Kiki Dimoula

Of course I am
against disturbing the moon.
For many reasons.
Not only is it an unseemly exaggeration
—personally I've long avoided exaggerating
because of exhaustion—
but it is also improper.
So far, the moon's relations with the earth
have been
highly formal.
Discreet from its enchanting distance,
it offered perfect solutions
to mankind's musing.
And, above all,
every so often,
it silver-plates
this worn-out earth for free.
...

Lie down. On something hard.
At first your leisure vertebrae may hurt
but gradually, painlessly, immobility
straightens its back till it stands there like a cypress.

Now compress your bad habits
into one rigid line.
Rest your hands on your chest
like the makeshift wings of a provisional angel.
Do not shift position.
The supine rows best.

Don't be afraid. Fear makes you fat,
it contains hunger.
Don't chew on sensations. Too many calories.
They cause the fat of deprivations.

Close your eyes, please
no dubious chinks
no lollipops of light.
They emit ultraviolet nostalgia.

Fully exhale, hold still
don't breathe, don't breathe
lest only half the ferryman
appear on the X-ray.

Let yourself slide down sleep.
You just relax, I'll play
your mother's lullaby on tape
hush little baby hush
like it or not I say.

Weigh yourself. Please hold still:
nested inside your body a scale awaits.
...

It rains with absolute candor.
So the sky is not a rumor
it does exist
and therefore earth is not
the sole solution
as each lazy dead person pretends.
...

The house a tiny neighbour to the sky.
Nearness' tendency built so high
on a peak's open wings like
a lectern that splendour might read the dawning
the meridian the setting gospel of the day.

I go out into the yard. Waiting for me sparkling
with reins saddle harness is the horizon's wild freedom
that I might mount and galloping tame its verification.
Ah, only gaze and vision managed to ride
this immaterial untamed conquest.
The heavens' overweening views tumble are dashed
for the unhindered is of the briefest duration.

See how it catches on a stretch of barbed wire
round the property. Low, tame and yet
if you look carefully consider it carefully it divides
my good-morning from the neighbour's
all day long fanaticising borders quietly arming
the weeds against their brothers.

At night alone the unifying fragrance of night flowers
cuts through it in places and passes
in the demented glow of the fireflies
- glowbums we called them when alive.

Oh, inglorious heroics by volunteer dreams. What's the point
in encroaching on two inches more of moondust
inheritance left by the summer to its passing.

Let them observe a minute's licence
those few illiterate widow extensions
that the law doesn't cover

though no one knows
what hope still holds in store for them.

Summer, Platanos-Aigialeia
...

I have to remember that packet of Camel
The camel that tonight is a guarantee
Of my attested insecurity

Maria Kyrtzaki, The Woman with the Flock


Are you still smoking those? Try Camel.

Not that I'm advertising some new tar
that removes death's difficult stains
nor that I still believe in the different
taste of the untried, in its new strength.
Every kiss exchanged between the old sensual
habit and each new gigolo smoke
is quick-burning.
A slower blend of love has not been found.

Camel because
however well you've managed till now
alone on foot to advance the wilderness
following of all its myriad paths
the difficult one that brings you to the exclusion
of all travel companions

now as you see the climate has rebelled
the sand rose up became a storm
the cargo of time you bear became harsher
lead drenched as it was by the rain of fast numbers.

You wish the ozone were to blame, that the soul's
black hole had grown overly big
you wish your sterilising of dreams had failed
so they wouldn't bear any others
now you're wrestling, groaning, shrieking
just as a dream shrieks that despite the sterilisation
bears for you the dream of a companion.

Accept then humiliation's admonitions
and climb on the camel's hump opportunity
offered you by that passing nicotine fellah.

Climb up, admit it
partner fears have entered your self-sufficiency
(just the other day you were seen with company
in sunstroke's mirror).

Let's not fool ourselves my likeness.
Only the futile is self-sufficient.
...

The goat kept on bleating hoarsely.
I angrily opened the oven what's all the noise I asked
the guests can hear you.
Your oven's not hot, it bleated
do something otherwise your cruelty
will go hungry and at festive time too.

I put my hand inside. It was true.
The head the legs the neck
the grass the pasture the crags
the slaughter all cold.
...

