September 7, 2014

  • Note:

    If someone out there would care to Google this site:

    ” http://soundcloud.com/#peterjamesmanos ”

    they might enjoy it…I hope… Blessings on all…PJM

April 12, 2014

  • Powders

    Powders
    Fine earth-dusts
    Beneath a stone upturned
    By the clattering
    Mob-pourings after centurions
    On the mocking-run to Golgotha

    They drive a poor shrunk Man heaving a Cross

    Bright honor they do to One
    Who gave them alms from heaven
    Bread from stone
    Life

    See them all for their total pale shadows-grey eye
    Each surly ash etched deep in monotonic dullness

    Yet slowly slowly now
    Out of the loveliness of death’s oncoming shade
    Deep deep within Exquisite Quiet
    Where Temple bleeds out thorn
    And Hands and Feet shed iron studs
    The Agony whispers in the sad and delicate air

    “Forgive”

    See Perfection and Futility
    As Twin Agonies inseperable as earth-dusts
    Lying beneath an upturned stone
    High on the mocking-run

    Powders
    Blowing time out of mind

    Powders
    Upon which the mind is nourished

    (Repost – For the Easter Passion)

January 22, 2014

  • The Thief

    You know… there are days in the winter of our lives
    Piling on now and symptomatic of a weakening will
    When those accidental atoms which make for a material existence
    Convert within a wrinkled water-inflated body
    To an ocean of silent degradation of those circuitous spores
    Those aquatic amoebas floating within us
    That once long ago…spermed and spiralled themselves into an “us”

    Within the turbulent caverns of our minds
    Our drained brains still manage a spark of tumultuous thought
    Of how to make it possible to greet another dawn
    Of how not to submit…of how not to surrender…
    Of how to cheat that stealthy thief of a few more ticks
    That miserable bastard… that mandatory time-keeper
    The enemy of us all

    But there is no hope… one might salvage a few more tired tries
    In the end though… the thief always wins

    Still the cat sleeps… She could not care less
    She has triumphed over that sly dilatory sneak
    Because she is not afraid of him
    Her courage sparkles… reaches out to us with gentle loving purrs
    She is our dominie… the guide to our survival
    Her eyes transmit her faith in us… she needs us
    Like nuns and monks need their sanctuaries
    She eats and drinks and stays warm in our bed

    And when you come right down to it
    Isn’t that all that really matters?

December 16, 2013

  • A Monestary Christmas

    Brother Stavros had been stationed at the lower gate all that day
    And worn a deep path in the snow with his pacing
    Now he was hungry and cold and he regarded the approaching darkness with relief
    For as soon as night fell he could go back inside the wall
    There in his room above the stable, he would eat some bread, cheese and olives
    Drink some tea to warm his frozen bones and go right to sleep…

    What nonsense he muttered to himself, waiting in this biting cold to greet some shabby peasants
    Coming to celebrate a holy birth in this bitter January cold
    A birth that had lost all significance… all reverence… all meaning…

    The wind heightened and he hugged his heavy shawl more closely about him
    And moved to the shelter of some trees next to the massive gate.
    What was there to celebrate he asked himself… staring out from behind his hood
    As if trying to penetrate the white mists rising from the valleys below
    Down there, men were slaughtering each other every day…
    Animals in a jungle had more respect for one another he muttered to himself
    Yes, it was true what he heard down in the village the other day
    The spirit of the Child has been trampled into the dusts of rolling tanks and marching feet…

    Of course, the abbot and his gentle priests had no knowledge of these things
    How could they when they were shut away up here on this remote mountain
    High above the sick world below… secure behind their cloistered walls…
    But he has seen with his own eyes, the devastation and the massacres
    The blood being spilled in the village streets and mountain passes
    He had watched as barefoot shepherds tried to stop the Panzer tanks
    With wine bottles filled with gasoline and were in turn cut down like so many hay-stalks
    Falling to the scythe by the enemy machine-gunners… Yes, he’d seen it with his own eyes
    Those two years leading his ragged partisans against that mechanized army of demons…
    He reached into his cassock and brought out a pack of German cigarettes
    The last pack from the last raid, twisting his lips into a mournful smile
    Even though they were betrayed they had done a thorough job on that supply convoy
    He counted the cigarettes… just five… Only five of his seventy-odd fighters survived
    The surprise German counter-attack… He put the cigarettes back into his pocket…
    He would smoke one tonight before he went to sleep…

