Inquire not of me, nor of my life!
     All knowledge, by instruction, is withheld.
     Our blood line cut, your kin no more my wife,
     your right to know by your own hand dispelled.
Your silence had you ousted from my heart,
     when I besought your most beloved names.
     Your hush kept me at bay, and us apart,
     as I sought you, my son-ship you disclaimed.
Now if perchance a thought of me has raised,
     please quick extinguish it and mind me not.
     Why resurrect the ghost of one you've razed
     upon your kin's request, and made as naught?  
True love, when born, has immortality;
when false it lives only conditionally.

(C)2018, Christos Rigakos

An unseen force has plagued the Earth at last,
     And shuttered man, and cleared his busy streets,
     Unlike those unseen forces of the past,
     For homes have now surpassed all man's retreats.
In New York City's heart, Third Avenue,
     Congested with Taxis, buses and such,
     The silence and the breeze are all so new,
     To few masked 'Yorkers, distanced not to touch.
Yet love abounds throughout our pestilence,
     Yes, there are still some swelled, afluttered hearts.
     Their masquerade is made with diligence,
     And tantric love is made six feet apart.
Those lovers not yet quarantined in homes,
Stare longingly like new masked garden gnomes.

(C)2020, Christos Rigakos

I send her roses each and every day.
     She asks for reasons, they don't satisfy.
     This heart's expression is my only way
     to answer each and every question, why?
She plants each one inside a large glass vase.
     It fattens in its bulky green-red width.
     She waters it hourly just in case
     this bulk shrivel by one rose-breadth.
In truth they have no petals and no stem,
     no color and no subtle fragrant scent.
     The vase is her awareness of them.
     They are but words of love my passions sent.
For I am but a poor and broken soul,
whose love for my dear love raises me whole.

(C)2019, Christos Rigakos

The jolly fat woman who rode on a horse,
     galloped, galloped with a clackity-clack,
     on cobble stone streets as if under attack,
     from her great hunger pangs, of course.
It galloped and galloped until a great crack
     was felt and a screeching loud neigh was heard,
     that startled to pitch-panicked flight every bird,
     throwing the fat off its back.
She rose from the mud to wipe off and gird
     her honor back onto her jiggling *****,
     then ran to the inn where she haggled with fulsome,
     for a bowl of hot fish soup with curd.
She gained two more stone in her gluttonous course,
then haggled at stables for a much stronger horse.

(C)2018, Christos Rigakos

Take my hand, my stupid jokes, and mix in
your unfettered passion, which hastens me,
raging and ready to kiss. Time like a thin
sea, is running to the cold ocean, free

of premonition, heavy with waiting
an extra second, to think over my
attitude and confidence. Then, kissing
and forgetting any thing or thought more.

Go with me in the black canoe. We won’t
drown, but we might fall, because the ocean—
your ocean, is not made of water. Loaned
sorrows are due soon, so cut commotion

in half and use one part to love me when
it hurts, and the other to hate me again.

This evening, alone, I dim the light.
The needle crackles on the vinyl disk,
and Billy Holiday expounds.  The night
belongs to 1933.  I risk

forgetting all the present, modern days
sinking.  In leather deeply I recline,
absorbing all that special era plays,
and all I never lived are surely mine.

With every sip of bourbon on this night,
they come alive again through jazz and song,
from album cover pictures, black and white.
We dance in black ties, black tails all night long.

And when the morning sun has woken me,
I will have lived my night in history.


(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

Unpacking an old box I scrounged and found
a card for Mother's Day from my ex-wife,
professing love for mom that will abound
through time and space until the end of life.

Four years have passed--since first she filed divorce--
no card or letter, nor a seldom call.
A once abundant love could not be forced
to crease a smile, for it would now appall.

Why do I flinch once more and wonder how,
the love departs, which oaths swore never would?
Why they all say, "but things are different now,"
though hearts were sold as things that never could?

Amazing, how such endless loves quick end,
as flimsy tattered fabrics quickly rend.

(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

Eight years have not diminished buried pain,
nor dulled the temperature of love beheld.
We proudly wear your dark and crimson stain--
our mark of love, remembrance long held.

We miss that flesh, dismantled long ago,
that lived to fill our world so vibrantly,
which held on till by slumber had to go--
its vibrant spirit from it had to flee.

And now we hush a moment, welling tears,
remembering your life, recalling death,
to honor your own silence of eight years,
that so began with your own final breath.

The silence of your void rings in the ear,
the only sound of you remaining here.

(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

In someone's mind there is a place of graves,
And farther still a darkened potter's field,
Where loved ones in memoriam are saved,
And those whose names should never be revealed.

I blow through iron bars and paths 'tween stones,
To find the carvings of my former name,
Which mark the resting place of my dear bones,
And date the finite years of my life's fame.

More anxiously I blow into the field,
Instinctively the farthest place most dark,
Where frost and ice have most securely sealed
A single mound without a numbered mark.

I reach for bones I can no more disturb,
Discarded far enough to not perturb.


(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Under the primrose stars, the lovers
Lie abed, on green, threadbare croft
Of sleeping daisy, clover and moss,
Trails with hushed air, an embroidery
So fine as to stitch blushing heart fall
And wrap the waters full of stillness
In graces, winding, soft, granulating
Time, wings flutter and hum, winsome
Sparks, fire white, flying as little suns
Burst confetti, in sweet encampment,
Of grass and sapling wood, innocents,
Charmed are wholly twining, in moon
Rise a lantern to the winking heavens,
Out of their skins they are climbing.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.