son
what a plane was.
*
WE SHAN’T BE PUNISHED WITH BEAUTY AGAIN
There’s no need for us to worry anymore.
Fine words have been abolished long ago
since all poets have died
long ago.
No one shall reorder us
to be happy with a sun
and pebbles;
no one shall suggest
our pouring imagination
out of everydayness
for our soul to drink courage.
Poets who committed suicide
grew tired of figures of speech
thrusting horrendous reality
into their bodies:
love affairs without kisses
poems without readers
indecencies that never
will be sins.
*
THOSE CONTEMPTUOUS OF TEARS
To imagine that someone is moved
when yawning
is not shameful.
Honour to the romantics
who take tears seriously.
As regards those who keep on
yawning
what can I say? They’ve seen through us.
Those contemptuous of tears make good.
*
HORROR FILMS
When the story reaches
a critical moment
a woman needs
a man
to fold her in his arms.
When the story reaches
a critical moment
a man needs
a woman
to fold in his arms.
When the story reaches a critical moment
the moment you are really scared
of dying alone or childless
never
you man or woman reconcile yourselves
to a warmth lesser
than that of a mother’s womb
and of childbirth.
For thousands of years now entire love
has been trying to enact it.
*
THE EARTH’S ROTATION
Trees remind me of people’s faces.
A little their leaves
a little their branches
knowing a little how to read
the nuances of the skin’s twitching
and
trees assume looks of perplexity
hate, caution, sorrow
but mainly
my God
mainly indifference.
Trees say the world has no brakes
and in summer as they kindle
near
our perspiring brows
they moisten hope with whatever the future brings
erasing it from the earth’s rotation.
Thus are born those we call atheists.
No one protects them
and no one loves them
who isn’t human or luck.
A photograph stills inside me.
If I don’t think of the world afresh
I’ll have to surrender to it.
*
RESURRECTED BY NECESSITY
He was obliged to be resurrected.
He stood anaemic on the stone
and said nothing more, knew nothing more to say
than love, love, love
but the Jews had no need
of miracles
of people around you when you are
in hospital, of women who
offer their breast when you are thirsty or
friends who fall down a precipice with you.
The Jews needed wonder-workers
to extinguish the sun’s light
in the sky
to take rabbits out of their pockets
and be resurrected after dying
amid blinding lights
on gold-trimmed chariots
angel-sung and wing-lead.
*
ECSTASY UP TO THE ALARM CLOCK
Air starts from the lung
it goes through the saxophone
becoming a note of dreams
and whirl of ecstasy.
And as we are getting wet
at a fountain
stepping on coins
of wishes
and as our moist kiss
irrigates paradise
that the dead might drink water again
the alarm clock goes off
for us to get up and go to work.
*
XERXES
My skin doesn’t breathe.
Presently it will die.
By and by nothing animate
shall define my insides
from the atmospheric air.
Once the skin decomposes
on me
my bowels will undergo
sublimation
in the crowd’s breathing.
Woe is him who catches sight of me
when I circulate freely, a smell,
in nostrils.
Removing his head
from the exhaust
he’ll have a clear view
of the heads’ boundless space
in the exhausts
rooted to the spot by the deafening
vrooming
of the invisible leader.
*
BLOODY BONES
I get up in the morning.
Millions of nightingales rub
coconut oil on my face
while singing, say it.
No, I must be mistaken.
The path I think of taking
is instantly strewn with lemon leaves;
termites strew it.
No, surely things can’t be
like this.
Vultures fly above the heads
of my enemies
thunder warns the rioters
lightning, termites, nightingales, coconuts
beseech, say it.
The sun has deserted
it hides in my mouth.
The planets shiver
and turn in the dark
around my tongue
for a taste, say it!
Tongue of earthquake victims and
cancer patients, tongue of
flood victims, of orphans
the poor, the maimed
what warmth and what light
can restore you?
What can I say that could rest
the bloody bones?
Â
*
LUNGS, LIVERS AND PANCREAS
When they tell you lung cancer
liver and pancreas metastases
you have all the time you need
to realize that
you’ll never go to the isle of Andros again
you’ll never hear Fotis Polymeris singing again
you won’t say no again
to your granny’s hairpins being disposed of.
With this refreshing sweetness on your lips
you close your eyes filled with hate
for the dependence of your home, your music
your unique personal history
of lungs, livers and pancreas.
*
COUNTDOWN
Government austerity measures
are inevitably imposed
as long as on this earth crooks,
usurers, bigheads and grabbers
are in control.
Now if some guy was found
to kill (having first tortured) the demon
then the majority of us could easily
go hungry without complaining
so that those few others
feed well.
However, we are all in a hurry to live
tick-tack tick-tack tick-tack.
*
DARWINIAN THEOLOGY
Having felt her struggling
entangled in the cobweb
the spider came out and bit
the bee
quickly wrapping her
in a silken shroud.
Once its innards
were moistened
it began sucking
greedily her juices
before leaving her, an empty carcass.
O God, I am watching you.
Here they call me a slanderer.
*
HEADSTONE IN PERSON
Here lies Dimitrios Mouzakis
who spent his life
beheading waves.
With his supernatural vision
he told us the truth:
above the sea’s body
for a moment protrudes
our life
and then is lost forever
in the water’s infinity.
The post Dimítrios Mouzákis, from «Bruxist», ed. Sidontas, 2011 (Translated from the Greek by Yannis Goumas) appeared first on Ποιείν.