Wellspring of Love

excerpt

…the flock of laying hens as they staked out their territory on the roosts
before darkness fell. The faint glow of sunset from the western sky
cast pale streamers of light among the shadows in the yard.
Tyne breathed in the aroma of honeysuckle from the early flowering
shrubs near the house. “It’s all so lovely,” she said quietly, “and I know
I should be at peace; but I’m not, Morley. I’m worried about Rachael.”
“About her being so close to Lyssa, I know. But this hippie thing
is only a phase the kids are going through. We had our own phase, I
suppose. Remember your bobby socks and saddle shoes?”
Tyne nudged him gently with her elbow. “Oh, Morley, that was entirely
different and you know it. This hippie craze is a whole new culture. They
may espouse peace and brotherhood but that, unfortunately, carries over
into free thinking as far as sex is concerned. It’s all wrong, Morley.”
“I know, hon, but we’ve done our best to teach Rachael our own
Christian values. She’s a smart girl, and we have to trust her to do
what’s right.”
Tyne nodded silently, then laid her head on Morley’s shoulder.
She looked up quickly when she heard Bobby’s shout and saw him
sprinting from the direction of the barn. He reached the porch in an
instant and stood, wide open eyes shining with excitement, his breath
coming in short gasps.
“Hey, Dad, you’d better come. Sunshine’s calving.”
Morley put his coffee cup on the table beside him and got to his
feet. “Hold on, Sport, nothing to get too excited about. She’s done
this many times before, you know.”
“Yeah, Dad, I know.” Bobby fairly bounced with impatience. “But
this is Sunshine we’re talking about, and she’s not young anymore.”
Morley smiled and laid his hand on Bobby’s shoulder as he passed
him on his way to the kitchen door. “She’ll be fine, son. We’ll stay
with her to make sure. Just let me go change my clothes.”
After they had hurried off in the direction of the barn, Tyne sat
for a few more minutes reflecting on the ten years about which they
had just spoken. Yes, it had been hard at first, but the blessings…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562917

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763327

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume I

Ocean’s March

We won’t read what we wrote
We shall raise our eyes
yearning for the galaxy’s waterfall
behind the almond tree of a white cloud
lingering above the sea
The time without hours and
repentance has arrived again
Azure echo of the light water
foggy walk of fishermen on sand
children sleep in the boats
and Angels bathe in their sleep
Fragrance of grass and star fragrance
At a distance mountaintops vanish in the opulent sky
Our tired hands are sprinkled
with the new dew
and our hair scented with
the shadow of yesterday’s grief
Mother the world has no borders

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562834

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763076

The Qliphoth

excerpt

Why don’t you just look at what’s here?” His tone was gentle,
almost wheedling. Larry was a parfait gentil rogue.
I glanced at the square black chest, neatly chamfered and bolted, with reinforced
corners and a three-digit combination lock. A black box. A mystery
cube. So what?
“I bet you don’t know the right number for the lock . . .”
“The combination is—four-one-eight!” Larry winked melodramatically
and tapped the heap of papers. I fiddled with the little brass wheels.
The trunk was padded with blue velvet, like a saxophone case. Larry
removed trays and slid back compartments. With a flourish he produced a flat
black disc, about six inches across, polished to mirror-image lustre, a slightly
smaller transparent sphere, and a small brass skull.
Then he lifted out a dented metal box, also painted black, about the size of a
small portable TV. As he swung it round, I could see that it was indeed some
kind of monitor—perhaps an oscilloscope, or a very early television system, for
the dusty cathode tube was only a few inches wide. I grasped it by the brass
handles screwed to the top. It was incredibly heavy.
The paintwork on the metal casing was scorched and pitted, with a curious
radial symmetry in the halo of discoloration. A three-core cable with frayed
ends was wound tightly around the base, obscuring some calibrated dials and
controls on the front panel. I thought of the war surplus electronic gear I’d
hoarded as a kid, which Pauline had just thrown out, as no hypothetical child
of hers was going to toy with military/ industrial junk.
I peered at the slots and sockets at the side, squinted at the stylised
eye-in-triangle motif embossed on the back plate—and the hand-painted lettering:
AETHERIC VISUALISER MK I.
Then I studied the dials, marked off in decimal units with engraved lettering.
Vibrationary Rate: Wave Function: Field Strength. The toggle switches were
unlabelled. A blue button was mounted beneath them. Idly I pressed it, like a
five-year old pressing buttons in the Science Museum.The box gave a dead click.
“Probably full of clockwork and plastic explosive”, murmured Larry
serenely. “You can slide off the back plate and look at the gizzards if you like.”
I stared at bulbous dirt-furred housings and faint lettering: Do not attempt to
dismantle any component in this AV unit. For full operational function this AV unit
must be connected to an Astral Transformer Device- by qualified personnel only.
I waved away the proffered joint, trying to pin down my uncertainties.
“This is all to do with Scientology, right? It’s some kind of vintage E meter, to
erase the engrams of your childhood traumas.” A few Scientologists came …

