i wax nostalgic as I pull my hair,
as they have always come, again they're here,
my friends, they sit like corpses and they stare,

lamenting how my life's been most unfair,
while quivering and lapping up my tears,
i wax nostalgic as I pull my hair,

and as the follicles from skin I tear,
they hush their tongues, in silence lend their ears,
my friends, they sit like corpses and they stare,

how long have two lone brothers been a pair?
how much was shared between two hearts most near?
i wax nostalgic as I pull my hair,

yet how much can these friends of mine more bear?
i've burdened them with pity year by year,
my friends, they sit like corpses and they stare,

fatigued of me, yet one day more they dare,
to sit with me, for one more tale to hear,
i wax nostalgic as I pull my hair,
my friends, they sit like corpses and they stare

(C)2009, Christos Rigakos

If I should pass away before you do,
knowing your heart is free to love again,
the torment of that thought would carry through
the grave to life beyond my mortal end.

If you should pass away before my eyes,
knowing my life is void of your sweet love,
my life would be but death in life's disguise,
spent seeking you in empty skies above.

'Tis best if our eternal love had life
eternal, spent eternally in birth,
or that neither your husband nor my wife
should know a moment spent alone on Earth.

Life's but a fleeting moment winding fast,
that we should spend as if it were our last.

(C)2006, Christos Rigakos

if you had died
i could have kept your love
and bronzed your memory
like little baby booties on
the mantle over the fireplace

instead you lived
and ran with love away
and left me with an urn
the ashes of your love
whose form i can't discern


(C)2001, Christos Rigakos

my eyes
like puppy dogs
follow you everywhere
happily hopping
tongues hanging
tails wagging
my eyes are yours
and you walk them
on a leash.


(C)2000, Christos Rigakos

We're strapped into our seats upon this boat,
the vessel of the journey of our days,
and steady 'pon the Grand River we float,
that would we, we could not deter its way.

The children whine, this journey never ends,
adults see where they've been and where they go,
The elderly, prepared to leave, pretend,
yet wish the ride to stutter and to slow.

The journey's one, though it be mine or thine,
though when it starts, the start is all we know,
the more we've traveled, less we have of time,
and wish we had some more before we go.

But God has granted me to be this wise:
that I should spend my journey in your eyes.

(C)2007, Christos Rigakos

straight through my spine the desert winds blow flute,
before my burial under the sand,
my skull an empty can, whistle and hoot,
my ribs a xylophone, femur in hand,

the dissonant cacophany--my taps,
a song for funerals devoid of men,
the vultures took my flesh in neat-sized scraps,
efficiently disposed in nature's den,

oh, once a garden, lush with greenery,
our love, abandoned by my rib's dear Eve,
now with her heart removed, the scenery
decayed, and to the burning sand i cleave,

my covering completes with eve's new dusk,
out of her sight, this old forgotten husk

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

my daily regimen, focused, intense,
a pugilistic kata of the tongue,
in preparation for our oral fence,
run laps around ideas, expand lungs,

my visualization of that day--
we spar with strikes and parries, counterstrikes,
in reasonings' most ****** kumite,
my verbal knuckles down her oral pikes,

so armed with good reasons to reconcile,
arriving at the place where she should be,
she proves to be so much more versatile
absent, my wasted versatility,

i cannot win with passion or with rage,
a lover's heart which simply won't engage

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos