the loving feeling

the loving feeling

The Loving Feeling

This is page 99 the way my wife and I sleep

and during the night when I half wake up pat

 her side of the duvet
to be sure that I’m not

reduced to a lonely 9.

There times when she can’t hear my breaths

she shakes me and ask me a daft question and

I know why, it is good to be loved, she to dislike

the idea of waking up alone in a bedroom. 

We do bicker during the day, she doesn’t like me

driving around in my scooter, I think she spends

too much time doing housework  and re- arranging 

which makes me fall on a strange object in the night?

Love is at time irritating we worried too much about

the one we love and I get annoyed if she badgers me,

but come bedtime we are friends again, and hope we

both will be there in the morning

the race thing

the race thing

The Race Thing

My ignorance was total, xenophobia in Africa; no, not

white people against black but black on black.

One sided I thought, mostly reading western history

that xenophobia was white against coloured people.

No I’m not shocked if surprised and I do not applaud

  but somehow make me
finally understand that Africa

has many races and many faces and are as different as

the Portuguese from The Swede, we get that we get

that and when we do xenophobia in Africa too.

No, this knowledge is no getting a white person off

the hook because white anti racism is built on fantasy

that we are so much better than them.

We who invented fascism a fever we now see seeps into

Israel too and make the people there think they are superb.

and have contempt for the rest. 

Athens

Athens

Athens

This time I was in Athens and met a woman in a park,

she promised me sex a moment of greatness I would

come back to her begging her for more.

I was in my late thirties, knew that sex with a prostitute

was like masturbating, a fantasy only more expensive

I declined, we got talking, and she was like me a communist

she had a university
degree in philosophy having no money

she sometimes sold her body,
but she could not go uptown

in the case she was
recognizable, it was a great night we sat in

a bar drinking ouzo and spoke to early morning and it was

time for me to go back onboard my ship and cook breakfast

For the crew. I don’t
know what happened to her but with

her education she eventually got a good employment and

joined the middle classes and a well to do husband who never

knew of her past yet enslaved by her sexual foresight.

recorder

Today  I took some photos of yellow flowers

in  a field that used to be a battle ground

The locals know little about it, but I think it had

to do with access to the salt mines, and to think

today we try to avoid salt, but back them salt was

a way of preserving food. But naturally the war was

not for commerce, soldiers fought to defend freedom

and they were given the spiel how brutal foes were.

Today it is about oil and we are given many accounts

yet we have many people like the “Sniper” whose

murderous conduct was made in  the name of freedom,

when it was fought in the filthy black mass of horror, but

the photos I took showed a field of yellow flowers and

where the word coward is a compliment to those who have s

seen the amalgamation of dreams and the possible

Meandering in Piraeus

Meandering in Piraeus

Meandering in Piraeus

Sunday in Piraeus, a
line of people outside a church

I joined the line and was inside given a bag of cakes.

The old woman behind me was refused a bag of cakes

it appears she had joined the line three times,

I gave her my bag.  I
didn’t think much of priests who were
mostly

 soft faced and fat looking.
The old woman had no teeth

I bought her a soft drink to swallow her cakes.

I sat in the park nursing a Dutch beer the local beer was

not to my liking, when the old woman came demanding

money I refused and
she screamed rape. The police removed

her from the park. In the park a grotto, by paying a few
drachma,

 I could go in and
there was an in a glass cage a likeness
of baby Jesus

as only a disturbed person could have made, the eyes of baby
Jesus

were full of malice and he had an erection big as a smithy’s
arm.

spring sonnet

spring sonnet

The vines are greening and the old man who owns the vines

was busy trimming them although it was Sunday and church

bells chimed He is very old 92 last year, and it was father’s day

a few days ago. He never married, but every bush is his child

And he gives them equal time. He is in many ways a lucky man

the vines love him, he knows that, leaves softens in his caring

hands that carry a promise of everlasting worship.

On father’s day, I never left the house, sat by the phone waited

for a call from my daughter, she is everything I never achieved,

my futile dream of respectability.

A whisper of a wind came through the open window, gently told

me that my cherished is a figment of my dreams of perfecting.

Then an irate storm cast rattled the window, your real daughter was

born in poverty in Kingston, Jamaica, the child of a prostitute and

she became one too.

spring sonnet

The vines are greening and the old man who owns the vines

was busy trimming them although it was Sunday and church

bells chimed He is very old 92 last year, and it was father’s day

a few days ago. He never married, but every bush is his child

And he gives them equal time. He is in many ways a lucky man

the vines love him, he knows that, leaves softens in his caring

hands that carry a promise of everlasting worship.

On father’s day, I never left the house, sat by the phone waited

for a call from my daughter, she is everything I never achieved,

my futile dream of respectability.

A whisper of a wind came through the open window, gently told

me that my cherished is a figment of my dreams of perfecting.

Then an irate storm cast rattled the window, your real daughter was

born in poverty in Kingston, Jamaica, the child of a prostitute and

she became one too.