Long Athenian Poems

Athenian Epitaphs

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls
in their...

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Athenian Epitaphs II

These are ancient Greek epitaphs for lost family and friends, including dogs and other animals ...

Now his voice is prisoned in the silent pathways of the night: 
his owner's faithful Maltese... 
but will...

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Oh, Democracy,* 
You, the most desirable bride among  
Political systems,
Your suitors many have been throughout 
History  
In every part of the world, you were the one
They were after
But
You declined their proposals, despite the...

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Those rarer men I once fondly 
knew...                            ...

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Oh, Democracy,* 
You, the most desirable bride among  
Political systems,
Your suitors many have been throughout 
History  
In every part of the world, you were the one
They were after
But
You declined their proposals, despite the...

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Exquisite Athenian goddess bronzed, a creation from God’s own hand,
Sculptured in your mother’s womb, that suckled Beauty from her breast,
As she gently fondled dreams to sleep, whilst deepest passions raged, unknown,
In the shadows of Milos,...

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This dread disease that has afflicted my home, 
This malady, this plague on my house;
This making convertible the former quaintness and provincialism thereof 
Into something wholly despicable and disgustingly homogeneous,
Yclept "cosmopolitanism," and "worldliness," and "globalization,"...

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Utter brainless nincompoop
in this poem heretofore addressing
I wanna be forever free
and clear from mortal anguish,
and need more than a blessing -
I need a miracle worker after confessing
behavior causing depressing
wretched state of mind
self incriminating admission expressing
emptying...

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1.


In an ahistorical fog:

all the Ways home,

all the signposts,

treacherously hidden 

by greedy men and women:

all eyes off the ball:

mere contemptible bourgeois folly.


2.


The rain is unending,

the wind howls,

the flooded river races,

its banks rapidly disappearing

in this darkness...

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(for: Those who go by New Tarzan) 

We have heard many of those lofty tales; 
Of her toying with our golden rule: 
Of her flying strength across the roads, 
When some fawning dogs of buses...

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Oh, ancient Greece, 
How much you have filled my soul.
The aesthetics of your kind, 
Are more than satisfied
By your beautiful eyes.

The epics of grace, 
Odysseus and Helen’s sublime face.
The war between two cities, 
And a...

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WOMAN & MACHINE

At a small hotel in Vitoria-Gasteiz
working at a table adjacent to a balcony
bounded and protected by an intricate 
wrought-iron barrier rail, I was watching 
pedestrians two stories below, intrigued
by the variety of the...

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The Death Of Socrates
What reasoning has brought you to this place
where death destroys your gift of sanctity?
Before the fall of night, and in disgrace
yes, all those hating you, shall make it be;

they'll label you confused...

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Nick's descent,
            his thoughts neutralized
            words that spill out, hobbled
   ...

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I've traveled from the farm in Indiana, the place of my humble birth,
To places I never dreamed of seeing all around this earth!
On ships, trains and airplanes visiting fascinating ports of call,
And dining in hoity-toity...

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It is thy wanton gestures that contrive inside long auburn
curls -
Wherefore to diminish the pleas of a warm, lustful
breeze!
For though gilded rays shall grace all thy sunlit days 
Tis Moonstrucks cast beams, your mischiefs, 
That...

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IF ever I had a country : XXIX - XXX

                         ...

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Many years ago,
Before yours or my time,
When the only way to
Travel to and fro
Was not with automobiles,
Or cars or trains,
Or even planes. 
But with a horse or a donkey.
This happened in the villages 
In Greece,...

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i would like to 
be a perfect one to
be a Katherine the Great to 

be     able to 
w  a t ch the screen as i type but i am n...

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The very word "anthology" means 
"flower-gathering", or "I gather flowers"
rooted in ancient Greek, to describe
the act of collecting

Perhaps on some rocky Athenian hillside, 
a maiden and too perhaps, 
a young strapping man
walk tentatively, 
amidst the...

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IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY - LXXIII

IF ever I had a country re-made by the Revolutionary
And if ever I were that Corsican Napoleon who appropriated the Apollonian sanctuary " gymnase " and the "...

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In the agora or out on the street
Wherever public figures he did meet
In conversation he loved to engage
Only to find his questions would enrage
He chipped and chipped at their exterior
Their words hollow with no interior
His...

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Aphorisms or EPIGRAMS on God and Human FREEDOM (?)
1. God is hiding in plain sight: God is the background, the very canvas, without which the foreground, the ART, cannot be! 

The renowned Missionary-Apostle, Paul, told...

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said
to have
a face of true
beauty so beautiful
too beautiful deserving
an Athenian beauty salon

curse
hours under
the sculpting 
stylist's stolen eye
honey when i'm done 
with you you'll rock their

socks off
so sitting back
closing her beautiful
eye lids of her beautiful
face she...

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August in Athens is always confusing
I spent the evening looking at a white wall the moon had lit up,
waiting for the movie to start.
Staggered into a church where bearded priests handed out bags 
of yesterday’s...

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