The Future is Blind
There is a revolution in my dark mind. A diverse population of women in uniform chanting about transforming waving flags and drinking Dom Perignon lying about their age surrendering to Botox and lip injections reaching into an advanced age of technology where dandelions stop growing where wildflowers become condos swim across concrete walls open up your own bank account you can’t rely on the past washing machines stop listening to you detergents no longer do their job. men named Alexander never stay Perhaps you are more comfortable with all the shades drawn in the middle of the day. Taking shots of vodka behind modern blinds the blogs want sameness with a modern feminism the dictionary no longer supports burn the books forget your library membership fall in love with your medicine stop texting your ex-lover to save you your womanhood is always on the verge of new breakdowns. You can make it real but none of it is a poem, I have telepathic eyes I can see how it's a war on equality A future where men Still make more money More poetry books More doctoral positions More artificial intelligence More robotics Futuristic philosophy A grave full of books Dead weeds where trees Were touched by your sisters The only question left to ponder How do I hide my greys? Do i go blonder or do I dare Become ash red? Black Coffee my eyes swollen from crying my heart slashed from denying all of my doings and undoings, never enough for any man. Love is not important in this poem’s recipe. I never want to go back to cream and sugar. be authentically me raw and naturally bitter dark and full of desire addictive and lively potent I’m alone in some one room apartment, Content to be staring at my beige walls As far from love as possible, with a new bank account. no borrowed money and staring at my purple rain album feeling love and freedom like a solved crossword puzzle. How long can one live with dread in the pit of one’s stomach? Our hopes are constantly filled with empty alcohol glasses. How many masks can one own? One face for every event a tight red dress and amber lipstick Black leather pants and heavy eyeliner. Ripped jeans and rock t-shirt so many sides to this story. I move from coffee to red wine, eat a bit of this and that, just to sustain type all hours of the night, day, mid-day, forget to pay my bills. but I write, oh, how the words spring forth like April tulips— oh, how the lines burst forth like weeds between cracks each poem a different hue of spring in the middle of winter, each poem a snowflake, melting before as it touches the ground. Weather and mornings have me tapping away writing fluid lines until the sky turns orange crossing and adding words with my HB pencil shutting and closing old dictionaries. My daily start of black coffee, silence, lies and truths combined My beige walls need a new paint I can’t decide between earth tone or van Gogh blue pink trees and empty coffee cups in the dishrack— But I do know home is where words go that never die. Brothel of Poets I’m as fragile as a piece of crumpled paper as tough as an outdated hard book cover. I have been day, afternoon, and night drinking again finally finished two wine bottles now hid them in the recycling bin. I’m talking to my poet friends about how selling your mental illness and body shame is a new foundation of lies of selling poetry books. Whatever happened to raw talent? How some poets think they can claim words as their own and no one can use them again? I was never an ugly or pretty princess I bought my own shoes listened to music before it was popular cried day and night to get my life back. I read Sexton in the middle of the day awake and alert at all the bus stops. I heard that people like to break you before they love you. I heard that love bombing is a thing now. I never knew love until you took me under the Montreal moon. I gave you myself either way, you took me like an unwrapped gift at least you thanked me for being your slut. You’re always creeping into my poems. Collecting Corks The more I stay away from your lovely lettering, The better I write or so I think It is the despised loneliness the sipping of you until the glass needs no washing my lips licking you I wait for you like a mother waits for her child to sleep so she can smoke a cigarette am I a good mother? I listen to you pour, I watch your patience, tempting me anticipation is fiery between us a wicked black love I know how this suffering flows, It becomes shiny glassware, untouched. Wake Up to Morrissey I eat up their shovelled words, ringworms in my stomach. My sin is full of fungal infection I stretched my legs too far— my arms shrunk my brain fell prisoner to cells of meds and beds for the outlaws sinners of generation X. It got so pitch black that night the ominous night of unwanted hell we thought we were kid smart to outrun the hidden world on an empty tank of gas yet we got our quick bang. I still eat you up and cough you out I have feminine power in my body. Proof of your existence on my ironed clothes get it right, predict the future with the guts you deny; I ate you swallowed you spit you loved you— back to a dead life. 1976 I’m used to him now speaking to him on a daily basis his songs, a morning call. It’s nice to say kalimera Baba to the open suburban sky, in his house one last summer. The summer before the end of a lifetime