Illusion of choice

 I pity every being, good and kind,

On the racetrack of eternal power aligned.

I recall each forceful shiver,

Of every popular rule's ambitious fever.

The pillars were constructed from the start,

On wealth and madness, set apart.

And you, instead of growing disillusioned,

Attempted to take hold of the confusion.

They tossed you warm and meager crumbs,

Placed you in offices, dreary and numb,

Gave you money, bloody from their sums,

Bathed you in rights absurd and dumb.

They raised the pillars firm and high,

Above the reach of any sky,

And left the people in the waters deep,

In poverty and plagues that never sleep.

In the final move of this grim match,

They conceived the era's clever patch:

To feed you empty, flashy claims,

With fables of participation's aims—

An illusion of choice, a hollow name,

To live drenched in the system's frame,

And keep consuming, to be content the same,

While the sadistic master boasts his game.

Ψευδαίσθηση επιλογής

 Λυπάμαι κάθε ύπαρξη αγαθή 

Στο στίβο της αιώνιας εξουσίας 

Θυμάμαι κάθε απόπειρα ισχυρή 

Της κάθε λαϊκής κυριαρχίας 

Δομούνταν οι πυλώνες εξ αρχής 

Στον πλούτο και την άνιση μανία

Κι εσύ αντί ν' απογοητευτείς

Προσπάθησες να πιάσεις τα ηνία 

Σου πέταξαν τα ψίχουλα ζεστά 

Σε βόλεψαν σε άσχημα γραφεία 

Σου έδωσαν αιματηρά λεφτά 

Σε λουσαν δικαιώματα αστεία 

Υψωσαν τους πυλώνες σταθερά 

Πιο πάνω από κάθε ουρανό 

Κι αφησαν το λαό μες τα νερά 

Στη φτώχια και στον άκρατο λοιμό 

Στην κίνηση την τελευταία ματ 

Σκαρφίστηκαν το τρικ της εποχής 

Να τρέφεσαι μ' ανούσια πλακάτ 

Με μύθευμα περί συμμετοχής 

Ψευδαίσθηση πλανάσαι επιλογής 

Στο σύστημα να ζεις να ποτιστεις 

Κι αφού καταναλώσεις ν' αρκεστείς

Αφέντης καμαρώνει ο σαδιστής 

Fertility

 The winds stood still in solemn row,

and my eternal dance ceased its flow.

They read a page from my own light,

and all became clear to the mind's sight.

The years rolled on, nervous and unaccountable,

and like a blind man between walls,

in company with innocent grave-robbers,

I breathed in gases murderous and foul.

They reversed the poles of my own life,

and I roared with dreadful, piercing cries—

why did they leave me with open eyes

to the vain wounds of my existence's strife?

My two lovers flew far away,

they left me—Happiness, Misery.

And now I feel a new euphoria,

that cares for me, holds me from mountains high.

Inspiration

 You seem a magical sight,

but however I may change you,

malice, disdain,

black as the dawn,

you’ve bloodied my eyes—

before you come, I’ll cry out.

Ill-fated mission,

I’ve borne you through the ages;

you steal the sunrise from me,

and I struggle, striving

for the ugly, distant

contortion of the bastard-born.

A sequel with devils

and northern winters,

you draw down darkness

with terrible typhoons;

now it nears and arrives—

the noose of oblivion.

We are bent and resemble

a misshapen swallow.

All around

 A landscape bowed on every side,

Greyish drops fall soft and wide

From the bloodied sky above,

While spiky plants below, with reverence, drink thereof.

Golden rays, like fugitives, pierce the wounds

Of the ashen ground, in silent rounds.

Cypress giants stand cut short, peering down

At small, dead, fragile shells they crown—

Once dwellings of slow, leisurely creatures, now undone.

The olive tree stands Pallas, even dimmed in light,

Gazing steadfast at the shifting sight—

A landscape of the modern human's art,

With which it neighbors, though set apart.

Celebrations

 Oh, behold, my dear lament,

as if someone calls to you—

I believe I hear at last

a voice of joyful hue.

The withering has been bound,

the season has arrived

when nature sheds its light,

and sorrows have derived.

But was a solution given to all

in the blink of an eye?

With labor, the stomach lays

such nourishment awry.

Let us make a retreat,

if only for a while,

and build within my eyes

a new perspective's style.

