With the sounds of the Smiths in my ears, I’m thinking about truthful, honest, compassionate, emotional, beautiful ways in which we can connect with ourselves and others.
This is not a trial run. It’s the main course, the only life we are given. I am smitten. We owe it to ourselves to be a beam of light cutting through the clouds. Take notice. What works, what doesn’t. Holding on to shit you don’t need may seem comfortable, familiar, safe.
Safety is an illusion.
Our time on this earth is minimal, I’m not being subliminal. These are the facts. We act out the parts we thought we could play. We stray away from what we really want instead of plunging into the unknown and trusting what we know to be true. Think about the impact you want to have, the thing that will stay long after you’re gone. That is the sliver of light. Who you are in the cloudy sky.
I know it’s not fair, years may go by and all you focus on is the misery the monotony in your heart. Stand apart from the crowd, dare to wear red in an all gray life.
Fuck them. War isn’t the answer. See above the clouds.
Metal gods loomed over the skyline, reminding me to be free instead of locked in up in my head. I didn’t know any better. Letting the isolation sink in, it cut to the bone, sapping my very existence. I learned quickly. Pretence isn’t looked upon kindly here. Here you make it because you ate shit for breakfast and it really doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.
“What the FUCK are you looking at!”, she shouts as you quickly avert your gaze, as she hits you with daggers of anger and fear. Imagine how hard you have to become in order to survive this grind and still plant trees of love and understanding, but now they’re rebranding Gotham City into a Monopoly Game. Property moguls eating up land faster than pacman ever could.
You once stood tall, but now.
Game Over. Move over lady this isn’t for you any more. Dark alleyways, dimly lit, covered in the wheat paste dreams of momentary and permanent art gods. The grunting sounds of kitchens working to feed a city that never slept. But now silence. As you hear the footsteps in front of you disappear.
Kindness comes from places you hardly expect. Even though they say no one cares, you get the stare of recognition of common pain. She knows what you’re dealing with as you fight back tears on a Brooklyn bound F train. Get off a stop early to collect yourself and, put on your dark glasses so others don’t see you strain. Suck it up, pull it together. There will be good days and bad days but this place makes a Human out of you with a capital H.
You walk up second avenue, conjuring up images in your head about how you got here in the first place. Will you triumph over your fears, or cower in self defence? Condensed dreams in a flash, sweep by you, bringing you to an intense euphoria as you realize it’s all about to end.
Walk a block up.
Freeman’s Alley – LES
Those moments of quaint rarity and clarity bubble up into the Manhattan Skyline. Right across the way, under the PepsiCo Sign, sublime afternoons overlooking the Hudson, moments of chaotic oneness, undone through the blaring sirens of cop cars. Bars overflowing with lonely boys trying to get your attention. “Hey pretty, wanna grab a drink with me?”
Nah I’m good.
LIC- Queens
I remember how I once stood, alone wondering how this would all turn out.
Fade to black.
Sirens, lure me onto ancient lands that are far more about fiction than fact. The dream is intact even though we are packed in like rats. 5 Million souls and counting, and everyone is in your damn business.
Monastiraki, Athens by night
A village, A rock, An ancient ideal now lost in the cement crevices of the mind. We are strangers here. Nomads. Others. Coming and going and finding our way out of the darkness. Slowly trying to prove to every passerby to look up at the skies, instead we limit ourselves to what’s available, attainable and nothing more.
That isn’t my game.
I came here to create change. No matter what. Lingering in the dimly lit passageways of my fatherland now lost in its ugliness and disrepair. People here stare at you as if trying to find the answer to their own insecurities and grief. Knee deep in regrets they never knew they had, they stand tall against the creeping fear mongering and laundering of hope.
I smile gently urging you to invite me to your ceremony. My tears shed in apotheosis of a dream long deferred, but no more. The allure of Athenian mysteries becomes clear, a litany of a city long demolished & rebuild on repeat.
I stand still for a moment to take it all in. The clouds of doubt have dispersed once again, to reveal the softness within.
On the process of outgrowing and unfolding into who we really are.
Looking back looking forward.
Motions moving in motion. The notions and lives I’ve lived and continue to live.
A distortion of the past. Cast upon the present tense, intense feelings underneath the smiles, all the while, unearthing moments of grief.
Disbelief that those persons I once was have now deceased.
Unleashing the present me, unforeseen, unseen till now. Watch out, I am not playing hide and seek, I’m sustaining the fire within.
Quieting the tears I once shed on my self made bed of nails.
It never fails to astound.
How profound it is to radically love myself putting past lives on the shelf as a reminder, that I no longer know who that is. And now?
Now I sit in my quiet space, unfazed. If don’t have to please your gaze. I’m here only fulfill my dreams one day at a time.