    He heard the evening bell sound behind the wall… The monks were at their meal
    Suddenly he was very hungry and he wished he could go up and eat too
    Someday he’d find enough courage to chuck his habit at the abbot’s feet and go down the mountain
    To the world of men once more – Even facing a firing squad did not worry him in moments like this
    But he should not be too hard on these priests
    They had taken him in without a word when badly wounded, he had climbed up here to hide
    After he tracked down and finished off that Judas of a peasant…

    Yes, the monks had been kind… They healed his wounds and robed him in their habit
    He was taught to gather the wild berries on the lower slopes and press them into a potent brandy
    He learned to cultivate the green tea which grew wild on the steep mountain-sides
    Pruning the olive trees in the fall and gathering their fruit for light and food throughout the year…

    Because he was a man of exceptional strength the abbot gave him much of the heavy labor to do
    He performed the various tasks without a word and though he sometimes grumbled to himself…
    Secretly he was content with this child’s-play world where he found sanctuary
    So he did nothing to harm his position or upset the abbot’s faith in him
    Even when the ancient priest would gently lecture him on the spiritual rewards he was missing
    By not joining the order… Brother Stavros managed with great skill and diplomacy
    To refuse without hurting the old man’s feelings…

    From time to time, he would descend to the world below wrapped in the anonymity of his habit
    He would wander almost-empty silent plazas of villages where as a child… he once played with friends
    Recalling how these once-vibrant streets sang with the banter and laughter of a happy people
    Now only stares of distrust and suspicion were evident in their eyes…
    He would sit alone in the “kafenia” in the market-places careful not to reveal too much
    Of his bearded face masked by his voluminous hood, and watch the Fascists strut arm-in-arm
    With their traitorous strumpets, and he would sense his peoples’ terror and hatred
    As they scattered to let the enemy pass…

    And, as he slowly sipped his bitter chicory laced with ouzo, there began in him
    A strange and disquieting awareness – for as he witnessed all the misery about him, the poverty
    The starving sunken faces, the stooped and beaten forms hurrying along rubble-strewn streets
    He would sit and stare at them and was reminded of the frightened rabbits he kept penned as a child
    And the once-fierce love for these people ebbed with each descent from his mountain hiding-place
    Until all of them were reduced to nothing more than legions of shadows
    Strung across the familiar architectures of the villages of his youth…
    The compassion for his people, the anger toward the enemy, the loves and hatreds
    They were all gone now… nothing was left save for a curious and recurring emptiness in his heart…

    When he had seen enough, he would mount his elderly mule and climb into the safety of the hills
    Making his way slowly along obscure mountain trails back to the safe haven of the monastery
    Always, after each of these journeys he would tell himself that it would be the last
    That he must not go again for it was far too dangerous – Yet when the mechanical routine of life
    Behind the walls became too much to bear, he would descend the mountain once more to watch
    And to reflect inwardly upon this strange dispassionate attitude which had come to possess him…

    Suddenly, he was shaken from his reverie as the tinkle of a donkey-bell
    Struck like a note from a heavenly harp in the crisp quiet of the mountain eve
    He peered into the darkness but could see nothing and began to think he imagined it
    But then he heard it again, this time much closer…

    “Who is it?” he bellowed into the night, his voice shattering the stillness…

    There was no answer but in the cut below, he made out the forms of a floundering burrow
    With a woman swaying on its back and as he hurried down to them he called out…

    “Are you alone?… Are the others not coming for the mass?… It is almost time to begin!”
    He reached them now and grasped the burrow’s rope and the exhausted animal nuzzled him
    Grateful for the chance to pause… He patted its head and looked up at the woman…

    She was very young and seemed heavy with child – face small and round – puffed and pained
    By the ordeal of the climb and her eyes watered as the wind, bristling through the ravine
    Whipped through her inadequate clothing… Her breath, uneven, came quickly
    Labored vaporous puffs in misted whiteness round her face so that her features seemed to float
    In the thin diaphanous air as if woven of the subtle formlessness of dreams…

