The Marathon plains
How it must have felt for the Greeks to see the Persians on the Marathon plains
Their soldiers must have gone on forever
And as the distant mountains rise and fall
So the first clash of metal
Decided Greek history
In order for us to stand here
In peace
And to learn from the mistakes of humanity
Conquering yourself
The greatest gift of all
To run a marathon
The plains in full bloom
Dawn and dusk approaching together
The plains of Hellas
By the plains of Hellas I will fall,
I will rest my head in its peaceful fields,
And it’s dying light,
And like a cataclysm that gives birth to something new,
I will choose my words wisely,
When I kiss her goodnight.
With all the glory of the homeland,
Who suffered through the ages,
In its chains of death,
I can still hear the ancients calling,
The empire of the mind,
Conquers all and no one.
Trireme
The years have passed
Like a trireme
Travelling to and from Troy
Having seen many adventures
Along the way
Now the ship is coasting
Slowly
Waiting for land
And new mysteries to discover
There beyond the sea
Where the people wait
For your arrival
Where fresh fruit will flow from your lips
Spring will give birth to summer
Whilst the trireme will lay waiting at harbour
Unbowed
Steadfast
Lapping against the water
Shining in the moonlight
In the ancient cauldron of desire
The Greek goddess
I walk back from the coffee shop,
Drink life in a cup,
The brown haired woman smiles,
The pavement shakes,
I think of romantic trysts,
As cars stall the road,
She looked like a Greek goddess,
Lost in time,
In the wrong place,
The wrong country,
The wrong street,
I can relate to her,
We are all strangers here,
Gawking under the sky,
Half the city sunny,
The other cold,
Where is she heading?
To Mount Olympus?
She is so far from home,
You were wrong Leonard,
Nobody knows.
Troy and Rome
Troy will fall
When we trick our enemy
When we show our true face
To the world
Rome will rise
When we come together
When we enslave
The rebellious spirit in ourselves
The wooden horse waits in the city
The soldiers lay drunk on the streets
Wine pours out of the moon
Odysseus spins the lyrics of speech
Lemnos, the island of Hephaestus
The large black rock comes out of the sea,
As if welded by the hands of Hephaestus himself.
Here on this ancient volcanic island,
Named after the Greek God.
His wife Aphrodite stretches out across the beach,
All sand and sea, as if braided from her hair.
Their marriage an unhappy one,
Each taking lovers to atone for their loneliness.
Rolling hills in daylight
As we drive in the car
I look out the window
And see the rolling hills
Like the sea at night
Dreaming of that battle
When Greece was finally free
All the heroes of yesteryear
Descending into the future
Bouboulina
Byron
And the 300
Rolling hills in daylight
Overture
My first swim
In the bluest sea
A jazz sun overhead
Waves of music
Salt of thirst
My skin youthful
The boats sway to and fro
The audience consists of an
Abandoned house
A plastic bag
Broken bamboo sticks
Seaweed and a tree branch
The blue sky
An aeroplane
The noise of cars on the road
Wet sand on my feet
And my healthy thoughts
Greece
Greece
I have waited to come here all my life
To dance with you
Long into the night
Not the Greece of my childhood
Nor the Greece of holiday beaches sun full
Nor the Greece of delicious food on every table
Not the Greece with its ancient history or fresh evening air
But the Greece of my mind
The Greece I have been travelling to my whole life
A place to call home
A welcoming paradise
Somewhere I can finally say ‘’you made it’’
‘’The choice is yours’’
Somewhere I can relax peacefully
And not worry about trivial things
Greece
I have waited to come here all my life
‘’What a beauty‘’
‘’What a treasure I have finally found’’
Arriving in Athens…
Arriving in Athens
On a modern aeroplane
Drinking a freddo cappuccino
This city is the cradle of civilisation
A baby born of the Ancient Greeks
They had so many stories to tell
Philosophy and Plato walked these streets
Democracy and Pericles ran its course
The famous statue of the goddess Athena
Now we tell our own stories
Walking amongst the ruins of the Parthenon temple
A mobile phone ringing loud
Relaxing at night in a taverna
Sipping ouzo and prized lamb
The fresh wind heroic
We have reached a calmness in humanity
Enjoying all the hard work of our elders before
Arriving in Athens thankful to those great minds
Like when a mother sees it’s baby grow and develop