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Übermensch

Undertaker
It was still early in the day when the undertaker
received us yet since we’re a large crowd he promised
to embalm us one by one even if this would take years
and we knew he had to start from the very beginning,
with Adam and Eve and of course the serpent without
its poison fangs.
It was time just before jealousy appeared when life
regained its importance and the body’s salt
tied knots on the thread of compassion when
Übermensch advised us to start with a song to honour
the Trojan war heroes but the light in the street
was so bright our voices sounded strange. Then
He opened his arms and after kissing the forehead
of our first dead He said: ‘this corpse will be
the future Übermensch.’

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGFRGLVH

Antony Fostieris

It Still Stirs
I walk past the light
and I carry a bag of absence:
myself.
I pass landscapes and cities
I talk to scared people
who tirelessly scratch
their unknown self
floating in air
days turn the foggy pages
like layers of onion
spurring up the tears.
When did the first dawn shine in my eyes?
Heavy and deaf things
persistently support a shape
and only music with its rhythmic undulation
raises the shapeless fate
to its most honorable moment:
the perhaps.
Ah, time’s such an opposition to memory
when it points to the funny cry
the futile excitement
and when it turns treason into victory
that it names movement.
Try to remember this
you student decaying
in the light: how
the face melts from within,
how everything ends in the now
and how emotion
remains the passionate
drop of ink
in the bottomless.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763653

Wheat Ears

Heroes
Bright eyes of the heroes fledging
and shoe-less feet splash
in the fountain
yet to be honored champions
who haven’t managed to explore
their hatred in front of throngs
on tv monitors, in the mourner’s tears
nothing moves as slow as history
in this parched world
that thirsts for rain and green olive
leaves
aspirations of a day
born red in the eyelids of the terrorist
and you said —
there’s nothing here for us
only a yellow death
and our desire for glory

https://draft2digital.com/book/3748127#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