    Without a word, Brother Stavros whipped the great shawl from his shoulders, reached up
    And wrapped it round the trembling girl and lifting her gently from the animal’s back
    He shooed the burrow before him and carried her up through the drifts, past the gate
    To his room above the stable, eased her onto his straw pallet and covered her with sheep-skins…

    Brother Stavros watched the tiny beads of sweat form on the girl’s face as she lay asleep
    In the warm comfort of the manger… He had fed the peat stove below with solid blocks stored
    In the shed behind the stable and filled his large tea-kettle with melted snow till it overflowed
    Now boiling in preparation for the birth which he knew would be very soon…

    He knelt anxiously beside her on his pallet for she was in the final stage of her delivery
    She strained while still half-asleep to bring forth her child and as he watched her
    He marveled at this incredible thing that was birth…In pain he said to himself
    We are all conceived… In pain some of us live and die… Why should this be? – It was as if God
    Had conspired against the whole of the creatures that inhabit his earth – for here in this very manger
    Here was a child coming into a world filled with the sounds of gunfire in the valleys below
    And the bodies of dead hostages sprawled in the dusts of the compounds…

    No doubt this child would die of hunger in infancy yet should it survive, it would pass its mortal days
    In anguish and uncertainty… never to know a peaceful moment… always struggling to maintain
    Even the smallest measure of dignity… a dignity that should be its birth-right from the start
    Ah, he whispered to the soon-to-be mother… what a price to pay for that first foolish breath of life…
    As he cooled the girl’s flushed face with snow, he recalled a night such as this many years before
    He remembered the quiet woman he loved so dearly and that snow-filled night
    When he helped her bring their child into the world…Yet a year later they were taken as hostages
    To compel him to surrender his ragged army of partisans and with this loss
    There had come to him a violent hatred for those who murdered his family
    He escaped and fought the enemy with a vengeance that made his name a rallying cry in the hills
    And brought a price on his head… He led his “patriotes” in one successful raid after another
    Causing the enemy to side-track great numbers of men in attempts to hunt them down
    In this backwash of the war… until one terrible night when he led most of his men
    To imprisonment and death at the hands of an informer, once his childhood friend
    Barely escaping the trap himself and wounded, he waited in the fields outside the German command post
    Strangling the life out of the traitor’s lungs with baling wire…

    It was at that precise moment when he heard the sound of that last bit of breath escaping
    From the man he’d slain… at that exact second when the night wind absorbed the last hiss of life
    Taking with it his comfort and guidance and his ability to pray to a God he no longer believed in…
    To serve nothing… to serve no one… to escape… to protect himself…
    This was all that mattered now…

    He was roused by the faint sound of the girl’s voice…
    “It is time” she whispered to him through her pain…

    Brother Stavros stood at the small window… It began to snow again and the spires of the monastery
    Were lost beyond the swirling banks of flakes
    The wind drove the snow round the courtyard into dimly-lit corners
    Drifting soft graceful forms against stone walls.
    Somewhere down the mountain, the muffled roar of an avalanche sifted back to him
    Signs of an early January thaw he thought and heard the animals below shift uneasily in their stalls.
    He glanced over to where the exhausted girl slept peacefully on his pallet

    After the birth he cleansed his hands with some brandy
    And washed the after-birth from the infant with warm water and cut and knotted the cord
    Then he wrapped the little boy as tightly as he could in one of his clean shirts and laid him next to her
    And her arm had encircled it pressed to her side, her face close by its own

    He went down and milked one of the goats and carried the pan upstairs
    He took one of his unused applewood pipes and filled the bowl with the warm milk
    He carefully placed the stem in the baby’s mouth and was pleased when it sucked a bit of it down
    The girl watched him all the while and when he was finished she closed her eyes and slept…

    Suddenly he was very tired and he realized that he hadn’t eaten since morning
    But he could not bring himself to prepare a meal
    He closed the shutter and lay next to her on the hay-strewn floor
    The familiar odor of animals and hay combined to lull his senses and relax his aching body
    He turned on his side so that he could see her…

    She slept a soft rhythmical sleep, her whole body consumed
    By the rising and falling of her breathing
    In the soft glow of the oil lamp he had hung from a rafter
    Her face had lost some of its pallor and faint points of color had begun to tint her cheeks
    How delicate yet strong the hand that nuzzled her child…