Into a young adult sure to one day make a family of its own
Full of passion and desire for the new world
Dreams of my childhood
I remember the clear blue sea
The play of the water against the rocks
Sand stretching across the years
The chirping of crickets by the veranda
Sunlight warming the white paint peeling
Off the summer house in the Greek countryside
I remember the toy cars and a ping pong ball’s loud hum
Fresh fruit and fish on my grandmother’s old wooden table
Tomatoes that taste of the starry night
Sumptuous in it’s memory of my youth
Swaying so far from the fishing boats
Caught in the nets of sleep
I remember the olive trees
And the trip to Delphi
Mountains higher than the clouds
Twisting and turning round those roads in the bright light
Till we met the oracle and the fresh spring greeting us with gifts
A view of the whole world
I remember the smell of my grandfather’s cigarettes at the kiosk in Porto Rafti
His evening coffee and grumpy face
All my families arguing over nothing at all
And the sound of Greek music from the Castle club
In the distant hills
As the sun set and the moon filled the sky with its gleam of yonder
Lover be aware of loving too much
Lover with eyes so golden
Hair like silk
Breasts full of roses
Build this temple on the cape of Sounion
From this cliff edge
Look at me like you look at the sun rise
Braid your happiness in knots
Feed the desire in me that trembles
At the touch of your skin on the coast
Your lips moving with the salty water
Archaic goddess of the heart
A statue that takes human form
Lover be aware of loving too much
I am already lost in Hades
The sun will blind you if you gaze too long
Your path is torn reaching for such dizzying heights
Driving on Lemnos roads
Van Gogh fields
Beams of wheat
Sunlight
Dabs of paint on the canvas
The sunset of emotions
Around us
A sense of leaving
Hard times behind me
Swirls of happiness
In the blue and green
The road home
Long road to Myrina
Leaving Lychna
The small homely village
Winding roads
Taking us to Myrina
Hilly landscape
Like multitudes of breasts
Small tree
Coming out of rock
Yellow sheen
Exasperated by blue
Fresh air
As wild as the sun
Bronzed fields
Swimming in the sky
We arrive at the capital
Heaven sent
Women greeting us
With their vase like hold
Sea dispersed
Amongst the crowds and cars
Fishermen trailing nets
Over the shops and cups
Coffee engulfing
The Grecian buzz
Smell of seaweed
Fish and filotimo
Leaving consciousness
Long road to Myrina
Liberty or death!
Let me tell you of a cautionary tale, a world of tyrants and immortals, Athena’s swan song
It begins with a dream, which grew on rock, a temple born as mighty as all the star flock
Oh beloved Greece, I know you do not believe in a hell on earth,
When men came and raped your earth,
The raging fire of the sun, the peaceful calm of the moon,
These are your philosophical musings, the golden rule,
Five hundred years slaves to the Ottoman mob, ploughing the fields as Athena looks on,
Planning her revengeful swan song,
Women and children sold to harems, men shot down like the blowing breeze
Magically one day Poseidon wakes from his dream, strikes down his trident, on this embattled earth
Crippling the Turkish fleet with waves of steel, like an earthquake shining for all to see
Immortals came from all the earth, to bring the tyrants to their knees,
Like smashing statues made of iron, the Colossus of Rhodes starts to stride,
To help the Greeks win back their pride, victory is within a marathons reach
Every man every woman take up arms and fight for peace
As an owl hovers across the steeps
When will they learn, that Greece does not believe in a hell on earth
But in the good and bad in everyman, the balance that keeps Athena’s wisdom living on...
Knowledge
Knowledge spreads its wings across this lonely night
Flying across cityscapes and natural delights
Lights below seem so distant so true
But these other human stories are so far away from you
Spinning like a wheel of contradictory desire
I spend my time waiting for a call from the ancient lyre
Because knowledge is not only victory for the few
It is understanding sometimes we have no clue
Fortune favours the bold?
Fortune favours the bold?
Can I cross those snow capped mountains?
Fly like an eagle?
Conquer the world like Alexander?
Liberate Greece?
Fortune favours the bold?
But who am I?
Can I walk alone in a park?
Kiss a beautiful woman?
Dance under the moonlight?
Sail within the stars reach?
All this and more?