I open the photo's windows
to air it. It's been shut up for some time.
like so many summer-house pasts.

You're on the balcony. In your old favourite
position; standing; you're wearing the earthly coloured
tight-fitting costume of planes: a tiled
roof the pine's inflatable anorak,
patched in-between with sea
in places where the branches tore
playing with strong winds.
The orchards are at high tide
they're up to the telegraph poles
and lemons dangle from the wires
unripe festive bulbs.

You're lowering the sun.
You're roll up the awnings crushing
canvas flowers. Impatiently you rotate
the motion as thought shade were scarce.

So far the photo's behaving logically.
Until I appear, a paranoiac newcomer
to the image; as if by plastic removal.

Though I was beside you all along
joint-owner of tide and orchards
seated just behind you
in my very cosy pliant smile
in now seems
as if I've just been added to the photo.
With my present face, dark gaze
long its tail dragging on the balcony
as if I'd been invited by the official darkness.
Not breathing I stretch as if wanting
to get you away from the awning
so no further shade quarry
will fall on you.
You're already sunless enough.
How was the photo updated.
How did real time get into paper time.

With what familiarity did pain
speak to the inanimate's apathy.
Might the inanimate be something deeper.
Perhaps the animate's former lives
that at the first painful opportunity
suffer a relapse?
...

Whenever I come to visit you
only the time that's intervened
from one visit to the next has changed.
As for the rest, as always
from my eyes runs a river
your engraved name blurred
- godfather to the little hyphen
between the two dates
so people won't think the length
of your life died unbaptised.
Next I clean the flowers'
withered droppings adding
some red earth where black had been laid
and finally I change the glass in the oil-lamp
for another a clean one I bring.

As soon as I get home
I diligently wash the dirty one
disinfecting it with chlorine
and the caustic foam of disgust I emit
as I shake vigorously.
Always with gloves and keeping my body
well away from the tiny basin
so the dead water won't splash me.
With strong aversion's wire wool I scour
the ingrained grease on the glass' rim
and on the palate of the doused flame
while rage crushes the illicit stroll
of a snail, trespasser
in the neighbouring stillness.

I rinse it then rinse with scalding fury
a boiling effort to bring the glass to its prime
its happy normal use
for quenching thirst.
And at last it becomes crystal clear
how hypochondriacal my wish is not to die.

dearest - look at it this way:
when wasn't love afraid of death?
...

Day's dull drizzle.
Some foolish bells splash
Lazarus' sleep to bring him forth.
Well-sealed the surrounding light.

I too had a few to bring forth
but they didn't reply if they wanted.

How could they reply
with that eavesdropper you left well-sealed
the surrounding light.

Then again why ask if they want.
The miracle doesn't ask.
It grabs you by the ear and
dragging hurls you into the light.
You rejoice of course in the glare, I don't disagree
but a worm the worry eats away inside you
perhaps the miracles are mortal.

Better to leave them there then
so we don't for a second time
have to take up their empty beds.

Have you heard nothing?
And yet, all this time in here
chatting with whatever to get some air
it was you I was talking to down there.
So I didn't address you?
Of all the Lernaean names which one
should I choose to call you.
Whichever I cut when seeking you
another grows on the spot.
...

Crying she describes
how burglars wrecked the house
the wretches took her jewellery and raped
old women values.

Isn't she happy?

It's been years since any thief
set foot in my house
even for coffee.
I deliberately leave the pot unlocked.

On returning each time I pray
to find the door's canines broken

the lights shaking as if just having knocked
against a tall earthquake's head

to see the burial gifts stolen
from the mirror's mummy kingdoms

as if someone had shaved in the bathroom
and whiskers had sprouted on my beardless touch
their refutation bound hand and foot on the floor

and, coming at its leisure from the kitchen, steam
from warm footprints with lots of cinnamon on top.
...

Lord what's still not in store for us.

I'm sitting here and sitting.
It's raining without raining
just as when a shadow
returns to us a body.

I'm sitting here and sitting.
Me here, my heart opposite
and still further away
my weary relationship with it.
So we might seem many
whenever emptiness counts us.

Empty room blowing.
I hold tight to the way
I have of being swept off.

I've no news of you.
Your photo stationary.
You stare as if coming
you smile as if not.
Dried flowers at one side
incessantly repeating for you
their unadulterated name semprevives
semprevives—eternal, eternal
in case you forget what you're not.