excerpt

“I didn’t say I was going to give it to the government, I’m going to give
it to Canada.”
“And when are you going to do that?”
“I have no idea. But one day I’ll do it and in the meantime that painting
is going to hang on the wall.”
Ken sketched out a large Inukshuk in the foreground of the new canvas
with several smaller Inuksuit dwindling toward the horizon where the
Canadian flag formed the backdrop. As he worked he decided to create
twelve similar paintings – each one a flag painting, each with a symbol of
the Arctic in the foreground and each forty by sixty inches.
When the painting for the CBC was completed, Avril Lehan, a noted
photographer, set up in the studio and shot brilliant large transparencies.
Wayne Morrison gave the painting the title, “Yearning to Belong”. “All of
Canada is yearning to belong,” he explained. “And we can’t seem to find a
way of holding hands at these great distances.”
Diane was indignant that Ken had given the painting to the Friends of
Canadian Broadcasting rather than charge for it. “How can you keep giving
paintings away?” she demanded.
“I’m not really giving them away,” he said. “These are special causes.
There is a value, but it’s not in money. It’s a different value. And I’m going
to keep doing it so stop pestering me.”
A large team of designers and advertising people had become involved
in the campaign for the CBC and they asked Ken if Inuksuit really existed.
“You’re a promoter – did you invent this thing?’
“Why don’t you folks just find out for yourselves and take the time to
go up there and look?” he suggested. “Go to the Arctic.”
Until someone proved otherwise, he claimed the Inukshuk was the
oldest man-made thing on the continent, the Canadian flag, by contrast,
was one of the newest and it was a grand omen that Canadians had finally
made something for themselves. Everything else in Canada had been
given to the country. “We need these things that we have made for ourselves,”
he said. “Years ago when I went to Parliament to see the Minister
of Foreign Affairs about a show in Spain, I noticed there was no hallmark
on the building. All great buildings in Europe bear a hallmark, but when
I looked around in Ottawa, everything I saw came from somewhere else.
There was very little that was actually Canadian – born in this country.
I think this image of the Inukshuk is perfect to go on a shield at the very
entrance of Parliament. I would like that to happen after I find a way to
give the first flag painting to Parliament.”
Diane grew increasingly frustrated by the flood of rejections from the
corporations she had approached for the funding of Isumataq. “I can’t
stand it,” she said. “We keep sending out letters asking for support and
not one single one comes back positive. They’re all negative!

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562830

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Constantine Cavafy

At Dusk
They wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. Experience
over the years has made this clear. However,
destiny came and hastily stopped them.
The beautiful life was short-lived.
But how strong the perfumes were,
how exquisite the bed we lay in,
what carnal delight we gave our bodies.
An echo of the days of sensual pleasure,
an echo of those days came close,
something of your youth’s shared fire.
I held a letter in my hands again,
I read over until the light went out.
And I went to the balcony in melancholy
I went out to change my thoughts at least by seeing
a bit of my beloved city,
a bit of action in the street and in the shops.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562856

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823

Marginal

Indifference
Let it come
the Hade’s moment
let it come
I won’t be here
save my knocking
on doors fallen inward
when I call
the world’s hungry
to come and feast
of our Easter table
Let it come
the freedom moment
let it come
I won’t be here
save the trace of fingers
over your lustful body
when I explore
its crypts
with fingers hungry and
lips equally devoted

https://draft2digital.com/book/3747032#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771715987

Arrows

excerpt

…of skull, which gleamed in the firelight. I put the gourd down right
after the first man stopped eating. This was the time they used yopo,
ashes that made them behave oddly and see things that weren’t
there.
I was happy to see them inhaling those ashes and smoking, falling
into a stupor that only they understood. I disappeared into the
darkness when they had forgotten about me and barely made it to
the stream before falling on all fours and spewing my guts out.
I was rinsing my mouth to get rid of the greasy taste of the
monkey when a hand came to rest on my shoulder. Startled, I turned
to find Apacuana outlined against the dark blue, starry sky.
She didn’t speak, just knelt beside me and took my face in her
hands, caressing the shaven skin. I could see her eyes taking in every
detail. I wanted to pull away, to say something, but couldn’t. I was
like an animal suddenly blinded by fire that doesn’t flee from the
arrow.
She was the fire and her lips the arrows that pierced my heart
when she kissed me. I had never felt like that. My heart nearly burst,
and something below my cord jolted into life as a maddening
throbbing took hold of me. She was shivering, too, and I don’t know
how we came to be lying on the river’s edge surrounded by reeds.
Her skin smelled of plantain, of ashes, of fire, of freedom. She
knew what she was doing when she touched me, sending me into a
paroxysm of desire. I don’t know how my hands came to be upon
her breasts. Her legs were opening, placing me between them. There
was a nagging voice in my head telling me: Who’s going to know? Just
once. Just to know how it is.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562848

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522