Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

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

Her house,
Numbered on a whim,
Stood firm against our suburb’s change –
Claiming asbestos as its wonder,
Indestructible as it is.

Her husband,
In conversation – lit up her eyes.
Missed desperately,
She spoke fondly
Of his construction at the back.

Her neighbour – the one that stayed,
Known as possum man to the kids,
Bugger Lugs to her.
Observing his antics, eyebrows raised,
She tolerated his ways – taken with fistfuls of salt.

Our house – the one on the corner,
Forever labeled the Kelly’s,
Held stories of her son and their daughter,
Asleep on the floor,
More comfortable it seemed, than his bed at his mum’s.

Our family,
She greeted with a Xmas type card,
Embraced without judgement
She snuck it past doors,
Wondering on tip toe – who we might be.

Our presence,
In time – seeded many a smile.
Rewarded – now and then, with a cup of tea or a beer.
A little something, she’d say, to toast
The couple – she was certain, would stay.

Her dottering gone – I still radar the yards.
Peering over our fence,
As much as our cat – who continues to hope,
That her saucer returns,
With his contraband milk and a pat on the back.

Dedication (For Betty Cutlack)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008

Heart felt angst
Wells up inside,
Tightening
Its spring
Until it bursts
As hairball
Tumble,
Landing flat
Upon the twisted ire
Of a life long loss.

To voice a goodbye
Free falls away
Favouring fate
That follows
Endings of uncrossed paths.
This thought, again replayed –
Is layed out in full,
Brushed with care,
And cradled for a time.
Turned, and again checked for its emotional ID.

Unlike fe-lines
Our kind, cannot predict
The seasons as once we did.
Nor, pre-empt such unseen loss.
Not being there could not be helped.
Cleo waited as long as she could,
Hung her thanks
Upon the decades of love, woven right around the house,
And heeded the call of her origin –
Returning home, one last time.

What she would’ve liked,
Was for all to recall
That, were it not for this family
Of open hearts
And unchecked time,
Trust would not have transformed from bud to bloom –
And 26 years
Of connected
Sighs, laughs and affection felt,
Could not have come to pass.

This Schrödinger’s cat was truly alive –
Thanks to the few who stepped up to the task,
Peered into the box,
And on tip-toes, pulled her little self into their lives.
She was that lifetime plaque
Of reciprical commitments,
Often drapped around the necks of the Decent,
And there could be no regrets
About such an arrangement,
Now could there.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2007

Having brought down the judgement of order,
A dandy lion fairy
Asserts her ruling over the mindless intellect,
Rounding it up
And whipping routine out of chaos,
Her innocent face
Takes on the scowl of a demon.
Sweet irony however,
Is lost
On those in servitude,
For the struggle to capture creativity backfires
Causing their muse to skip away ever faster,
Fearful of the clock-in creature
Of nine to five,
That leans hard and suffocates,
Obscuring vision and drowning out inspirational sweat.
Were one
To destroy all clocks,
A symphony of wonder
Would fill one’s mind,
And chorus such Art
As never before seen.
Instead,
The demented cherub
Taps away the seconds of the day,
Upon the brow,
Of those
Who would be king
And blindly strive
To inherit the throne of Shakespeare.

In role
Us – the Outsiders,
Witness their ‘fade away’
As another torso
Is lost to the faceless crowd
Of sensibility.
Thank goodness, these brothers and sisters
Have a place to call home – the Mall.
Without it,
I shudder at the thought of their fate.

Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 90sec / 707kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2007

Slacks suits
Tailor, to imprint
On silicone skin.
Drawn up hems,
Caress all manner
Of brushed down hair – flashed,
In the hope
That Godless salvation,
Will empty
Their wretched lives,
Into another’s cup.
Transforming
That given face,
Into the latest magazine mask.

Abandoned by light and sugared by thorns,
Youth declare meaningless wisdom
As the basis to their body’s vacant room.

And somehow, this has come to stand
For modern insight – hard driven inspiration;
Even though, none of the words
Challenge reality,
And the Oracle
Of the Room never replies
To the half hearted questions,
Posed by a whole generation
Of self strangled,
Still born adults.

