Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

Soon enough, we too will die
And finally meet up
With the ones who await us,
Joining them on freedom’s perch
Which juts out over the river of new life.
Sitting tall with a glimmer
Of insight in their eyes,
Our loved ones will appear and beckon
And eagerness will follow faithfully,
As together we are ushered
Into the transfigured universe,
Prepared in the absence of time’s sadness.
It is there that “death tramples death”,
And eternity takes on form
Embracing us with the smile of friendship
Clasped firmly between beaks,
And drawn forward by His Compassion
Which surrounds us in the uncreated light of tomorrow.

Dedication (For my feathered friend Bert who continues to mourn Molly, his head preener and companion.)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

Saddled up
And wading out,
We all embrace – though tentatively at first,
Our golden leaf ticket,
Validated by the conductor of our birth.

Often – it takes a while
For us to realise,
That our bodies
Are the carriages,
Of nature’s own time machine.

Witnessing change first hand,
And reliving the past in our minds,
We are all experts
By the time we step off,
And hand over our ticket stubs – though reticent,

To the grinning skull,
Of the sickle bearing station master!

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

What once feed us,
In times of famine.
Is now sought out
For slaughter;
Alongside the bindies
And clover.
Dabbed by our solvent touch,
We seek the shrivel
And death;
In search of the perfect lawn.

If this doesn’t define us,
I don’t know what does!

Dedication (In response to my wife yelling out… “Look at the dandy lions!”)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

Nothing left;
Just an old man in a blue T-shirt.
Bike parked near the nets,
He taps at pollution filled oysters,
Hoping for a winning,
And done in remembrance,
Of the bountiful nutrition,
That the land
Had once bestowed on his people.

Never again,
Will it be as the ancestors knew.
For it was taken;
And in the shortest amount of time,
Crushed by the other.
Annihilating the balance
That once ruled these waters.

Everything is right;
As far as the mainstreamers
Are concerned.
But all that remains
Is the blue,
Filling up my mind,
And drowning out my heart;
Stretching ahead,
For as far as I can see.

Dedication (For Minjerribah)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

The freshest air,
Arrived this morning, with welcomed relief.
Facing east
And climbing our doorstep,
I allowed it to weave back and forth over my face,
Brush away my hair,
And tug incessantly at my gardener’s shirt.
This simple event
Returned me,
Though momentarily,
To the innocence of childhood.
I knew
It could not last,
But even if it could,
Would I really want it to?
The mind of the child
Only sees the good in everything,
Even if its playground
Is a field of weeds,
Generated by the Spawn of Satan.

I now understand,
That all I saw
Were the multitudes
Of colourful flowers,
Produced by the weeds.
Never realising,
That the weeds themselves
Could rise up
And strangle the admirer,
Whose back was turned.

Yet that was then.
Today, with graying stubble
My sandy lot is cleared,
Made ready
For the growing of food.
And I finally know,
That everything is OK
As I carry my hoe upright,
Into the crisp warmth
Of the Bay’s glassy sunlight.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

Tears falling,
Besotted with memories
Of things that could have been,
She knew
She had done nothing wrong;
Just stepped outside the line work
Brushed in pastel – that was all.
The movement of her hand
Coloured the moment,
And all rationality
Understood it was innocent enough;
But there was no sanity
In his actions.
Responses were based on triggers
Cocked by adrenaline,
Fired by falling feathers,
And forged by experiences
In a life non-disclosed.

Hope had filled
The dingy of marriage;
Cedar solid,
It pushed off from uncertainty,
Travelling north
And sometimes finding,
All it had
Between its sails,
Were her sobs
In the laundry,
His shame
At his ways.

