a thousand what-ifs swarmed before my eyes,
and stung me as if I had rocked beehives,
the woulda-coulda-shouldas, if-only-I's,
all buzzed their screams, that he'd be still alive,

yet I had done all that I knew to do,
the breaths of life I gave him, much too late,
the EMT's three-quarter hour, their crew,
could not revive my father from his fate,

his heart had fibrillated, lifeless eyes,
were blind to all, his ears heard not our screams,
upon my breath his breathing finalized,
he fell to sleep the sleep where are no dreams,

now on that couch where father there reposed,
not we nor our dear cat to rest there goes

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

( for Síneánn )

Sound softly hung, she spoke, gave birth to place;
And there, found him closed in, frozen, shivering.
Her dawn light hands gently warmed his face;
His winter room sweetly broke into the spring.
After darkness died he felt strange bonds again;
Birds chimed, flew by, and the walls fell away.
Locked in her arms the turning world grew open;
His eyes nestled in the light her joy had made
And with her temperance swelled his weary eyes;
This was the day of her birth, Venus by the seas
And lonely air was steeping, the ground set aside
His tabled world was now a feral garden green.
In countenance with only grace she lies,
With mere touch turned his ceiling into sky.

SEEDS GLIDE AS YOU BLOW
ON THE SOFT HELD UNIVERSE;
DANDELIONS GROW

EACH AN EASY VERSE,
BUT LOVE IS HARD.  TO PLANT WEEDS
TAKES YOUR BREATH – NO WORDS.

LOVE PARACHUTES SEEDS
SPREAD ABOUT ALL – NO BEES, BIRDS;
SOME LOVE  IS QUICK LUST.

LOVE IS HARD AND RARE
TO CULTIVATE, WITHSTAND DUST
A FLOWER NEEDS CARE.

The ease of lustful apathy takes breath,
but cultivated love is overstepping death.

in recess, children walking 'bout the yard,
are playing, chatting, sitting round in groups,
declaring statements, all without regard
to hands on basketballs and hula hoops,

their promises to one another, found
expressed in ways most dear to their own care,
the boys do carve their words into the ground,
the girls do whisper them into the air,

in twenty years when all, then grown, return,
recalling promises so far gone made,
how will they recollect, will they discern
the choices memory has wiped to fade?

the boys will find their fossils waiting there,
the girls will find a silence in the air

(C)2011, Christos Rigakos

they love me secretly; and i surmise
they'll whisper from the rooftops with cupped hands,
and nowhere will it echo through the skies,
and none will be aware among the lands,

for if the heart-shaped flakes fell from above,
upon the heads of certain worry warts,
these questioners would question why this love
should still remain within my loved ones' hearts,

for i have been rejected from their home,
and so it goes their love should likewise be,
the value placed upon these commenteers,
is valueless and meaningless to me,

for worry warts could question me and stare,
and i would walk away without a care

(C)2011, Christos Rigakos

ineffable the moment of one's death,
between the final beat and darkness....
when consciousness takes notice of no sound
within the chest while fading into numbness,

yet moreso inconceivable is then
the moment of the numbness into dark,
before that step into oblivion,
when final thoughts yet feed upon a spark,

the final thought, the final one indeed,
its ending more precisely mystery,
its closing, its transition where it leads,
into no thought, nor zen, no more to be,

since none are dead who ponder on such things,
to those who live no understanding rings

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

love was the heart loud pounding in the ears,
and beating out the chest, it longed to be
enjoined unto another many years,
and these, the only things, it craved to see:

the goodness in one's heart, the gentle eyes,
a kindness radiating from one's soul,
a charity unspoken, undisguised,
it sought to join with such, becoming whole,

today love seeks the guile which one could say,
the suits of status, trinkets sparkling bright,
the methods of the wealthy plied by day,
virility cold practiced in the night,

oh, love, which once probed oceans wide and deep,
you've run aground upon a shallow reef

(C)2012, 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

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

he lays upon a hammock in the garden,
to watch the sun slow travel 'cross the sky,
weighed down by love long gone, profanely ardent,
apollo's fiery chariot drags his eye,

and when the sun god's sunk into the bay,
the glow of hope for her return now cooled,
his eyes then close upon the fruitless day,
his prayers to apollo overruled,

in dreams, there hades beckons him to come,
a room has been prepared that he may stay,
enjoy a painless state existing numb,
where no more he will rue the light of day,

yet he, who can not live without her breath,
likewise can not depart from her in death

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

My mother's waters gave me birth
and wrinkled, I came to her arms.
So, wrinkled, will I leave this earth;
beyond its sorrows and its charms.
How sorrowful and soon, the dusk
will not be held back by our cries
and I within this worn out husk
lie down again, and hope to rise.
I dream of other waters now;
where joy and love and comfort are.
Where, to pain I need never bow,
beyond some bright but distant star.
Such afterlife I'll never know,
unless I slip this earth -and go.