Our life giving Spark,
Has media mutated
Into a naked Primate,
Dressed in plaid
And given to shouting,
The ego’s own chant – “Who do I love? Myself!”
So much for the archetypal need to look beyond –
To seek out lyrics, folklore and fairy-tales.
So much for ionic philosophy and religion –
Or the desire to produce instead of consume.

The ‘Y’s, no longer know how
To fill the Void
When the camp fires go out.
Instead, they catch themselves
Staring off into the distance,
Dreaming up nothing,
And hoping that their magical consoles
Will re-ignite tomorrow,
Allowing the world
To offer up Noise! – More blessed Noise!

Such an approach, was once an anathema –
Known to regress our species’ evolution.
But now, all manner of glitter balls take centre stage
Locking in the legacy –
Of talons for the sleek, manure for the brave!

Audio Version (To Be Added)
New Word (Monkeyed – adj. regressing the evolution of one’s own species.)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2006

What rank are you?
You, who claim servitude to God
Yet retire,
The two legged and the four unto
The recesses of the mind.
I graze
On your absence,
Your smug stamp of expression
Is a polarity of righteousness,
That salts my wounds,
Reminding me
Of the abandoned-ness
Suffered by the the One.
And as things get too hard.
As mortality gets too real.
You choose domesticity of the soul,
And the garb of the Ego Queens
Over brutal truth, and much needed compassion.

This, I have witnessed.
This, do I know.
Your self averted,
A priest’s son dies,
Promises are made,
Visits considered,
But nothing occures.
Touched by your play,
A creature is hurt,
Un-gathered by arms, killed,
Not nutured to death,
But denied its extension of expression.
Consumed by your status,
A friend is felled, unwitnessed,
Subjected to blow after blow,
The silent assault
Mimics the clamour
Of a synthesized Voice.

And were I to reflect on this,
Were I to really trouble myself by what I’ve seen,
My thoughts would be forced to raise the question:
Who are these people?
People, whose behaviour has been less wholesome
Than that of my darkest enemies.

Though we began our journey together.
Though we staked out
A claim within Holy Walls.
I’ve come to accept
That we do not travel the same Road
Or follow the same Source
And this has saddened me, greatly.
One can’t help but wonder,
What will it take for ‘You’ to return
To the ‘Way’.
A death? A birth? A disability?
Or are you so charmed,
As to think, you will make it to the end of life
Without your cocoon being pierced
By an instrument of God.
I only pray, that you are spared the knowing-ness
That that instrument
Is often the scalpel, of Christ’s own hand

Dedication (For complacent Orthodox Christians)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2005

Palm planted
He reclined
Back, in greeting
His dawn, of eastern gold.
Fingers arched,
There was silent focus
In the line of his neck,
Seeking the little
Menace
That was Bent
On return,
And intent,
In its struggle
To cement permanancy
Through forays
To conquer,
The legancy of one man.
Though his Face
Turned away
The sprawled
Seating
On nurtured grass
Said more
Than expression.
This was a soul
Contented,
Knowing, time’s edge
Was near,
And that
Weeding was just
One,
Of a glorious
Multitude
Of memories
He would be taking
With him
Across the divide.

His silouette
Now etched in my mind,
Is seeded whole –
An archetype of peace.
And I am
Forever grateful
For his moment of grace,
Which was sprinkled
Through a window,
Upon a neighbour,
Whom
He never knew.

Dedication (For Stan Cutlack)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2004

Of tempered manner,
Refined in stance,
Class-ed brow,
And fine cut hair.
You are, what the colonies were built on.
You are the muscle,
You are the backbone,
You are the worker left behind
When empire building
Was done with.
Yet, you continue the tradition
Of all that was best
About Queen and Country.

Too bad the ‘cultured’
Only know you as ‘the drunk’,
And not the gentleman
That you truly are.

Dedication (For Joseph Plunkett)
Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 42sec / 331kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2003