Still, their stubbornness
Kept them afloat,
Minimising each other’s distress
And capturing each other’s strength.
Eyes locked on the horizon,
The direction
Of their negotiated compass,
Often corrected for life’s turbulence.
While the deviation
Of the field’s flickering,
Was deemed acceptable
In spite of each other’s shortcomings.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

In a time of upheaval,
Nothing can be saved.
My kind left behind the plates where they lay,
Took only one piece of cutlery – just a knife,
And abandoned their linen
To the moths next door.
They locked down the doors,
Boarded up the panes,
Dropped jewelery into wells
And fled into the night.
They stayed off the roads
Made for the salt spray.
And spoke the Young Turks talk,
In order to blend in with the crowds -
Crowds who had come down to see
How red the earth’s tears had turned.
Death then took them all the way
To the promised land
Where the other’s plates were now their’s to claim.
But nothing felt right.
After 86 years
Of living with a pricked conscience – hidden beneath eucalyptus,
This generational itch was resolved.
By chance,
A trip back from the other side
Found the board
Where it was placed
And the plates
Where they were laid.

When queried about this,
The Gorukle replied -
We thought you’d return.
We left everything as it was,
For you were our friends, our brothers, our sisters,
And these things were not ours to take.
It never dawned on the Christians
Who reached the promised land
To extend such a courtesy.
The Christians deserved all that was abandoned
And left nothing for the Moslems to return to -
Moving into their homes almost immediately.
And yet, to this day
My kind
Claim to be the better human beings.
Now why is that again?

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008

Not a word, not a whisper,
Not a finger lifted
To query my angst.
Empathy ounced
In minuscule bags,
Is dangled briefly before vestibular eyes
Then shoved
Into bottomless pockets
That shock infect one’s own expression.
The benefit of the doubt
As always – my call,
Led to the dysfunctional response.
Maybe my witness was tainted,
Maybe illness fogged up
These lensed off events,
For I continued to pour
Years of investment
Into one way streets -
Unusual for Melbournian roads.
And this fact,
Should have been my warning heeded.
Yet, I put aside my own rules
And ricocheted forward – until now
Where their personal inconvenience
Body slammed me into the pavement.

These people
Were never family!
Thank goodness
For the Grant-ed role model,
Which now fills the void
The emotional chasm left behind
By those who tainted the sacred.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008

Us
The lone dogs of war
Feel safe -
Only when “C” follows “B” and “B” follows “A”.
Our need for things to stay the same,
To have beginnings, middles and ends – is non-negotiable.
For those civilians
Looking through our blasted front doors,
These regimented lives – these routines,
Look restricted at best.
How impossible it is
To explain that this approach
Makes us feel good,
Keeps us sane
And able to face another day.
Soldier, Stray or Survivor,
Our physical form, our truthful tales
Are always irrelevant.
All that matters is the outcome.
Trauma, to the point
Of life ending now,
Lands us in the same trench
Clenching, ground down teeth,
And stabbing true,
At any
Who attempt to drag us from our fox holes.
No ones fault – in the end,
Just life gone wrong
And we cope through continued containment,
Whether at the gym,
In the garden,
Or – alone.

“Traumateous Polemous” (translation – injuries of war)
Was my grandfather’s term.
I sometimes wonder
If he imagined
Such things could occur
Within the sterile walls
Of Suburbia.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008

Believing nothing
I am here
Quantified in person
Sanctified in self
Staring into the mirror
And gagging on my own essence.
I could not have imagined
Such horror as a child.
A world where humanity
Is inexcusable, and its presence unwanted
By its own origins.
I grieve for all beings
And the good in my kind,
For the Sapien has become a patsy,
Drunk in its quest for murder
And clinging to genes
Linked to the structural guilt of superiority.
This psychic bile is piled up at our feet
And slung across the room
At the God Head.
All in the hope
That it’ll stick to Him and not us.
Like all others,
I was taught to look away at such things.
But the screams will not be silenced
In my mind (nor beyond),
No matter how much separation
We distill upon ourselves.
And so, I find myself an accomplice
To these crimes,
Just through breath and being.
Each moment now
Strikes the gong of grief
As the pain is witnessed
Within the eyes of the other.
The minuscule good
That remains in my kind
Will not be enough to redeem
The billions killed
Nor the billions yet to die.

Awake at last
We know there will be
No further sleep,
For sentience
Demands action
When faced with truth
And our earthly role,
To voice the voiceless,
Must be placed on a pedestal and heeded,
In spite of the hordes
And what they might do,
When finally, we speak!

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008