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Goa
The unexplained heat-Summer
unexplored country unfolding,
a mystery for Christopher Columbus. We drank white wine from a green bottle
in the shape of a fish.
Was it cruel to drink wine
from the soul of a fish’s innocence? Lost in our own land,
drinking fish wine
to quench the unknown. We hear only the crickets’
shrill and constant song
in crescendos
masking the invisible shield of heat. Downstairs,
in the moist darkness,
an insect as large as a fist,
triple strands of wings,
flies fitfully,
We try to catch it in a butterfly net,
but it eludes us.
In purposeful revenge it flies about our faces,
aiming, well acquainted with our fear, it seems,
of its grotesque, pre-historic body. While in the country Christopher Columbus
meant to discover,
you discover, alone.
finding white sand,
the fisher man, and his fishing boat,
who carries the soul of fishermen
from century to century. You ride a bicycle on the wet sand. Goa. You meet a bird in Goa. You read and from the balcony,
the ocean expands
as you bore into the vastness for miles.
Are we on the other side? The bird watches
from the wire that stretches though the garden.
Iridescent feathers of aqua,
the beak, so exaggerated, ochre. Someone says it’s a King Fisher.
Jennifer Robin McConnell |
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Illustration by Paul Grillo |
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Heart Wanderer
Picking wildflowers from an ocean of thought
to plant in the desert of memory
Walking on glass that becomes violet at each
step
floating through dimensions unseen
Heart Wanderer
Falling though a window of silver rain
plummeting into fields of caress
harvesting the ethereal
collapsing into sweet slumber
Tara Del Maestro |
Poems by Dino Kotsiopoulos. Photographs by Mark Dengler
(The following poems and photography are from Illuminations is Many Things, by Dino Kotsiopoulos and Mark Dengler)
Elvis Song part 1
She meets me like a mirror;
a different make than
Alice’s wondrous glass,
but nearly as strong.
She reflects a younger
image, though not a
true one.
I see who I should have
been, and who I want to be,
but not who I was.
My true reflection
would not have cared
to wonder what she was in me.
And what does she see?
Am I some vision to her?
Does she see possibilities
that I overlook?
I speak to the glass,
Who am I?
You must see something
(catch all light,
but release it),
something I miss.
Be true in your reflection. |
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Elvis Song part 2
I’m looking at you
to see myself,
I’m looking to you for... Not an answer,
just some clue.
I don’t even know
what to ask, what to look for,
Your light enters my eyes (illumination is many things) .
but you are not the source,
just a reflection as am I.
The source is the sun and
all it implies:
light, warmth, growth.
You show me life with
all its joys and sorrows.
I see the sun in you,
for I cannot look directly
upon it.
So I implore,
reflect well and true,
and I will honor your light. |
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To Mary Jean
There is a cold place
where time is not
adorned on walls,
where everyone is
a stranger
and everyone looks at you
or through you.
And in this place,
you must hold on to
yourself with inner arms
or your soul will be lost,
and your body
will grow cold,
and you will be
forced to look at
the real people
with jealous eyes. |
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Line
On the forever blue,
deep as wide and
heavy as death worries.
Slowly witness the dying of
yellow and the
coming of black
(”Orange!” it pleads, “Pink!”)
Broken black, spotted black,
shotgun holes in the
celestial dome
letting in sprinkles of God.
Pinholes in a paper held to light.
Slate blue heavy, perforated black,
and the gossamer horizon line
like some expansive divider.
Neither matter nor energy
Just a notion, an idea.
Mind trick of illusion at best.
Unreachable and untouchable,
but real enough to tear
Heaven from Earth. Separate, then spend
whisper quiet nights trying to
hammer and nail thoughts into
an everyman’s Jacob’s ladder. |
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The Tired Man
The tired man stops walking.
He sits down, bones creaking.
Pulling a canteen from his
backpack, he sips stale water.
He speaks, seemingly to no one:
“The road is a long one to
travel, my friend,
it is hard to walk slow.”
Surprisingly, his shadow answers,
“May patience travel beside you.”
The tired man reflects upon his past:
“Patience has been with me
for many years, but I fear
she will leave me before I
reach my destination.”
The tired man weeps
Salty tears, and his shadow weeps
Tears of light. |
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Amen
I still wish my ifs and maybes,
even though it isn’t right.
In the quiet cover of darkness
too empty to distract,
I wonder:
Don’t you still? Won’t you, will you? (please)
Do you know how far I fell tonight?
So far that I can’t see you anymore.
But I can feel you still,
yes, of course and always,
and maybe even forever.You started with a touch
so many smiles ago.
At my fingers, in my arms
and on my lips,
you spread like some
disease or sunrise
onto my waiting horizon.
My planted fields grew
like weeds, and harvest
came abruptly.
I stand stunted, stubbed, a stem
of who I was (whom I liked) -
my feet still stuck in the dirt.
You took my wheat
and made your own bread,
your own sustenance.
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To Sigh
We’re all terminal;
Some of us run to our deaths,
some of us just drift. |
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Draw?
With a rusty old shovel
he digs the garden, turning the soil.
He sees the challenge in
his mind and hates it.
Base competition with
body- arms, back, blistered
hands.
They all taunt him,
enemies.
He goes on, fueled
by pain and
stupid, stupid stubbornness.
In the end, he loses
the battle, but stands
on soft earth,
ready to plant. |
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Irini’s Song
In a stupid world of
impatience and anger,
all a soul can star the
night with is the simple
decision of who to love.
Every star is a note on a
grand sheet,
a sound in a song.
Do you know hot it goes?
I’ve hummed it under my breath
while we talked about talk.
It was a quiet serenade.
It was the background music
to every late night airing
of love and pain we ever had.
I think you can’t get it out
of your head until you
sing a different song.
Or finally
learn the words. |
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Cape May Memorial (to Mark)
At sea,
even as a guest,
you see the life everywhere,
just as there is death
under every whitecap
and in every hint of wind.
It doesn’t care for a boat
one way or another,
just as the shark doesn’t
care if you have opera
in your head. Many
lost fisherman
have prompted many memorials
that children throw stones
at in play “try and
knock off his hat” .
Many tears have formed,
but no one hates the sea
like some criminal,
for it gives as well as
it takes.
Where people can be
good or bad,
the sea just is
what it is.
There.
Like a magnet
it draws some in
and pushes others away.
With a soul of indifference,
It is only...
there. |
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A View
It was made
to warm,
to protect.
Fogging when we breathe,
we draw pictures for
the wild things,
and gather in comfort
to discuss and
project and
be.
Thin guardian,
separate child from mother,
thunder from lightning,
stream from source,
body from soul.
Block the wind
which carries the
unspoken, unheard.
Clear.
For better or worse,
on the outside looking
in. |
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Growing Up
They’ve taken the magic
away;
suppressed it with figures and
facts.
The sun is no longer the wheel of a fiery
chariot,
It is but a shapeless mass of burning
gas.
They killed the man on the
moon
when they told us it had no
air.
And thy shot the
unicorns
with the cruel bullets of
logic. |
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