The Kabeirian Mysteries
Ride on beautiful song
Into the Kabeirian mysteries
Take me to the lords of night and day
Release me from my consciousness
Where Ancient Greece hangs on a wire
A cult hanging on one leg
Descending beneath the clouds
Into the ether of the incense
Smoke rising cryptically
Smelling the undiscovered world
Letting loose the spirits within
Where man and woman are at one with the stars inside
Almost like a new born child in peace with itself
Here the sky fills me with pain
Like tears falling
Like orgiastic songs
This wine travels across rivers
Reaching seas of mysteries
For the festivities have begun
Hellas
Beautiful Hellas
You are free
At last
Now dance into the universe
TROY
Fresh wind covers the rocky island softly
From the port to the stoned cottages and streaming clothes lines
Ouzo is slammed down on blue tables
As crickets speak till night comes covering the sun
Whilst the whole world burns
In storms of misunderstandings and hope
We are lucky to be alive
Under the full moon
Sailing through the Aegean sea of memories
Here, thousands of years ago
Paris's arrow shot Achilles' heel
Fame a face that shone like above
A selfish seed becoming a tree
Homer sung of an age lost
Like a dolphin's grace
Under Greek crying starlit skies
Whilst Troy burns
Helen is still in love
Beautiful and cursed at equal measure
Full of desire to move in and out of the waves
The lyre's crescendo defeats the disease
The war has only just begun
As I begin to walk on pebbled sandy beaches in peace
ATHENA
The heat is stifling
On dunelike isles
A wind passes through fleetingly
This is the picture in my mind
Of a life spent waiting for a relief
Etched in stone like marble thousands of years old
Worshipping the Goddess Athena
Offering her wine and fresh fruit
Picked from holy trees
And wisdom above all
Not the hunger to want more and more
As the night calms the wild sun
And the moon sleeps in peace
Fresh air covers me completely
I have finally arrived at Athena
DIPTYCH
Sappho I hear you calling from the grave
I hear you calling from all the lost papyri, mummified
From your shattered mind and word, indefinite, perplexed
Sappho I hear you calling from all the fragments
I hear you calling scattered all the way around the world
In the Nile Delta and the Apollonian sun, like chariots let loose
Sappho I hear you calling from your heart
I hear you calling for woman and for man, entwined like anthos
Supple waterlike lovers Anaktoria, Atthis and Gongyla flowing
Sappho I hear you calling for strong willed Kerkylas
I hear you calling for your husband of the eternal day
But most of all the passion of your Kleis, daughter of the moon
You call for love
Such love does not last forever
Composing lyrics to circum
If you wanted to abandon your enemies
Those who poisoned your words
You had to sing for them
Like a nightingale
All through the night
Daybreak
Silence
Heart
Thunderous
Only then can dawn break its curse
Become mortal
With few words
Be set free
Sappho I hear you calling, I hear you dying infinite times
I hear you calling like lightening, like wisdom, and like fire
Stirring my...
beautiful
dream
SAPPHO I HEAR YOU CALLING
Sappho I hear you calling from the grave
I hear you calling from all the lost papyri, mummified
From your shattered mind and word, indefinite, perplexed
Sappho I hear you calling from all the fragments
I hear you calling scattered all the way around the world
In the Nile Delta and the Apollonian sun, like chariots let loose
Sappho I hear you calling from your heart
I hear you calling for woman and for man, entwined like anthos
Supple waterlike lovers Anaktoria, Atthis and Gongyla flowing
Sappho I hear you calling for strong willed Kerkylas
I hear you calling for your husband of the eternal day
But most of all the passion of your Kleis, daughter of the moon
You call for love
Such love does not last forever
Not from the distant calling, nor from a forgotten inkless pen
It only lasts in your heart Psappho
Abandon your enemies
Who poisoned your words
Religious glory in the name of truth
Crucified you in defenceless pagan Mytilene
Sing
Like a nightingale
All through the Lesbos night
Ancient Greek legend of old
People flocked to see you from foreign shores
Homer's heir, the Tenth Muse
''Sing to me
Oh muse
You of the serene voices
Cast me in your spell
Love me without fault''
Daybreak
Silence
Heart
Thunderous
Only then can dawn break its curse
Become mortal
With few words
Be set free
Sappho I hear you calling, I hear you dying infinite times
I hear you calling like lightening, like wisdom, and like fire
You are somewhere in the underworld
Stirring my...