    He began to wonder where she had come from and by what miracle she found her way
    Up the mountain when the trails had been drifted over by mid-winter snows?
    Where was her husband?… Perhaps a lover?… a German soldier?…
    No matter, it was her affair… He would not ask…

    He turned on his back to stare up at the great beams which supported the rough red-tiled roof
    Below an animal snorted… another moved stamping its hoofs against the base of its stall
    He closed his eyes…

    How small the child cupped in his hands… its pinched red face… the smell of just-born
    The cord soft to his fingers as he cut and knotted it… how limp the girl’s body went
    As he placed the infant on her chest after he fed it… the infinite gratitude in her eyes…

    He placed a stalk of the dried grass between his teeth and sucked it… and the faint scent of fields
    Browned under late summer sun flitted back to him… he heard once more
    The fragmentary music of the lark above the pearl-mist of cloud-fills… He saw again the slanting flight
    Of blue deer just below the snowline… the cutting angled flight of crows above the brilliant fields…
    The mazarine sky… the aimlessness of their swinging darting flight… the solitary child
    Lying upon the solid earth under the twisted branches of the wild apple tree
    Centered within the barren womb of this caravansary of mountains…
    Would it drink too the cool sweet water of the rock?… the warm milk of the goat?… Would it hear
    The passing-bell pealing in the village and wonder who had died?… Would it pray?…
    And when it is older, would it thrill to the crystalled laughter of a woman and know her love
    Deep in the silent passages of night?… lose her and their child?…
    Within the million-colored tapestry of life, how deep would lie its disenchantment?…

    Where are the angels of his childhood?…

    How could he have forgotten the venerable prayers taught him by his mother… prayers recited
    In the semi-darkness of their white-washed kitchen lighted only by the holy oil of the “kandili”
    Hung from the ceiling before the icons… he recalls the illumined faces of saints staring down on him
    From their shelf as his gentle mother whispered of passionate battles fought in the service of the Lord,
    The violence of their persecutions and the eternal rewards of their fruitful victories… and secretly
    He fights once more imaginary demons in the lush viridian fields above the village, lancing them
    With spears fashioned from the branches of the lemon tree… and as he grows old enough
    To spell his father in the wild pasturelands high in the hills, he sits again among the grazing sheep
    And prays silently for hours to the invisible hosts beyond the drifting clouds…

    Life is warm and full and he wishes all this beauty would return… He wishes with such passion
    That tears come to his eyes… the vivaciousness of his mother… the quiet strength of his father
    The warm haven of that shining white house perched on the hillside above the village of his youth…
    The wash and counter-wash of dreams… the brilliance of memories…

    Just before he fell asleep, Brother Stavros heard the mother suckling her child and her tender kiss…
    Outside, as suddenly as it began, the snow had stopped and high on the hill
    The monks led by the old abbot filed slowly out of the chapel, each carrrying a lighted candle…
    They chanted softly, the Gregorian “Genesis Sou Christe” and the delicate music soaring
    Into the infinite majesty of night, lost itself to the acute loneliness of far immutable stars…

    Note: Written at the age of 22 and revised a few years later, then illustrated and printed as a Christmas card.

December 10, 2013

  • Beautiful Dreamer

    He is beyond the narrow valley – he has clawed his way into the dreamery
    But this deliberate and medicated journey is now flawed
    By the smoky drabness of this last fall day
    Before the silencing of snow overtakes and muffles his languor

    Wild things seem to fly at him from this bitter-leaden patch of sky
    Try as he might to sweep them away – still they come
    Hounding him into a sort of middle consciousness
    Not fully aware – not yet swollen with the rudeness of sleep

    He sees island spruce bending slightly waiting for inevitable ice
    Even though the scrubs of alders he struggles through
    Are burnished bright with death of leaf
    Their lovely tangled leaves on fire – their sugars spent

    He stumbles and is jabbed by lost branches of stiff birch
    He is in pain – he is bloodied by their vicious sharpness – he is hurt
    He must get help – but who on this massacred island is there for him?
    He is ravished by fear – no one will find him – there is no one to help