I'm asked by time
how I want it to pass
exactly how I pronounce myself
as edging or ageing.
Foolishness.
No end is ever articulate.

I've no news of you.
Your photo stationary.
Just as it rains without raining.

Just as a shadow returns to me a body.
And just as we'll meet one day
up there.
In some lush sparseness
with shady unexpectations
and evergreen rotations.
As interpreter of the intense
silence that we'll feel
—developed form of the intense
intoxication caused by a meeting
down here—will come a void.

And we'll be enraptured then
by a passionate unrecognition
—developed form of the embrace
employed by a meeting down here.
Yes we'll meet. Breathing fine, concealed
form attraction. In a downpour
of heavy lack of gravity. Perhaps on one
of infinity's trips to ad infinitum;
at the ceremony for loss awards to the known
for its great contribution to the unknown;
guests at destination's starlight,
at cessation's galas on behalf of dissolving
causes and the skies' farewell
importances once great.
Expect that this company of distances
will be somewhat downcast, cheerless
even if non-existence finds cheer from nothing.
Perhaps because the soul of the party will be absent.
The flesh.

I call to the ash
to disarm me.
I call upon the ash
by its code name: Everything.

You'll meet regularly I imagine
you and the death of that dream.
The last-born dream.
Of all I had the best-behaved.
Clear-headed, gentle, understanding.
Not of course so dreamy
but neither worthless or mean,
no toady to all and sundry.
A very thrifty dream,
in intensity and errors.
Of the dreams I raised
my most loving: so I'd not
grow old alone.

You'll meet regularly I imagine
you and its death.
Give it my regards, tell it to come
too without fail when we meet
there, at the loss awards ceremony.

Love me as long as you don't live.
Yes yes the impossible's enough for me.
Once I was loved by that.
Love me as long as you don't live.
For I've no news of you.
And heaven forbid that the absurd
should show no signs of life.
...

I'm listed, said chaos to the contractors.
Inside, things have to remain as they are.
Minor changes to the façade is all I'll allow.

In the beginning appeared yesterday. In no time,
as soon as the visionary sense
on first seeing the day constructed cried
heavens, you're so short. You won't do
not even for one person's loneliness.

The clay was alarmed. What was wrong?
In the plans the day seemed endless.
I saw loaded with bricks and earth
a suspicious orange truck.
The sunset's dirty work?

The constructor nowhere to be seen.

The decorator pleasure was urgently called in.
An expert in expanding time
just as mirrors do small spaces.

And so appeared deception.
Garbed in paradise:

Bass waters, guitarist streams
above the vault with distance's blue
local costume uncrumpled,
hamlets townships resorts for warblings
high on suspension's peaks
below copses orchards serpentine fruits
pipes that mesmerised poisonous apples
lasting cicadas throughout the four
maybe more warm seasons - I don't know
when I arrived it was cold -
equilibrist dewdrops on tiny leaves
the poppies figures from a Cossack dance
reverie indulging itself sucking
fizzy nightingales one after the other through its straw
shame with a bright-red fig-leaf
slit high on the side dancing
with a homesick emigrant word
as for obedience
sewn at the same seamstress' as deception
this too was garbed in paradise.

The first beauty contest.

Eternity was voted Miss Cosmos.
She wasn't present.

And again appeared yesterday.
So as not to be lost like the previous one
it was accompanied a little further on
by photographs.

Duration fell breathless.
They thought it was asleep.
They slapped it threw buckets of kisses over it.
Nothing.
Just endless night.

And the first biped sobbing was heard.
The apple had bitten it.

Where was the first aid for dreams.
Hadn't they been given priority?
Wrong. Every grandiose clay adventure
fashions its stretcher-bearers in the beginning.

Tomorrow appeared hurry-scurry.
But now it was far too late.
...

A dream on patrol

in abandonment's tenements

arrested an old acquaintance suspicion

red-handed, leaning on

a shuttered likelihood,

eavesdropping.



"Please understand," I told it,

"the folks you nab are no garbage.

Don't mire them in. I break my back

retrieving them. They're for repair and return.

You're not their expiration.

A poor exhausted nap is what you are

under the cool of tears

while the repairs occur so they won't hurt."



