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

We are to come and leave and not return,
But hand our secret scroll to those who'd be.
I'll pass the writings on which passed to me,
And shrink to blackened ash with flameless burn.

As far as those who'll be--of whom will earn,
That secret scroll containing some of me,
Quite like yet quite unlike, in no way me--
They'll mourn for I'll have gone and won't return.

To live on in a heart or memory,
Is not living or life or anything,
But trite consoling words of sympathy--

A metaphor or best a simile--
suspending truth, and grief that loss will bring.
In truth no more am I nor shall I be.


(C)2015, Christos Rigakos

The normal way of life is such:
          the old give way to young.
To understand does not take much,
          explained in simple tongue:
Adults that love do procreate.
Their selves they form and replicate,
          continuing the song which they have sung.

The first into the world are first
          to leave the world behind.
They dry and shrivel in their thirst,
          are ground to dust and rind.
They find their solace in their spawn,
inside whose flesh they carry on
          their signatures, in place of their old mind.

The next await their counted turn,
          with shovel at the hand;
enjoy the lives which must adjourn
          into the unseen land.
Then find a mate to spawn their own,
before their own flesh from the bone
          departs into the dryness of the sand.

Yet once upon a blood red moon,
          the normalcy defers.
The next in line depart too soon,
          in snares of life's dark lures.
The first must intern on the shelves
of crypts the flesh that holds their selves,
          and taste what to the next this life confers.


(C)2014, Christos Rigakos

I find myself...
mesmerized,

by family photographs,
whose subjects all are...

dead...

the great aunt smiling,
frozen in mid-song,

the little boy squirming,
in her lap,

the tabby cat on the floor,
watching them both
intently...

all eyes looking,
frozen in mid-stare...

their actions,
frozen in mid-time...

those very vibrant,
living loves...

gone...

forever


(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

i trained a bloodhound in my quest
     to find the fount of youth
upon its memory impressed
     the habits of a sleuth
round every rock and grass and tree
it spied what others could not see
     in search of one most abstract hopeful truth

the training ground was in the park
     where children roamed and played
the bloodhound, trained to bay and bark
     where innocence displayed
it sniffed the scent of every child
with purity not yet defiled
     its diligence always duly repaid

by daily treks its efforts grew
     enthusiastically
and by the same i surely knew
     the end was soon to be
round pools and lakes and finally
a river leading to the sea
     the fount of youth would soon belong to me

at last one day upon the dawn
     the time was now at hand
it came to me, my head it fawned
     its tail most quickly fanned
the hound had licked my head around
it barked and bayed and i had found
     the end was quite unlike what i had planned


(C)2014, Christos Rigakos