    He has lost his way – where is the middle path? – the one he must take
    To return to “life among the living” – so much of this tangled mass of moss
    Falling from above is stuffing up his mouth – he cannot breathe
    The wild things are crawling into him and biting his insides – he hurts

    He is on a gravel beach – He picks up a stone with a starfish frozen into it
    A billion years ago – and there are bloated bodies floating now
    Carved up by cruiser fire in the pacific straits – eyes eaten by crabs
    A totem washed out of an African grave glides on a wavelet toward him

    A huge cranberry wave roars up beyond the sea-moss laden ledges
    Seas fairy-colored by buoys – brilliant hues of yellow-greens and reds and oranges
    Detonate below him and carry him flying above the blood of bodies
    Seeping from smashed ships lining the bottom of seething Leyte Gulf

    He is in the forest again – its blackness blinds him – he cannot breathe
    On this rocky outcrop the ghosts of Sarah Bradford and her eight children
    Smother him with hugs and tender kisses – has he come to save them
    From the axes of rampaging savages? – they cling to him like sucker-fish

    The wilderness suddenly explodes – a great copper-beech crushes down on him
    Mud seeps into all his openings – he struggles to free himself from the mush
    Cormorants light on the copper’s branches and peck at him – why are they here?
    So far from the implacable sea – a harbor seal slithers toward him barking softly

    It smiles a toothy smile and sucks the smothering mud from out of him
    What is this animal doing in the middle of this violent tree-fall?
    Eyes open dully – comforted by blindingly brilliant sun filling his room
    Breath slows – he has survived yet again – to return to “life among the living”*

    (In the early 1600′s Abenaki Indians harassed by white settlers killed a
    white woman and her eight children who had fled to an island in Muscongus Bay. Maine
    *Marsden Hartley

November 25, 2013

  • There Was A Time Not Long Ago

    There was a time not long ago
    When all seemed attainable and sure
    Pure days that ran together without change
    A many-colored canvas bright
    With innocence of artless sun-filled thrall

    There was a time not long ago
    When snow-clogged streets became the playgrounds of our gods
    Sun-struck streets that also split with August heat
    Tar dug from cobbles wadded into bitter gum
    And every hour sparkled with the marvel of it all

    There was a time not long ago
    Ground peach-pits round brown finger-grips
    We rode the backs of trolleys
    To watch our Giants and our Yanks stretch summer hits
    And there were day-dreams in our post-game ball

    There was a time not long ago
    We picked the supper dandelions in Divello’s fields
    And fished the City-Island’s flounder fens
    Burned red for lack of sun-screen we could not afford
    And prayed to soar beyond our brightening pall

    There was a time not long ago
    From the roof of an ancient tenement high on our hill
    We see a smogless panoramic brilliance
    The tallest buildings of the world
    With love in our arms that fourteenth fall

    When every hour sparkled with the marvel of it all

November 19, 2013

  • North Amityville Shock

    There was a time many years ago
    When past became present
    He thought he was broken beyond repair
    Dreams an abhorrent reality
    A tunneling of horrifying images
    Middle sleep unable to shed tortured delirium
    Phantasmal hallucinatory visions
    Boiling his brain into a delusionary mash
    Day after night a frightening fearsome purgatory

    They calmed him with a shot and ink-blots
    What did he see in this one?… That one?…
    In the PTSD Weirdo Room they had him count backwards
    One-Hundred… Ninety-Nine…Ninety-Eight…
    When he woke up they made him take a cold shower
    Then wrapped him naked-tight in a large rubber sheet
    Laid him out on the freezing porch for a while
    Before they brought him back to his rock-hard mattress
    In the gloom of one of the four wards

    Next to him the old guy from Auschwitz started up again
    “Rachel…Rachel…Where are you Rachel?…
    Shut the hell up you old bastard somebody yelled
    They cooked her in the ovens you jerk someone else shouted
    After she took the gas another chimed in
    The big black male nurse came in with a flashlight
    “Okay…Okay… That’s enough Mr Rosenberg”
    And stuck him in the ass with a needle
    Everybody shut up but he still could not sleep