A skilled restorer, inspiration,

precisely montaging all their trials

without which the body doesn't trust

any reintegration.



New people never did exist. And even if

we named a couple first-created

it was to win imagination's

majority confidence vote.

They always show up second-hand

from their mysterious origin, a mystery too

how old that is, what slavery it comes from,

horsewhipped in cellular plantations

for dinosauric eons.



We don't know a thing.

Every beginning came to us

a simile with its mystery.



A fabulous restorer, inspiration -

of every worn beginning

renewing art, artifice, and life

from ashes to Lo

Lala Lola all fall up!



Only their box is new.



I send them down again with the old price

since they have lived before.



So, have we too?

Then what's the quick?

And is the seam a gimmick

to make us love?

If life is reparable

where's all that's lost?

Still being stitched?

Can such delay be overcome?

This inspiration, is it careful,

correctly marking, numbering each piece,

or does it use my body by mistake

to fix like new what yours

is lacking?



So old each new sorrow.

So dearly paid for its new box.



O millionaire

answers and your unknown

hooded, secret abductors.
...

My God, try to remember

where you hid

the findings of that awful accident.

I dug where I detected

some buried wrecks of logic, but besides

the illogical's propellers spinning still, I found

no other explanation.



I want to understand what overturned the rule

and brought about that fatal

by exception.



What happened? The road was straight.

The warring anarchic differences —

which charged you from their lair

behind the serene Edenic equality

of blooms blooms and the flowers ―

you cleverly quelled, corralling them

in a spacious gradation:

large

small

smaller

least.

And so the major matter: who eats whom

was settled in the court of mass.

The hunger of the smaller feeds

the hunger of the larger and so on.

It only surfaced later that

the reasonable was not

so fruitful.



And while the large fish ate the small

the ephemeral the butterfly

eros ate eros

proliferation the unique

the soul was eaten by its fretting

over leaving us

the seven goats devoured by the wolf

except the smallest one who hid

behind a story.

What happened, God, that final moment

on such straight road, were you daydreaming

and the rule reversed and we fell in

that fateful by exception

so now the small worm eats

the large



human

except the smallest one

who hides behind

a story.
...

Hello, hello, can you hear me? Hello?

I'm calling from far away. What?

You can't hear me? Has my distance

discharged? Are you speaking from mobile

space? Press zero again? Again?

Can you hear me now?

Yes, can you please put my mother on?

What number did I call? The Sky —

this is what I was given. She's not there?

Can I scream her a message?

It's very urgent, tell her

I saw in my sleep she died and I

small sobbing child who peed itself

fear-soaked all the way

up and still

not dry.



Tell her to come and change it.



If she can't, tell her please

her old warning ripened, that the old

man would eat me if I didn't

eat.



It ripened. I became

a meal of age. Not in a small dreamy taverna.

In some popular dive now managed

by the mirror.
...

I wait a bit for the differences

and the indifferent to darken, then

I open the windows.

It is not urgent

but I do it to keep motion from warping.

I borrow my former curiosity's head

and twist. Not twist exactly.

I nod a servile good evening to all

those fawners of the fears, the stars. Not nod

exactly. I fix with a gazing thread

the silver buttons of distance, some of which

are undone, tremble, and will fall.

It is not urgent. I do it only to show distance

my gratitude for its offering.



Without distance

long trips would shrivel. The universe

our need to flee had pined for

would be delivered to our door by motorbike

like pizza. Like a leech

old age would suck on youth and I'd be called

grandmother from birth

equally by eros and grandbabies.

What would the stars then be

without distance's provident support?

Earthbound silver, some candelabra, ashtrays

for the spent butts of pugnacious wealth,

and fawning's investment bubble.



Without distance

nostalgia would speak to us in thees.

Her now rare timid rendezvous

with our plethoric need

would fatally assimilate

frequency's street-smart speech.



Of course, without distance, our neighbor

wouldn't seem a far-off star — he'd be

in prime proximity, two steps would bridge

his outline from a dream.

As also nearby the soul's

ultimate escape would stay.

Why so much wanderlust? Whole rooms

are empty. We'd go downstairs

to live in our basement body

and distance with its myth and odds and ends

would incarnate to flesh.