But when I gaze ahead with care,

I see a pitiable breed,

endlessly shallow, stripped of worth,

and driven by sickly need.

Once more they've grasped at life,

lifeless and crippled, low—

yet celebrations echo,

a hollow, endless show.

Early spoken

 Serpent, eagle, and mankind,

Bound together at dawn's break,

Nectar of truth, fruit of the tireless mind,

Scourge and pleasure the pen shall make.

Iron now seethes, the omen's sign,

Minds selected in storms' design,

A cleansing wind of the dead's domain

Reaps fruits corrupted, foul, and vain.

The rays of the great noon take flight and gleam,

They cast their glow on the massive, carved tombstone,

Upon it, victory shields of noble esteem

Of the great murderer, the ram on his throne.

Laughing cynically once more,

Divine epitaphs' measures roar,

A final bridge unites two lands,

Today and tomorrow of natural man's demands.

Let them be insurmountably right,

Raw, bathed in humanity's blood and light,

Ages will testify in hidden, covert ways,

By chance, they were spoken too early in the haze,

And thus misunderstood in their endless days.

Will

 Mother serpent, slumbering deep, my will,

Upon my breast she rests and watches still

The thoughts and actions of my life's display,

Judging which ones might offend her sway.

With exquisite Apollonian sounds, I lull her sleep,

Lest she by chance catch Dionysus' scent so deep,

For after, I shall need assistance fine and slight,

Since the base one, when enraged with all her might,

However painfully and raw I pay the price,

With venom, she will sacrifice my heart in vice.

Ode to a goddess

 Bent over existence's abyss, profound,

A blind, irreverent little man, unbound,

I grope for you, bitter goddess of the deathless sound.

You, unnaturally cold and finely sleek,

Absolute truth, utterly nude and meek,

Small sister of pleasure, elegant Melancholy's peak.

Hidden eternal patroness of nature's art,

Faithful enemy of the faint of heart,

Yet my redemption and heaven's finest part.

As a companion, I worshipped you in snow,

Sweet nectar of death, a lethal, gentle flow,

Libations, sacrifices, all my years bestow.

You, forever chthonic, queen of a palace unheard,

Eternally beautiful, beyond any word,

Olympian priestess of nightmare's descent, absurd.

One moment

 In a dream, spasms found me, deep and dread,

They woke in me a thirst for calm instead.

I rose with tears of terror, stark and wild,

Various voices in a meter, anxious, riled.

I searched for them but felt a blindness grow,

An employee in a circus of crippled woe,

Grieving for clown-lovers, lost in their art,

A philosopher in houses set apart.

I built them as another's stern command,

And measured a defeat across the land.

A bleeding silence struck me, sharp and clear,

As I stood stunned by irony divine and sheer.

Romance

 You cunning and bereft of grace,

In epochs ere the Titans' race,

You schemed to bring a god to earth,

Adorned with paeans, gave Love birth.

Your power craved to be sustained,

And you hunted ambrosia, unrestrained,

But you did not foresee the turn so stark,

That fed and fortified your own dark arc.

Now you lament with feminine tears,

Forgetting the womb that quelled your fears,

You yourself added chains anew,

A tragic shape of childhood's view.

I pass on to the void

 I leave to the void a legacy, a rod,

As I depart with a bowed head, unshod—

To this alone, I owe a gift, a grace,

(A muddled mind in a sealed bottle's space).

Three luckless colors, a waxen caress,

A heart of embankments, few tears' oil to bless,

The deeds of ink in abundant darkness.

Routine day

 When I saw light, I leapt up high,

From the small burrow where I used to lie.

Adorned with dewdrops, I began to race,

Rotten flowers in a hidden place.

Bloodied hands gathered near,

A wretched Golgotha I brought to bear.

As I polished distant stars so bright,

I clad them in black tears of night.

And I moved toward the rosy dawn,

There a strange cross gazed upon,

With an underground breath, drawn and worn,

Upon a head that turned forlorn.

I fed ash to the stomach's core,

And spat profane bile, bitter and sore.

An unlucky Muse amid the fray,

Felled by a wild, unruly spray.

A thrice-suspicious summoner,

Lifted me to the ridge's spur.

And there I laid fate's flowers, due,

On marble in love's tomb, so true.

