I was 18 and surrendered to a Van Gogh sunset,
The Aegean Sea a calm mirror,
Plato’s sun, rose-red and dying,
A shift from wind to breeze,
Each night negotiates a calm.

There were eight of us
Inside the cave,
A cathedral inside a mountain,
Our home, high upside a cliff,
The mountain shepherds unhappy
With our stake,
Until we saved the lamb.

We’d found each other,
An octad to a family formed,
Wandering, drinking, annoying the Swiss,
Our freedom dangerous,
Beyond control,
Our odd desire to just be.

Hell, we were reading Hesse,
One of their own,
Our Swiss welcome spent,
They’d had enough,
And so we left for Athens,
To dance and sing,
And tender the sad patience of the Greeks.

Eighteen hours on the ferry to Eos,
People barfed huge arcs over the railing,
Then sat down to reread the headlines for the hundredth time,
Eos was an island of no cars, sparse electricity,
An abundance of religion
And a constant flow and cask of wine.
Retsina, the barrel sealing resin of the Aleppo pine,
An odd and unmistakable taste,
It left a hangover like a warning shot,
The only cure to drink again.

We spent Easter high on acid,
In the back pews of a church,
A thousand years of candles
White walls black with carbon,
A priest, a chalice, the smoking thurible,
A pendulum of incense and pure thought,
The ancients practiced faith with all their senses.

On cloudy moonless nights,
We walked the miles home,
Sandals slap on a sugar sand,
The beach ours, all of it
So dark we could only hear the sea,
The rhythm of the waves like the downbeat of the earth,
We plodded to its dark measure in a line,
On return, from village, church,
Or a lover’s walk through miles of wild daisies,
Until the rediscovered goat path up to our cave,
A Sisyphean task, a find each time,
Drunk, ******, alive, young, nuclear with hope and desire,
We would change the world,
We would mend kind all the broken parts.

And in our cave,
The sounds of others making love,
Rough grunts and soft sighs, whisper kisses,
I would think and dream,
And ride the silver of those waves
Our lives like skipping stones,
Brief, beautiful, and bound.

A question that should be on
Your mind this evening is why?
Why are the people of Greece--
Why is the nation of Greece--getting
Spanked & punished by their EU
German & French economic overlords?
We should be saluting tonight’s
Referendum NO vote results,
The Greek electorate voting against another
Devastating round of economic sanctions,
Voting NO on more years of austere living.
In fact, it should be U.S. foreign policy to
Support complete Greek withdrawal from
The European Union. That’s right:
“Euro No, Drachma naí!”
The EU is fiscal tyranny,
Led by the EU autocrats,
Angela Merkel & whomever is sitting in the
French baby high chair these days.
Isn’t it a strange coincidence that the
EU whip, always seems to be cracking on
Their swarthier brethren,
Their southern European members,
The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians &,
The Greeks.
The Greeks have had enough.
One would expect nothing less from
These fiercely independent
Hellenistic people.
And you can **** the Greek people
Up their ***** all you want &
Many of them might like it, but
The Greeks will survive,
Survive as they have for nearly 3,000 years,
Give or take a Kalamata olive or two.
We breathe the air of Greek culture,
Deep respiration of so much of
What we still call learning these days.
We owe the Greeks: it was
Greek inception of so much
Math & science &
Countless other right-brain
Spatial ability & logical precision; not to
Mention so many left-brain contributions in
Sociology & ethics,
Politics & democratic government,
Geography & religion,
Education & philosophy,
Sculpture & art, philosophy,
Live theater & literature.
We owe the Greeks.
Had we interceded with the Brits on Greece’s behalf,
Reminding them that we bailed out their sorry ***-cheeks
After two 20th Century world wars, perhaps
The British Museum might have Fedexed
The so-called Elgin Marbles--
Those boosted friezes,
Jacked right off the
Parthenon façade,
Should have Fedexed them back to
"Eleftherios Venizelos,"
Decades ago.
George’s wife, that foxy babe
Amal Clooney sure thinks so.
We owe the Greeks.
The world owes the Greeks.
Let us all help the Greeks.
Let’s encourage them to quit the EU.
To Greeks I say: trust & patience,
You’ve got the sun.
You’ve got the sea.
A clean white landscape,
Ouzo & Retsina,
Spanakopita & Moussaka.
The Greek Islands:
Crete & Mykonos,
Santorini & Corfu,
Rhodes & Ios
Samos & ****** . . .
We owe you.
We love you.
We will come to you.

morning dove
or is it the mourning dove?
speaks this morning
of melancholy
rock and sheep
and a drunken friend
who each night
ended his day
the same

each minute
was nothing I knew
it was the sound of the bells,
around their necks
and from the church.
Above in the abandoned castle,
defenses down
in rooms
open to the sky
looking down
on the village life
the smell of the beach
fish and retsina
the wisteria sheltered agora

I came there
like the gypsies
we never saw
who snuck in at night
took our clothing
off the lines
and potted plants
from the patio,
leaving only what was missing
as evidence
they'd been there

Cabana, cheese and mustard sauce
Do grace the tablecloth,
White puffy clouds and warm south breeze
And joy in chilled beer's froth.
Hot sun doth bake these stony walls
Sweet mandolins do play,
And the pigeons peck at breadcrumbs caste.
And all fares well today.

Young darting men on Vespa's
Ply their arrogant good looks,
And those stunning senoritas
Strut their stuff while momma cooks.
Monsignors in scarlet robes
Do scurry through the town
Dispensing Catholic action
To any soul who is around.

Madonna's guard the roadside shrines
Where hot seal winds aloft
Toward the craggy mountain pass
And pastured alpine croft.
The peasant woman bends her spine
Trudging forth with strain,
Wood ******* piled upon her back,
Up hillward bound with pain.

Old men sit and ruminate
And watch the young girls pass,
Whilst nursing dark retsina
In an opaque thimble glass.
The olive trees look stately
In their crooked ancient way,
And cast a darkened shadow
Where the roosting chicken's lay.

And out across the mounded hills
The patchwork quilt of farm
And out beyond that deep azure
Of Italian coastal charm.
Seaward to horizon
The aqua blue intense
Extends as far as eye can see
Mediterranean immense.


Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
23 January 2010

There is nothing cleaner
than a freckled spotted hyena
drinking warm retsina
outside a Catholic church

There's nothing more obtuse
than an educated moose
running aboot the hoose
looking for a shoe

There is nothing more verbose
than a really exceptionally long line of prose that didn't quite rhyme at the end

I see you sitting
on the red bed
drinking Retsina
against the white wall
where we had
drawn hexagrams,
in your black slip
smiling up at me
in the pellucid
Greek light.

Since that moment,
Forty-five years
have dissolved
like tears
in a hurricane.

You are only a
ghost who smiles
in my memories.

I never thought
I would find another
woman like you,
strong and complete.

But I have travelled
far and long
and like magic,
here she is.

Thank you for saying
that one day
I would know love
because I was worthy.

And you went away,
and  she is here.

Ghosts always
tell the truth.

If you are patient.

It's beautiful stuff,

this pale yellow braided rope --


I smell retsina.