Selected Poetry by Hephaestion Christopoulos
Photo Source: Pexels
Ammoniac Heart
Stench of ammonia and scattered pills
Shards of glass and nameless ills
That’s all her precious love could ever be
Fool’s gold and cheap moonshine
For weary ghosts who forever pay the fine
From the office window
Half blinded by the sun’s stinging rays
She’d see this old, gaunt and curved man
Every afternoon, two o’clock, five minutes give or take
He’d cross the highway
Dragging swollen feet on hot asphalt,
Atrophic arms waving to passing cars
Atrophic fingers clasping his cane
Tapping it on the burning ground
Tick-tock, just like a metronome
Her sight blurry from the blazing light
She’d shrivel her eyelids, move a little to the side
Hoping to catch a clearer glimpse of that man’s imminent death
Crawling like a turtle among a herd of rampaging bison
Be it today, be it tomorrow
She never knew
She just clammed up and looked and waited
Wouldn’t we all?
It takes a man’s death to set those hearts ablaze
For ammoniac hearts to shine inside their shells of clay
They say old seadogs never sink
They say they smell the storm like hounds
And so she’d wait
Late at night, still awake, eyes always red and wide open
Windows to a sandstorm that someone forgot to lock
Ears buzzing with the cries of whipped dogs and beaten wives
Horrid sounds that thrive in the dark and cower back by daylight
Wine dripping on the carpet from her trembling glass
She’d run her curved claws across her cheeks
She’d sink her curved cat-claws in her palms
The scars would be gone by morning anyway
The lines would vanish once lighted by the new day
Leaving behind just a tiny sting in her flesh
That tiny sting that keeps us from forgetting
He once drew a heart in the snow for her
She once whispered his name to the night sky
But snow melts and words fly
Never to be heard again
Now just an acrid smell remained
A lit cigarette can hardly scar a heart but you have tried
And you’ve dipped your curved claws deep inside your chest
But your shredded heart one day was whole again the next
You wish you could have been a cat and only had nine lives
A Razor’s Worth of Boats
Little Harry didn’t believe me when I told him how simple it is to make a boat
So I showed him
I guess I shouldn’t have, but I’m not wired up for this
To make a boat, I said, you only need a deep breath and a razorblade
Look—I already have three
Little Harry didn’t even flinch
I never saw him again
Pain is just a feeling
Sometimes maybe even a friend
Blood is irrelevant
Nothing more than tears down my cheek
Boats always float on blood
Seven more
I don’t know why I said I’d count up to eleven
Such an imperfect number
Sounds wrong
But eleven it is
So I carve one every morning, a little arc following the curve of my eye
My boats
My fleet
My caravan
People on the street look the other way
Mrs Jives says they should send me to the funny farm
And my landlord has been giving me those looks of his a long time now
But he always takes my money and never says a word
I guess it’s better that way
What could we ever talk about?
Six more
Five more
Four
Three
I just miss you so
And miss you even more because you’re always here
But it’s still you and not you
Where’s that golden hair of yours?
Your moonshine smile has set forever
And there’s this rattling in the heaving of your breasts
Like a broken machine
Even the serrated sadness in your eyes is now of a different kind
A dull kind
One I dread to describe
One I don’t recognise
One I’m afraid I might stop loving
So I carve my ships and wait
Just two more left
Then we’ll get all dressed up and paint our eyelids gold
Braid our hair or what’s left of it
And get drunk just like in the old days
I can carry you
There’s not much left of you
From up here the buildings look like the broken bones of behemoths
Or maybe the stained teeth of giant horses
This is the last boat
And this one can fly, all the way up to the stars
I’ll take you there
I promise
[God’s eye’s on the moon tonight
Shedding on Earth His loving light
God’s mouth’s on the ground tonight
Open to swallow up the coward kind]
Borderline Conscience
Balancing on the edge of the world you said:
“What if I let go?
There might be miracles you’ve never met
In the chaos down below”
I shook my head. “All dreams are dead
And monsters bellow there
The beasts that we ourselves have bred
In shame they cry and blare”
You shrugged and said, “I have no shame.
My dreams have breathed their last
Somewhere along this burning plain.
I came, I saw, I lost”
Her Lullaby Sounded Like Canned Storms and Cracking Teeth
The wall is scarred in a most violent manner
The grooves make the plaster bleed
like someone’s been trying to claw their way through
But there are no blood stains to be seen
and in the far corner, where all lines meet,
written in cursive with a feather quill,
one can read
“I am no stranger to your strange self”
I just don’t think we ever expected to witness that feeling again
No stranger
I just didn’t think we’d ever wade in these waters again
our strange selves
But the ink smears on the floor speak of
contrition
convulsions
contortions
Just perch on a scorched branch
paint your feathers black
and be a stranger
We never wanted these strange selves
we never wanted to hear the sound of thoughts forming
But this crow feather quill has scratched the walls
and all we can see is the curly ligatures
of ancient cursive
that speak of things best left forgotten
best left to be carried away
by a river of liquid cement
Strange selves
shelves
elves
Maybe it’s not the words that matter this time
Maybe it’s the cigarette butts piled up under the inscription
Maybe it’s the feathers left here by a passing dove
or swallow
I forget
or the rusty syringe no one dares pick up
The cement flows
but takes nothing away with it
So there we are
strangers within a strange self
We never wanted the lines to meet
We never wanted the river to freeze
We never wanted to claw our way through these walls
We never wanted anything
except for this cursed bird-feather-quill
to at last stop cawing
stop eyeing us
stop fluttering above our heads
Then maybe the bones that push through the concrete
will one day paint our dreams blue
Hephaestion Christopoulos is confused: part engineer, part translator, part linguist and part hopeless bassist. He also writes. He has published two short story collections in Greek and has participated in several anthologies. His latest book, The Whales on the Moon, mixes realism with speculative elements and has received very positive reviews. He lives in Athens with five women, only three of which are furry. You can find him on Twitter @CompsonsCurse
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