of gardening, building kitchens, DIY tiles, demolishing walls. creating new childhood bedrooms, parties for every occasion: holidays, birthdays, name days; Everyone is sleeping, except me and the old clock. I tap, tap, tap He ticks, tocks, ticks. our own beat of forty-two-year memories. It was 1976, the drive felt longer— everything moved slower then. You were always in it; running around not being found getting lost and no one looking. The old Buick was long, fitting all three of us. In the front, no seatbelts; three in the back— Pappou, Yiayia, my brother. A family of six, three left. We made codfish with fresh garden herbs; mint, parsley, celery, dill tarragon, basil, I chopped them up, sprinkled their love, crunching on the stems, I was supposed to discard. added water, oil and tomato sauce. I’m not a prisoner here, I like it. I am sleeping too long chilling with no motherly guilt, cooking Greek meals and lemon meringue desserts on my summer vacation of peach memories making more, with whoever is left to kiss goodnight, and drink hot coffee in the humid mornings without rushing, to work to teach, to prepare. I tap, tap, tap, he ticks, tocks, tocks— This is how time traps writers. This is how time traps grief, This is how we create poetry. How Deep Inside a Gun Are You? It is mostly the way you come at me from afar— treat me so differently up close pretend that the clothes I’m wearing are irrelevant; I was as poor as you as rich in feeling like you as lost in spirit as you. I guessed you played with life as players do. Manipulations are over mind games are dead mothers are older children are taking over that love you are holding onto is growing weeds— you think that seconds mean worlds that cutting up my sanity is a game. Perhaps you drowned once I never did I keep floating existing in this joke. Open your mouth speak, don’t fire. At A Party At a party with a priest I used to smoke outside with At the hospital where we worked At a time when smoking rooms existed When smoking was not bad for your image At a party with people I don’t know Pretending I remember How we talked back then How we loved less Read more At a party trying not to slur Or flirt with the wrong man Remembering a time I wanted to forget It was the tragic old ladies With pink lipstick And peach laugh lines Who asked me to tie back Their hair with silk fuchsia ribbons When I was there to clean floors Wipe dusty tables How did I end up reading passages From an old book? Or talk to them about nonsense To feel someone cared It was the empty beds Cleaning them and wondering What death meant at all How it came and went And I was twenty Wondering if I should break up With my boyfriend Go to Peru Or cry for an old lady I barely knew. At a party Listening to Taylor Swift And loving her more than I should. I Wrote Nothing For Days originally published in Rhythm N Bones Lit Issue 6 : Love Trying to find emptiness in a tall glass of midnight madness. My thoughts on the slow, dark time of your words. Open up your closed book eat the crumbs of cake off my hand. I fed the wrong man old tattered thoughts in ancient chains while I sunk in mythological mud up to my ankles washed your fake love with aloe and coconut but your European veins and musky scent are alive on my skin like birth marks and moles no matter how hard I try to rub you off no one can see your penetrating marks. Aren't We All Monsters originally published in Dark Marrow (Rhythm & Bones Lit offshoot mag Issue 2 Survivor Monsters are the loneliest creatures... We're not all under your bed or in your head. we're all looking at you straight in the empty eye, in your mirror in your head, lift the covers or just stop checking. You still love her, never forget your tiny feet. One enemy is enough. Go ahead - Call her to tell her you think about her every day, then go back to hating her. Conversations with the Dead originally published in Dark Marrow (Rhythm & Bones Lit offshoot mag Issue 2 Survivor Never followed Dad's advice. Wish I did now. In '89 thought his words archaic, In 2017 I'd say he was Pretty damn smart. My daughter will roll her eyes, One day remember ancient adages Maybe in 2050- Finally agree, nod her intelligent head And remember this like me. This is hindsight: The unanswered phone. Black Bell phone on the kitchen counter, ringing endlessly, going to voicemail no one checking again. I can hear his voice from the dead- it's rough, yet gentle faintly forgotten. I press play. I thought you were home. I hate these damn machines. His broken English sounding perfect to my ears. This is the cycle; My mental tangerine peels, my form of existential awareness an endless study of the silenced voice playing back recordings to remember Because tombstones Cannot talk back. A Book Review of “Love and Metaxa” by Christina Strigas A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Christina Strigas From Avalanches in Poetry writings & art inspired by Leonard Cohen (2019) How Leonard Cohen Kept Evading Me by Christina Strigas Christina Strigas links: https://christinastrigas.com/ https://twitter.com/christinastriga? https://www.facebook.com/christinastrigasauthor/ https://www.instagram.com/c.strigas_sexyasspoet/?hl=en https://www.bookbub.com/profile/christina-strigas https://tinyletter.com/christinastrigas
Fevers of the Mind 
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