Tinos 

'twas mauve with pastel pink highlights

like rays from his forehead

behind the wheel of his mercury phase sedan

performing the rites of anubis as had his uncle and his uncle before him

when he spies the ormos isternia where he has spent 6 pleasurable days

so, oozing sex, he sallies out  behind his ray bans

didn't shave today, but no matter

all grown up now, putting those traumatic events behind, like a rosary trailing his wake

was it legal? he asked.

no longer, but no matter, few spies here.

spies the mini skirted flocks of kota on the shore, wondering just what is it he would do with one? Just sidle up next to one of the gum-snapping sisters, breathe deep and try not to look too sleazy. As if breathing deeply in close proximity to one so young, partaking vampirically, of their young prana will somehow stay the hand of magere hein, o xaros, angel of mortality, patron saint of dead batteries, broken sunglasses, crumbling rubber toys, all things entropic.

 “I am probably obliged to say something rife with double entendre, some piquant comment designed to snare me one-a them ripe juicy beauties”

rolls down the window in his behemoth, takes a breath as if to speak but says nothing, finally. But no matter, den pirasi, there was no car, no flock of girl, only fevered daydreaming.

Floating dreamily through another day of holiday all caught up in the dark recesses of he own mind, follows that wiliam wisp train of thought whither it leadeth.

he did that monster mash, mashed it good, or so he remembers, not so very clearly

takes longer and longer for his computer to render the massive fruits of his head. so taking a ride on the coast to soothe he mind.

the sea was all whipped up into little sheep formations.

What was it again? How from Elizabeth Taylor to what? Think. Spiny plants scratch his legs on the way down to the beach, evolved in all their obnoxiousness to discourage timid predators, no other. Or, perhaps intelligently designed? To what end? Who sat down and said “you know, belial, you know, shiva, you know what we need now? We need some scratchy dark-green thistle thingies, to scare hell out of errant crows. Hey presto!”

Michael Jackson, brooke shields, where was that train of thought? No, lost. Was funny, how he had gotten from spiny plants to elizabeth taylor in cleopatra in 6 moves. But now forgotten. What hey.

But wait! Yes, was spiny plants designed by some demi-urgos half-assed creator, not unlike the venal makers of worlds in some of phillip jose farmer’s books. Phillip jose farmer, author of Riverworld whose hero was the explorer Richard Burton, discoverer of the source of the Nile, translator of “1001 Arabian Nights”. Eponymous with Richard Burton, Welsh actor and alcoholic, married to Elizabeth Taylor. They who co-starred in the massively stupid and expensive hollywood epic “Cleopatra” in which an increasingly bulky Liz was schlepped by hordes of slaves aboard a massive stone sphinx enroute to a meeting with Rex Harrison, “sexy rexy” who was clad in a skirt made of pickets to play Julius Caesar.  Thence to Michael Jackson, who befriended Liz shortly before turning white, fleeing to Dubai in Howard Hughes disgrace.

 All remembered now, but to no demonstrable end save an attempt to protest that the memory is as good as ever. It is demonstrably not, but who’s counting?

 Meat,

Engorged, throbbing in the morning mist, priapic and massively stupid

Clamoring for attention. Slowly attempts to awaken her begin, furtive and sly. Casually brush the back of the hand just there, tweak this node of nerves, twist that. Pause to gather a handful of the silken country that is her thigh, ecstatic manicured lawn, milky ski slope, the palm pauses a while, eating the riot of nerve impulses that travel up the arm, up the neck, lasering their way into the desire centers of the brain, back again and down to the flesh obelisk, the stele beast who can never sleep. And through it all, the knowledge that when she finally takes it in her hand, all systems are go, we have clearance for takeoff and may begin in earnest. Nagging doubt, does she really want someone humping the small of her back before she has had time to take her first conscious breath of the day?

inserted slowly but insistently

sliding up and in, up and in

licks off the salt crystals accumulated there on her white skin.

phone rings, but they ignore it

and the blessed virgin mama hovers up in the actinic sky

woven seamlessly into the horizon

 It’s always this way, it’s never this way, the shy and maddening kiss of the flies on my legs, insistent like all truly stupid things and unable to take no for an answer.