Patiently.
Undoing the crimes of the past, feeling like an outcast from the lives I’ve since created, dismantling the facades that once covered the walls of the self made prisons I built.
Putting together the torn and tattered pieces like a quilt that covers me, comforts me from my self made guilt.
And now finding freedom doesn’t seem like a dream deferred.
Home made bread slathered with olive oil, goats cheese and honey makes life worth living.
I am Greek, in every possible way, I love my country with its immense flaws, Athens is my city and I have fallen for her, despite her pretty ugliness and chaotic living.
I’m not only a Greek. An amalgam a blend, a mé·lange, a mixed grill, a greatest hits, a combo platter, a hyphenated soul.
I’m not old… yet.
Being skinny and fit, has been replaced with being strong and healthy.
I have stopped giving any more fucks.
I give all the fucks.
Loving and being loved is really all that we’re all out here to do.
Working better is the new working hard.
Everything is art.
Trust, self-respect and Integrity are superbly sexy.
A hot bod is too.
A balanced person is constantly adjusting and learning.
Nature is under scrutiny and constant attack; still she has a way to keep going despite our efforts to overpower her. Devour her.
We are at the mercy of her. This earth we have with hubris & destruction overtaken. We will awaken to our limits and have no where to go.
Running away from extinction destruction and greed. No deed left unpunished. No scheme left unscathed. We are unfazed by our audacity our capacity for change. And we choose to remain unchanged.
How long will it take? We remain chained to our past mistakes. What does it really take ? We underestimate the rate at which we will be outnumbered and overtaken.
By our own hypocrisy, their autocracy, this is not a democracy. It’s a fallacy, a game.
We’re all the same in the eyes of god they say? which god is that? I’d like to have a word please. With the higher power up in a tower that no one can see.
This one is on me…
You say your life story as your pour me another drink, I didn’t order and didn’t need. Take heed, listen to the powers that be, as you take the last sip of poison before you leave.
Somber mornings, built in longings, and the sea awaits. Crossings, passages, journeys of time, sublime aromas of a land that is my sacred place. Intoxicating smells of the past coming back to me at last. Long lost destiny starts with just one step, but I’ve been walking for miles and miles and I’m growing tired.
What do you do for yourself they ask. I have a task, herculean at best. There is no rest for my body tonight.
Frightful faces look at me as I smile, they must not have seen joy in a while. Staring in disbelief that someone can break the spell of misery, it’s not a mystery. Listen to my liturgy. Amen
Strange men pause their eyes one me.
Breaking the sanctity of my solidarity.
What the fuck are you looking at…My tongue gets caught in a reaction but I bite it hard.
I close my joy in a box to share with those who give it back.
It’s a rarity in these strange times. To find the sublime in the ordinary and mundane.
The rain keeps falling on the streets of familiarity, my old haunts. They fault me, chase me away.
Yet I return changed.
Memories streaming like the rivers formed by the first fall rain.
Athena is washed clean after a summer of debauchery and tourist delights.
They will soon go as they always do, to leave our land for us to clean up.
Fast forward to a quiet space. Against the race of time. It’s all mine now, this moment. Atonement for my sins. Quietly knocking down my resignation to this abomination this greed. I plant the seed to a new life, walking away from the past like a lion roaming the earth in search for a place to call home.
breathe in breathe out be thankful be sweet be concrete discreet unique dance to another beat don’t let people step on your feet. Don’t give in yet. I confess I’m lost in my emotions I have notions about you and me Nothing concrete just a feeling Unique complete maybe it’s just me do you see? This thing I’m in, this swinging in my hips my lips part I start. Step to the rhythm then I get lost in you again I stopped my pen and thought not again... but then I felt your breath on my neck sweetness completeness uniqueness a pleasure listen to
Sometimes I lay down and wonder what it would be like to be your wife… Fuck no. Thank the universal beings and celestial forces you are as far away from me as possible. Undoubtedly so. You did me a favor With your razor sharp wit. I must admit, I thought you were hot shit. But then the reality hit SMACK DAB in the center of your fantasy of me. You see? God is in the details they say and you’re just murky Trust me. It’s apparent. I gave you consent over my body. Not my mind. You played that one of a kind, pimp game. The lie folded into half truths and lead me to assume that you loved me. It was all above me like a noose. I get goosebumps when I think of the shit I would have done to lower myself to your level. It’s undeniable how unreliable The pussy is compared to the gut. And in you strut, like a homing device for my weakness my vice. You slice precisely like a surgeon, my heart into a cavernous hole. But then you underestimate my soul. And here I am Whole. Compete without distinction or defeat. I spit at your feet. Don’t deplete my space I have erased you from my memory. click — delete complete without distinction or defeat.
Eleana Kouneli 