If not for you, distance, Lethe would,

much easier and faster in one night,

traverse her difficult protracted adolescence

which we, for euphony, name recall.



Not recall exactly. I fix facsimiles

with a gazing thread — they've come undone,

are trembling, and will fall.

Not fix exactly. Servile, I orbit

those fawners of time which I, for brevity,

named recall. Not recall exactly. I refuel meteors

with extended annihilation.

It is urgent.
...

The devotion night will show us

oppresses me. I prefer



to remember. Not that my well

of living images is dry.

But each time I place them

in their expressive postures,

I see by morning they have moved.

I know it by the scrapes their drag

from their original positions leave

on stability's luster.



It's why I insist

on remembering: to not mar the luster.

Not because it makes me feel more durable

— it being the infinity of time already lapsed.



If I insist on remembering

it's not to accommodate God — arousing

the inert figures, I provide him

also with some motility.



I insist on remembering

not because ease offers me this choice

gratis. By arduous feeling and sacrifice

and turning despair inside out,

I eked out how to squawk-dyi squawk-ing —

I speak crow-Latin to keep the menace

ignorant of my refuge.



If I insist on remembering

it's not to find excuses

for always speaking in the same

worn words — what do you think the new ones

are? A temporal childish defiance

to the old.



If I insist on remembering

it is no battle-flinch

no backwoods retreat. All kinds

of people constantly pass by.

What I remember can be seen

from the most central districts.



For a little hope, a hint of renewal

I remember. I'm totally fed up with all

that ineluctable and future Lord

squawk why-have-you-forsaken squawk—

without exaggeration!
...

The devotion night will show us

oppresses me. I prefer



to remember. Not that my well

of living images is dry.

But each time I place them

in their expressive postures,

I see by morning they have moved.

I know it by the scrapes their drag

from their original positions leave

on stability's luster.



It's why I insist

on remembering: to not mar the luster.

Not because it makes me feel more durable

— it being the infinity of time already lapsed.



If I insist on remembering

it's not to accommodate God — arousing

the inert figures, I provide him

also with some motility.



I insist on remembering

not because ease offers me this choice

gratis. By arduous feeling and sacrifice

and turning despair inside out,

I eked out how to squawk-dyi squawk-ing —

I speak crow-Latin to keep the menace

ignorant of my refuge.



If I insist on remembering

it's not to find excuses

for always speaking in the same

worn words — what do you think the new ones

are? A temporal childish defiance

to the old.



If I insist on remembering

it is no battle-flinch

no backwoods retreat. All kinds

of people constantly pass by.

What I remember can be seen

from the most central districts.



For a little hope, a hint of renewal

I remember. I'm totally fed up with all

that ineluctable and future Lord

squawk why-have-you-forsaken squawk—

without exaggeration!
...

Do you remember the small carafe

a crown of blue blossoms painted on

its wine-bearing lip?

— you bought it in Alsace for me

without enthusiasm

what for, you said, we never drink.

You never know, I insisted, one day we might

in some haze need to meet.



Its handle broke for no reason

other than a deep crack in my touch.



I hold it now from your hand

steady with your hand

my hazy alcoholic figment

fills it up with wine.
...

At night,
that angelform melting,
kneading the body with sleep's lotions,
creaming its defenses, it is
no physiotherapist.
It is your new employment in storage,
treasuries, safe deposit boxes — you can't see
blindfolded by the bosses.
Invisible telecontrols
direct your secret practice.
Your work is this: to not know
what it is you guard or until when.

Dreams? Do they trust us? Most often
we rob them leaving in their stead
beautiful forgeries as real.

Now, for this storage post they choose
for reasons of security
bodies who sleep alone
on hard unyielding anatomic beds

since stuffing, inner springs, latex and curves
are busy growing someone else

on the empty side —

their fluffy anomalies roll him to the dent
your worn attention sinks, your sleeping trust
keeps making room for him till danger
grazes what you guard.

Before these measures were enacted
you sometimes woke up in the morning
on the floor, dream

eye punched
purple, strange fungi sleeping
on pillow-top and foam,
and every store-room open.

Now, before sleeping, latch
windows, bolt the doors
and, as your ribcage is unlocked on either side,
drag tables vanities the wardrobe and the hutch
washing-machine night-table the TV —
blockade and barricade it.
...