 Wonders, was it some reaction between the antibiotics and the homeopathic medicine or just ordinary madness?  Back in Athens, so fevered, so obsessed, wracked with jealous mind spasms, mental nausea, and why? Sitting there in the platia plowing through an ice cream, was yogurt and chocolate was it not? Or could have been souvlaki and garlic. Or all of the above. Or none.the sea the sea the sea

thalassa

brilliant white light, sheets of molten silver undulating there.

wind whipping the waves over the melting sea

like sentient lace, like white hot filigree over the ruined columns of the ancient port

whipped to a frenzy by the wind

blasts of sand abrading his face. Lunching upon saganaki and tomatoes, fried cheese that is, tomatoes and bread, a few olives scattered about on the plate. Shuffling café proprietor plods about, shouts down the phone at someone, one of those sodden fat man shirts open over his protruding hirsute belly minds this café at the end of the world, tiny nook next to a church next to the sea with about three tables. And the scene that unfolds before us so transcendent, so incandescent, I say

“this is the best café on earth right now.” And she might have agreed.

 and she sitting there next to me, sipping tea, staring out to sea. All replete with her maddening sexuality, with the white fields of her skin, where I am wont to romp and play with distracted affect to waltz away the silver night in engorged abandon, the likes of which I have not known in this round of fleshly observation. Me in the morning riding up that shaft into her moist recess my very being sitting astride my dick woo hoo woo hoo like slim pickens riding the nuke down into cowboy Gotterdammerung. Now she was off to make tea, I want to follow her down the stairs. Soon to hit the beach. And all the beaches here requiring a near-vertical descent to their sandy shore, his knees complaining with all the pent-up frustration of their 53 years, gots da room-a-tiz bad, boss, why don’ you jes let up fo’ a minute? But no, but no.

 the wind gusts up ever now and then, whistling in the night, carries the anthropomorphic voices of the goats up the hill, carries the morning cry of the kokoras or rooster up the hill. Sea unfolded there like a blue picnic. Like the sheets on Zeus’ sofa. Wobbling, tossing up sheep simulacra into the wind swept afternoon.

And the boat from Athens plows a white row across the sea, effortlessly slicing the view into two halves, one of which contains the hazy purple silhouette of the next island, the other containing me and her and this house and everything in it. She gets up to kill flies for me. I am not so helpless, but inept at the fly-killing game.

long long time ago

when the flies of August were fat, Babis and Xristos found him on their way down to the harbor for a game of tavli and a glass of Mastika liqueur. They had called him Jacopo at first for 'twas written on his wrist when they found him  floating face down in the town water trough. Babis, the impetuous one, turned him over and he spluttered and choked, spray rising from his lips like a crystal chandelier in the white-hot sun.

He was wearing a sombrero, sandals, purple poncho and a space helmet, or, perhaps he was wearing spandex tights colored camembert and aubergine, a Calvin Klein scarf  with Sponge Bob printed motif tied at the neck and back in halter fashion, green day-glo birkenstock sandals, a crimson fedora, enormous Chanel mirror sunglasses and a gold ankle bracelet. 400 piercings were scattered randomly over his tapioca-colored body, one of which seemed to be in his very eyeball.

 Yet again, he could have been wearing a Harris tweed jacket with a leather patch on the right elbow only, houndstooth check leather jodhpurs, orange Wellington boots, a mesh-back baseball cap emblazoned with a Marmite logo, a soiled fuschia t-shirt listing the tour dates of the re-formed Lothar and the Hand People, a massive chinese digital wristwatch encrusted with rhinestones, with a pink leather band, a gold-plated bicycle chain from which dangled a Navajo turquoise and silver medallion the size of a dinner plate gold Converse all-star tennis shoes with platform soles laced up to the knee, and a regimental tie from the Coldstream Guards.

 Spastic, pungent, loving, with the desperate grace of the mentally ill or the embalmed, fetid like ancient cheese sealed for two decades in a tupperware box left out for the donkey, but forgotten when grandma died, he had entered their morning with an audible click and would never leave their limited gestalt.

Eternal and strange, silent as the rows of noble columns weathered by the incessant winds, he lay there on his back staring up at the actinic blue sky.nothing stirs, a heavy silence hangs suspended over the scene like a muslin tarpaulin. flies waltz in the air, coupling frenetically with the desperate pizzazz of beings who know that the swatter may land at any time.

 Babis and Xristos were nonplussed. (brief character description of b and x)

(dialog between babis and xristos)

(fragment ends here.........)