she scolds about the sacred little things,
if ever sacred things I fail to see,
those moments, pictures, flowers, cards and rings,
tall city monuments that face the sea,

for she reveals great stories when she sings
the meanings of the moments come to be,
do i not also see what moment brings?
why as a man are meanings lost on me?

yet when she kills the heart with mortal stings,
she calls to raze the buildings by decree,
why still my heart holds sacred and it clings
to monuments she built and now shall flee?

for meanings are those things that fall apart,
when love grows cold and from her soul departs

(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

She speaks in figures, nuances,
          in subtle hint-drop rain,
the truth's in what she never says,
          her spoken words are vain,
for nothing heard is what it seems,
she'll only hint at what she means,
          to hold a dialogue is quite insane.

So when a question grabs her mind,
          to ask it she'll refrain,
instead she'll traipse around, behind,
          from side to side in pain,
to ask ten questions unrelated,
avoiding that one unabated,
          all questions leading to that single, main.

Frustration builds at every step,
          with every question asked,
for every one such question shlepped
          around's a weighty task,
I answer all and each reply,
confounds her every subtle try,
          for none of them fulfill the one not asked.

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

the humble priest who, clothed in black and drab
old moth-holed garb and well-worn holy shoes,
saw yellow-orange men with breath infused
survive while hammered under concrete slabs,

adorned with seizure's scrapes and new dried scab,
a monk's black cap and simple wooden cross,
from Shaolin's breath could not be pushed or tossed,
or even budged when by his arm was grabbed,

then one whose throat withstood the point of spear,
did ask the priest what powers blocked his chi,
the humble priest explained and this he said,

"from chi's destructive force i had no fear,
for i did what you could not hear or see,
recite the name of One raised from the dead"

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

i walked along a strange and darkened place
the citizens of which abused themselves
a man who chewed his lip and ate his face
then laid inside a coffin's wooden shelves

aside his neighbors' corpses and their pets
and sang his song long after all his bones
were eaten clean, aligned in metric sets
beside the graveyard's glistened stones

the humid air, pneumonia in lungs
leaked out from nostrils as i ran away
slow motion through molasses climbing rungs
my fear of here and sanity left frayed

a woman over-hunched, upon my "hi",
like pill-bug touched had curled into herself
her head in **** and hissed her grumbled sigh
accused that I had killed the mighty elf

a girl who stabbed her migraine with a knife,
whose teeth were aspirins, dripped from bleeding gums
and claimed her husband was her lawful wife
was following his trail of stale breadcrumbs

town criers cried for Argentina, sobbed
"Evita was evicted from our hearts!"
then rushed upon me these un-living mobs
to eat my chest in torn and ****** parts

chihuahua babies swarmed my ankles hard
and bit with rubber teeth and razor gums
i fell and crushed them like a house of cards
they barked like children yelping in their slums

i bled to death from gaping hollow wounds
and flowed my soul into a sewer grate
under the darkened place's shining moon
an angry molten lava stream of hate.

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

old woman
at the windowsill
staring out

her skin
a veiny leaf
dried in late autumn

her lips
pursed tight
crows feet count her age


her hair
powdered snow
on black tar streets

her eyes
glazed yellow
staring at grandchildren

her memory
Spring air filling
a young girl's nostrils, lungs

running, laughing,
holding his hand,
her handsome boy

a smile betrays
a glimmer of youth
and for a moment she glows

a car horn
startles her giggle
to a sour lemon scowl

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

last night I took a stroll within a dream,
a slow procession through the dirt path aisles,
within her cemetery's mindful stream,
in search of my name carved in stone or tiles,

i'd almost missed the marker to my grave,
cold winds half-covered with forgetfulness,
no epigram was carved to hold and save
my memory, entombed in nothingness,

two bookend dates to mark my history--
when we were born and when we died in love--
my name, two words containing all of me,
a marker quite unseen from up above,

now from this stroll i've surely learned a lot,
to not inquire of what her mind's forgot

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos

when they move on they never look behind,
determined eyes seek only what's ahead,
and those they've left behind are left for dead,
their memory does every heel step grind,

so no old fiber to their thought can bind,
and to alleviate that awful dread,
which weighs upon the heart like heavy lead,
they hum the olden song of auld lang syne,

and those they've left behind for some odd sin,
who long for, are deprived of, one last kiss,
and haunt their memories with dreadful sigh,

forgotten for they've surely never been,
no more in recollections do exist,
they shrivel as a memory and die

(C)2013, Christos Rigakos