BETWEEN BODIES
You keep going away, my darling,
beyond expectations
and in the waters of the overflowing sea
without shore we drift next to each other.
May there be peace between the bodies,
hands should meet in cold touch,
let only air remain after the words
and you, honey, just keep going.
Note
The celestial note, that I am
I reverberate harmoniously
vibration eclipsing momentarily
eternal sun of its possession
vibes and emotion
from down up toward
the intimate moment
to become one with the endless
symphony of echoes
and ancient melodies
stop and enjoy this bloomed rose
you said pointing to our balcony
where spring had arrived
with flying colors of roses
and the valiant hyacinth
with its exquisite aroma
Fast-forward: images blitter non-stop across the tube—brown-bellied children
scrabbling at a desert water-hole/a smart missile blitzing the wrong
bunker/the famous blazing palm trees of LA—but these aren’t the icons that
Lucas is searching for. Pause.
He wants his mother. Or, rather, his father, that notorious mysterioso old
scumbag—or so everybody says. Lucas doesn’t know, his father is virtually
terra incognita.
But he’s certain his father is hidden somewhere, on one of these dusty
VHS-180s that he’s found stashed behind her bedside cabinet. The tapes must
have been there for months, since the last time Pauline The Mother of Battles
(why is he feeling so violent about her?) visited this dank so-called holiday
home (how can a Marxist Mum have a holiday home?); and if she’s been bringing
down old tapes to record over (why does she tape every doomstruck documentary
even in her holidays?) she’s possibly erased this family showpiece.
He’s not even sure what the show was called. One of the words was definitely
two syllables, like—The Blah Blah Show. That was his father’s rhythmic
mumble, whiskery husks of words in the ear, as minders hustled visitors out of
the ward. Watch your mother on the Blah Blah Show—she told them the same old
story . . .
Lucas wishes he could forget the dribbly mouthing of that phrase, just let it
go. But there must have been a show. Lucas was almost in it, if not in on it. It
was at home but it wasn’t a home movie. It wasn’t a fun’n’games show, either.
As far as he can remember.
Nevertheless, thousands of people may have seen it—when he was too
small to know better. That hurts, Mummy. What have you done with Daddy?
Perhaps this is going to hurt, so fucking what, he wants the gut truths hanging
out, there’s nothing left to lose, nothing left.
He ejects the unlabelled cassette, puts it to one side on the coffee-table, on
top of his most recent disaster, supposedly receiving his earliest attention. The
important documents are crumpled, wine-stained. Still shell-shocked, he
blankly scans a paragraph: ‘If you have not achieved the prerequisite grades for
any of the provisional places you have been offered, fill in the attached form
immediately and send it to the University Admissions Service at . . .’
He carefully repositions the cassette to conceal his Results Slip, already…
Hellenic Canadian Literature 