Call to Ares

 One final gleam, a last faint spark,

My Ares owes me, stark and dark.

So many times I've watched, dismayed,

The defenses of my tired life betrayed,

Cowardly shattered, frail and frayed.

One final gleam, a last faint light,

My Ares owes me, fierce and bright.

Though he has left abundant silence deep,

To chew upon the words I weep,

From my blood-soaked cry, my anguish steep.

One final gleam, a last respite,

My Ares owes me, in the night.

My enemies around me, loathed and vile,

A stinking pack, corrupt with guile,

Of half a race, untaught, base-born the while.

One final gleam, in battle's fevered chase,

May all the lambs be crucified in space,

That you may have just slaughters to embrace.

Polyplexia

 A heap of voices crowds and drinks the air,

petty tyrants claiming the cosmos' share,

demanding rights to turn all life into a sphere

of private feelings they exchanged so dear.

In vain I try to find some unity,

as all my hopes limp on tragically.

I want to shield the wooded lands with glass,

enclose my rightful homelands, hold them fast.

All modern "gentlemen" speak of abundance,

yet I suckle at the breast of paranoia's substance,

seeing around me ugly, rushed distress—

a vulgar dance of new, absolute ignorance.

Waterless shore

 My feet are severed, sharp and bare,

Buried in the sandy lair,

Myriads within the bone,

Thin, faint pinches, coldly known

From unknown, gnawing things that creep,

Inner candles burning deep.

A black hum echoes all around,

Everywhere, the light is bound

In a sickly, fading gleam

On our unknowing faces' dream.

Hermetically deaf and blind,

The landscape wraps us, unkind—

A constant hallucination

Grows upon your mind's creation,

A satanic hill, a dark plantation.

Seeking to escape the chill

Of frozen, weary, bleak despair,

We burned too soon, against our will,

On a waterless shore, stripped bare.

Comedy

 Each wretched dawn, I see you rise,

You stand erect 'midst all that dies,

In cells of luckless human forms,

You thrive among the trees in storms.

You seize the moment by its hair,

Becoming queen of all things fair,

You build the steps of conscious thought,

With strides of elephants, vast-wrought.

I find you in me from the start,

Eternal, divine Comic Art,

An effluence of our decline,

Also called Truth, by right divine.

Empty people

 Empty, with a head so light,

Open, terribly hollow and bare,

Distant in the music's air,

They pose like bottles void and white.

Pale white pieces of the foam,

Prey to every wind that flies,

Smoke from a broken train that dies,

Dead plants in the field they roam.

False the wrapping of the flesh,

Baked in life's weariness and pain,

Garment of a soul in vain,

A patch on every boat's torn mesh.

Incapable of every rite,

Clerks in a tear-drenched office space,

They pile up at the building's base,

To draw a virtue's pension, slight.

Loss of a relative

 Tonight at nine, we lay to rest,

My youngest brother, Fear, now blessed.

He did not live long, but he was raised right,

So brave, he took one breath before the night...

Together we passed many a test,

In my youth's morning, east to west.

Together we would go to school,

Together learned each worldly rule.

Only when I played, he would withdraw,

And keep a quiet distance from it all.

Discreet he was—by my side, I’d forget,

Yet strong in presence, never upset.

Many times I wronged his gentle grace,

For in the end, he guarded every space.

But as time passed, and I grew mature,

He met with age, less strong, less sure.

To some, he grew a bother, a weary sigh,

And less and less I spoke, passed slowly by.

Now I wither as I stand in view

Of his cold marble, gleaming, true—

I think that I, too, bear the blame,

For his early parting, his fading flame.

For I grew tired of living bound,

Carrying his cross on haunted ground.

Earplugs

 All things speak in absolute silence deep,

You hear voices anxious, thick and steep.

Within the waxy hush, all is smooth and plain,

All is analyzed in strict lines' domain.

So many unknown voices hide and wait,

That ripen secretly behind walls' state.

As they were kneaded, they emerge like saws,

Singing all their deathly sounds and laws.

The wood can hear as if the glass now speaks,

The light cries out for all things to draw near.

And fabrics drink the voice that sound bespeaks,

Which they then attach to colors, sharp and clear.

But in the black silence, as the truest part,

Your self draws near, it limps out of oblivion's art.

It formally presents itself as body's lord,

And for straight dialogue, it urges you toward.