    They came for him again the next morning
    The nurse took his blood pressure and temperature
    Then gave him another shot
    They rolled him into the Shock Room
    Strapped him down onto the insulated metal table
    Ankles knees waist elbows wrists secured real tight
    Shoved in a mouth-piece so he wouldn’t bite his tongue off
    Tucked his hair under the rubber cap and put the headset on
    He woke up hours later with one hell of a greased headache

    “Rachel…Rachel… Where are you Rachel”?…

November 16, 2013

  • The Pleasure Domes*

    The nuns waver in the shimmer an hour before the afternoon rain
    Devils dance in the streets
    Bunker oil has not been laid as yet to still them
    Across the strait – The skies above the mountains of Samaar
    Slowly blacken with jungle moisture on its way to join our own

    In the shallows – The masts of sunken ships lance skyward to mark their graves
    Some blown pillboxes rubbled on the beach
    Mix with pristine sand to mark more graves
    Occasionally a bloated corpse floats in to be degassed with a forty-five
    If it is one of ours – or just left to be exploded by the sun

    Sweat soaks us as we line up yet again in the merciless heat
    Palm-shade not helping much as we await our turns
    Outside the rounded metal hut
    It was thrown up less than a week after the town had been secured
    Tagalog notices distributed and the hiring of eager applicants begun

    It’s been four months since the supreme generalissimo returned as promised
    Splashing ashore more than once for army movie-cams to get it right
    One of his first decrees – To build the pleasure domes
    Staffed with his docs and medics who now short-arm us all
    And also make sure the girls are clean

    No blacks are seen in our protracted line
    (It would be years before equality’s affirmed)
    Their own much smaller quonset near the strip is hidden in the bush
    On the other side of town – It trembles slightly adding to the thrill
    As the Billies and the 38′s roar off on useless runs

    The nuns? – They come and go oblivious of our long queue
    (Embarrassed men and boys)
    For there’s a nunnery across the way and the nuns of Santa Cruz
    Silently they come and go in darkness and in light
    To minister to their debilitated flock at a hastily-rebuilt hospital on Red Beach

    After the hills are stabilized and danger’s past – Junketing congressmen
    The U.S.O and press appear – and the pleasure domes are closed
    Infections soar – Rum is poisoned and the economy caves in
    The huts are then given to the nuns who have them torn apart
    To roof both hospital and nunnery with corrugated sheets

    *Repost: The site of the poem is the town of Tacloban where
    the recent devastation we all see on our TV screens has taken place…

October 18, 2013

  • Let Them Eat Tar

    The time of our collective innocence has almost expired

    Along with the promises of those who have always lied to us

    Those cunning pols and their supporters

    The moneycrats nefarious in their deviousness

    Who trampled our dreams and flung them

    Into a common ash-heap – a dry dead dust

    Darkened and opaque – a deceitful greed

    Now congealed and blackened by false promises

    Our savings held for ripened after-years

    Pauperized

     

    Old age has become an unwanted pitiful welfareism

    Our dreams unfulfilled – Our lives unraveled

    Duped dismantled destroyed

     

    Similar sinful liars back then too –

    Just as today – Killing people is good economics they preached

    Almost 70 years since those sly bottom-feeders shipped us out

    To save the republic they said – theirs first of course then ours

    Wars are very profitable and create lots of jobs they said

    With Rosie turning out tanks and planes instead of cars

     

    But near-children were thrown willy-nilly into an unimaginable maelstrom

    Kids barely outgrown their tar-chewing days

    Tar stripped and gouged from between granite cobbles of neighborhood streets

    And they’re still doing it to us

     

    Once he swears he heard one of those plundering plutocrats proclaim:

    “Hey… That’s capitalism… If they don’t like it…

    Let them eat tar”

     

     

October 9, 2013

  • Wondersleep

    Sleep

    Wondersleep

    Formless

    Fathomless wondersleep

     

    Infinite sandmists

    Smothermists

     

    Blinded

    Sandblinded

    Unable to waken

    Sandsmothered

    Sandchoked

     

    Soaring now

    Sandlines below

    Drawn without permission

    Sensing shadowlines

    Sensing unease

     

    Whipped sleep granules

    Grind under lids

    Tremble

     

    Eyelids tremble

    Shaken shaken shake

    Choking choke

    Eyelids tremble

    Wake up

    For God’s sake

    Wake up!

    Wake up!