Passing through those glorious doors together

We find home at Bombay Bakers

Your hand in mine

The sugary air hitting us harder than a brick wall

We both feel the grace of familiarity

Our chemistry hotter than the rolls in the oven

The smell of freshly baked croissants gives me the same warm feeling as your smile

Passing Agora we look at each other with the same bright eyes

It'll just be a quick stop but such a savory one as we sit and share a large caramel coffee

I hate the aftertaste but anything with you is such a candied tang in the end

Your cinnamon dusted lips so close to mine

Your taste so sweet couldn't even be compared

Licking each finger after your touch, trying to save each bit of you

It doesn't matter which side of the world we are on or where we end up in the end

As long as there's that corner bakers shop nearby

It'll be home with you

En France, a cause de
leur system métrique , a
Bakers Dozen does not
exist, so, in order to get
around this dilemma, I
had no choice but title the
poem, a bakers cousin or
else it would have been
called Le Boulanger's Dix
which has a ******* sound
to it and the #MeToo lot
are already complaining
about the ****** innuendo
of what some see as a blatant
symbiotic patriarchal profession
that has created both the Baguette
and the Croissant as some form of
visual representation of the phallus
and ****** with yeast being the
common denominator of them both,
therefore by introducing his cousin
and keeping the relationship within
the confines of an incestuous family
affair, the poem in theory should not
need to be censored by the readers,
unless of course you are a Coeliac
in which case I strongly advise that
all of what you have read here is best
erased from your memory immediately.

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
     finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
     throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

In the ill-lit room singed with ovens’ heat
Swift hands deftly turn wheat ***** sweet
The air exudes a smell of pulpy soft taste
Blended with the odd fragrance of sweat!
Here reigns under the tin shed eternal night
As if by some design is forbidden daylight
Roll out confectionaries crisp and light
To fill the mouths with salivary delight!
Bread, cake, cookie and cherry bun
Kneading them in the heat is no fun
The bakers’ faces glow warm and red
Faster they must go before they rest their head!
The delicious stuff are relished by kids and grownups
They savor the flavor with their hot morning cups
Do they ever pause or give it a thought
How those laboring bodies in the heat rot!

Every night he's out with his torch
shinning it from off his wooden porch
looking for unsightly bugs and slugs
knowing those greedy munching critters

He had put beer cups in the soil
but to no avail
only a few slugs got so drunk
that they fell inside

So this night would be his sweet vengeance
this night will be liberation of his green friends
with salt in a bucket he goes storming Norman
throwing a frenzy of burning salt that melts flesh

He was a very nice chap most of the time
but tonight it was just protect those cabbages
and protect them he did and destroyed
yet forgot the cost to his liberty he claimed so right


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

We, the people of this country, in your eyes are:

babblers, bachelors, bafflers, baiters, barkers,
beakers, beaters, brawlers, blamers, beggars,
bloaters, bloopers, bombers, boozers, blunders,
bruisers, bafflers, bluffers, burglars and burners.

That's why you feel compelled to keep your foot on our heads
keep us down, put us down, push us down
subjugate us, belittle us, berate us.

We, the people of this country, in our eyes are:

butlers, bouncers, bakers, buyers, barbers,
cake-makers, delivery-takers, cocktail-shakers,
taxi drivers, cancer survivors, employers and hirers,
music makers, entertainers, window washers, foster takers,
plasterers, carpenters, scaffolders, sparks and builders,
boxers, carers, coaches, tailors, shoe makers,
designers, illustrators, multi-language facilitators,
dog walkers, dog trainers, bikers and cycle couriers,
doctors and nurses and all the emergency services.

We are the People, the reason you are where you are now
you sometimes forget that we exist as people, somehow
locked in your ivory towers with gold plated showers
and MP expenses and investment banker pretenses
this is not theater, its real life drama, its not just a bluff
its time to stand up
and say enough is enough.

Funny men in tall chef hats
Marching about so wildly
Stone soup and humble pie
Main course and dessert delight

Give me a dose
And that girl two
Vanity, her dream come true
Narcissistic uncaring and cold

A mid-evil blunder
So daring and bold
Spoiled brats
And rotting Brauts

Sugared too sweet
Not telling the truth
The gossip
And all

The Court jester
The village idiot
He sinks to the bottom
She cheers to the top

It's amazing the wonder
The high school scene
The many things
That relate to its sheen

The short stout bakers
Making profit from weakness
Some goods so smooth
Some just the opposite

The geeks and nerds
Hackers and slackers
Jocks with jerseys
And rebels with rock

Serve up course two and three
Let's make it a festival
Just you and me
Vanity and sheen

Were just getting started
This is high school
This mid-evil concert
For four years we live it

A new melody
A new song
It's not the end
But the struggle

Is on.

Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.


And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.


It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.


Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy ...