Amandolin

kore

Rhode Island haiku

Ring around the moon
they say a storm is coming
Shop for bread and milk.

wolflight

The fall of darkness
when colors lose their hue,
all is soft gray.
A moment's stillness.
Focus fades,
the night feeders gather.

faces of the gauntlet: skiathos

what's true

I watched you run the gauntlet
with such grace, nothing touched you.
The rubber band man in some short alley
is bending over backwards , begging you stop, to look, to maybe press yourself right up against the wall and kiss him
But no, you pass on by without a glance
With such finesse, such beauty.
The tormentors put down their sticks, shut their mouths,
and scatter rose petals in your path.
©Skorda 2008

-for hannah lee
what's true

Ta Phota

EarthQuake in Greece

January 6, 2008
-6.5 Richter
-7:14 AM Sunday morning
-seismic center was around the area of Leonidio Peloponissos about 150 km S by SW
-No major Damages reported since seismic activity was 70 km below ground; no Damages in Athens
-No major aftershocks expected
felt all over Greece and parts of Southern Italy
-The sea around Leonidio turned red due to massive amounts of mud that eminated from the underground activity.
of Athens.



Ta Phota

Twelve days passed

Chill gray morning, scented with basil,
The priest walks from the church, smiling
villagers follow, gather at sea's edge.
Young men, hope in their hearts, eyes shining
run down the hill to the shore.
Who will be the strong, the quick, the chosen
the holder of this cross?
With a prayer the priest lifts his hands.
This is Christ, now in the sea.
One, two and then the dive.
Salty water, cold and dark.
Hands grasping and rocks and sand.
One hand closes over the treasure.
Victory! O blessed day!
The earth shakes in reply.
-skorda

2008

The past year just sort of slithered off. I wasn’t able to be home to adhere to the usual traditions, superstitions, etc. No resolutions, no promises to self. Coming home on the train tonight I started thinking about the past year. I tried to think sweet things, but endied up focused on things I do not like and would rather not see, do watch, consume or have continue in the New Year.in this coming year:

Skorda Cranky New Year

Spare me please the status cars, lusty drunks with fat cigars
Internet thieves just waiting to hack
The guy who bends over and shows me his crack
No two minute fucks, no new Starbucks, Rhinestone cellphones? Nada
No big mouthed Rush, fake friends who gush, no skinny girls in in Prada

No neocons or mafia dons, big houses with gates that scream wealth
No people who push, that idiot Bush, or wars begun in stealth
Keep me from bullies and people who fight
Small closed minds, the religious rightt
No biased Fox news or celebrity phonies,
Crooked politicians and all of their cronies

No shows about prisons or Dr Phil
Cyberspace scumbags or children who kill
Stars who dance, that faked wide stance, hybrid dogs in cases
Politicos who choose to lie to cover all their bases.

No sushi that’s old, no coffee that’s cold,
Or food in the fridge all covered with mold
No e.coli or bad microbes
No hateful speaking homophobes

No rich getting richer and still wanting more
Begrudging the pittance that goes to the poor
No giant fake boobs,
shaved stubbly pubes
or piercings in places that always stay sore.
-skorda

mycenae

mycenae
by Giogios Feferis

Give me your hands, give me your hands, give me
your hands.

I have seen in the night
the sharp peak of the mountain,
seen the plain beyond flooded
with the light of an invisible moon,
seen, turning my head,
black stones huddled
and my life taut as a chord
beginning and end
the final moment:
my hands.

Sinks whoever raises the great stones;
I've raised these stones as long as I was able
I've loved these stones as long as I was able
these stones, my fate.
Wounded by my own soil
tortured by my own shirt
condemned by my own gods,
these stones.

I know that they don't know, but I
who've followed so many times
the path from killer to victim
from victim to punishment
from punishment to the next murder,
groping
the inexhaustible purple
that night of the return
when the Furies began whistling
in the meager grassQ
I've seen snakes crossed with viper~
knotted over the evil generation
our fate.

Voices out of the stone out of sleep
deeper here where the world darkens,
memory of toil rooted in the rhythm
beaten upon the earth by feet
forgotten.
Bodies sunk into the foundations
of the other time, naked. Eyes
fixed, fixed on a point
that you can't make out, much as you want to:
the soul
struggling to become your own soul.

Not even the silence is now yours
here where the mill stones have stopped turning.

October 1935

two shades of a blue door

2006

the city

-Konstantine P. Kavafy (1910)
You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope --
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

since feeling is first

- e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Song to the Moon

Silver moon upon the deep dark sky,
Through the vast night pierce your rays.
This sleeping world you wander by,
Smiling on men's homes and ways.
Oh moon ere past you glide, tell me,
Tell me, oh where does my loved one bide?
Oh moon ere past you glide, tell me
Tell me, oh where does my loved one bide?
Tell him, oh tell him, my silver moon,

-written by Jaroslav Kvapil, for Dvorak's "Song to the Moon"

Feather to Fire

centauria

Chironia
travels swiftly across the plains of Thessaly
galloping towards Dodonia
Achilles, his very self, is young
and strong and beautiful
no fear
there is glory
But Penelope
knows the other side of the story,
that when
one doesn't die,
one must endure
-skorda

creation

Wherever the dead are there they are and
Nothing more. But you and I can expect
To see angels in the meadowgrass that look
Like cows -
And wherever we are in paradise
in furnished room without bath and
six flights up
Is all God! We read
To one another, loving the sound of the s’s
Slipping up on the f’s and much is good
Enough to raise the hair on our heads, like Rilke and Wilfred Owen

Any person who loves another person,
Wherever in the world, is with us in this room -
Even though there are battlefields.

-Kenneth Patchen

November

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

MY Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Thought for today

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance." ee cummings