beautiful
dream
COUNTRY
Country, land of my ancestors
Place of my breath
You walk with me in my adventures
Deep in this foreign isle of tears
Whenever I feel like a stranger here
You rest my head on the shores of Hellas
Reminding me of the beauty of my youth
And the gift to the world of a new born child
Now you are old you still look young
As the earth struggles through the hardship
My hair turns grey each lonely day
Urban pavements paint the stanzas
Rain falls like statues from my frown
The sky toppled like a memorial sea of blue
I turn a corner and pass chances everlasting
To one day lay with you
THE LONG JOURNEY BACK TO THIS
On this bed of silk and roses
Time leaves me withered and strange
Homeland I hear you calling loudly
Through pebbled streets of unknown fame
Horse and carriage there will take me
To a rocky hot sea of love
My life is written in this azure sky
As if swimming through lines that I wrote presently, oh to be as free as a dove, the long journey back to this begins, on this bed...
Of silk and roses
Time leaves me withered and strange
Homeland I hear you calling loudly
Through pebbled streets of unknown fame
Horse and carriage there will take me
To a rocky hot sea of love
My life is written in this azure sky
As if swimming through lines that I wrote presently, oh to be as free as a dove, the long journey back to this begins, on this bed...
Ithaka
Ithaka
Isle of longing
So dear to my heart
I see you everywhere
But I can never reach your shores
From this ship
I hear you calling
Far away
Sailing for years
Since I left lonely Troy
But I will arrive one day
Stepping out my front door
One cold morning
Ithaka
Its calm horizon
In front of my eyes
Wine Fermentation
The island separated from the land
The individual separated from the populace
The ship floating on the sea
The sun floating in the sky
Words rushing down the mountains
Hilly landscapes creating spaces
Through ravens and paragraphs
Whilst novels are written
Under textured skies
Full of stars and the moon
Floating in the night
Window Seat
The North Pole
Ice bergs peaking here and there
Surrounded by the vast ocean
Still crystal clear water
Beneath the depths
The lost land of Atlantis
Sunken over time
As I look out of the aeroplane window
In the horizon I see the sky touching
the ice and sea
Ascending up a stripped meaning
Into the Blue
As my feet sink into sun-drenched paradise
I look out to the seventh sea
The sun beaming on my happiness
My mind at one with nature
Suddenly I dive into the great beyond
For a few seconds I disappear from it all
Only to come back from the blue
My first breath of summer
Soaking my memories for weeks to come
A church on the hillside praying
The wind turbines cooling me from the winter pain
London so far away now
Lemnos beautiful and strong
Writing words for evermore
As cars weave in and out of mountainous roads
Touching the sea-coloured skies
Reaching homeward
But now where home is
Nobody knows
Delphi
On this mountaintop
Silence fell like thunder,
As I climbed up the steps of the temple at Delphi,
To ask the oracle What it means to be alive?
Written at the entrance were the words,
''Everything in good measure''.
I look away.
Up here I am so high in the heavens,
Yet below the sea is so beautiful in the distance.
The sun warming me reflecting the rise and fall of man,
Soaring with the giants of time!
My footsteps disappear in the dust.
The Labyrinth
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
Will the sails be white?
In this blackest of night
Has Theseus killed the minotaur?
I hear Ariadne is in love
Am I destined to spend my life wandering through this labyrinth?
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
This ball of thread unravels at a steady pace
Each corridor a hopeful mystery
King Minos and his palace holds a spell over me
Crete builds its dreams meticulously
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
Ariadne aligned to the sun god Helios
Eternally searching for her confidant
Sailing on and on towards Hellas
Rising and setting each step of the way
The marble temple on the cape of her heart
A foreigner to these shores of chance
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
Suddenly in the distance I see a light
Like a far off galaxy too beautiful to reveal
Is this the ship I have been exhausting for?
A trick of the light by pale moonlight?
Maybe Poseidon in all his might?
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
For all I know it is the ship who has spotted land first
It is my son who has finally seen me
For it is these gleaming ships who have power over me
I am but a lone star out there in the horizon
Shining endlessly from the Sounion rock
Each one of us masters and victims of our own tragedy
As the sun sets over my life
I spend my days waiting for a ship that never arrives
Out there in the vastness of the blue sea
From his ship Theseus wanders
Has my father seen my safe return?
As the sun sets over my life
Are my sails white?
In this blackest of night
Will he jump from the cliff face into the Aegean sea?
Am I destined to spend my life wandering through this labyrinth?
I know Ariadne is in love
