Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

To be alive
Is to pry open
The vanity,
Acknowledge the village square,
Breath in the jasmine
And dry the morning beams.
Foam cover the face,
Shave,
And shout greetings
To friends and family,
Who walk the cobblers
Not so far below.

Simple complexity
Begets
Low cost richness,
For males
Of
Any Age.

Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 40sec / 315kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2003

Glory oh glorious,
Silhouetted against an arch
Our frames leap
To touch your form.
A promise made,
A promise kept,
You are revealed
Full length
To the descendants
Of Noah.
Bay straddled
From island to rotunda,
You force us
To catch our breath,
And wonder at majesty
Never matched
By our hands.
Smudging colour,
Drizzling rain,
Soft words from my wife
And then
You are vanquished,
As buses push you aside
On their way to heaven.

Until next time
Then,
When all variables align,
And you stretch tall,
My hidden,
And ancient Friend.

Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 54sec / 425kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2003

Let us not think
Too hard
Or too long,
And it may yet
Come to pass,
That our
Arrogance and Ignorance,
Will be forgiven
By the seventy percentiles,
Who lack and die
Each and every day.

But I fear
Its more likely,
That the sandpits
Of the mind
Will burn the fury
Of their eyes,
Into their hands,
And cause them
To gouge out
The sight
Of the First.

And now,
As countless innocents
Incinerate,
Within the distinctness
Of the Mind.
Impotent leaders
Dance political jigs,
Poking out tongues
While taunting the harmful,
Who’d happily scrape
More sanctity, off the lives, of those who remain.

Dedication (In Memory Of The World Trade Center Tragedy)
Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 55sec / 433kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2001

The curbing of rage
Sends out needles,
Drawn forth to target
None other
Than the self.
Blessed by DNA strands
Selected through fight,
I am at a disadvantage
In a world that values
None of the gifts
I bring to the pool.
The clotting
That saved,
My knife wielding kin.
The adrenaline
That carried,
Their hand to hand combat.
Both, seen as mutations
To be controlled, not extolled.
I find
The memory
Of those eliminated,
To produce the ‘me’,
Insulted.
Three cheers for modern medicine and western civilisation.
They continue to see nothing,
Beyond the narrow
Of the norm.

May their place
In this DNA space,
Grow in regression.

Dedication (For My Ancestors)
Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 60sec / 472kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2001

His given name –
Versatility,
Sought solutions
Which pooled like cool oil drops on velvet.
Had he not lived,
Fiction would not have invented
Such fantasy.
He walked with the Invisible Ones
Moulding creation,
Long before his Brothers and Sisters
Regained the Insight.
He was the catalyst
Seeding the awakening,
But no one ever knew him,
And the changes he brought
Almost never came to pass.
The fact that he breathed at all,
Gives us hope –
A clear reason to live.

For
Each and everyone,
Now knows,
We are the centre
Of at least one universe –
Namely, our own.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2001

Forever and ever
We circle
Our precious home,
Not seeing
The jewel that wears us as its glory.

Taken from the deepest
Blue of seas,
Souls were broken,
Fed upon soil-less food
And ground, face first into the desert of safety.
But the desert
Finally turned to muddied water.
And the muddied water
Finally distilled to sea and sediment.
And the sea and sediment
Once again allowed us
To touch the deepest blue of our past.

So across the water
Curvature is again
Eyed by Byzantine Mariners,
Whose lookout,
Is now built upon the steps
Of Wynnum Natives.

The voice
Though silenced for millennia,
Is again rising
To glorify
Far more
Than a mythological phoenix.

And this time
It will praise
His Being proper.
“So be it!”
Shout the visible and invisible worlds,
May we not rest till it is done.

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2001

Without disguise
Peace is poured into cavities,
And I lean
As hard as strength allows,
Cradled
By mortar and wood.

So long lived
Amongst the elements,
My being
Was lip serviced
By fibro,
Fronting as home.

And now? I clutch at good fortune
Wondering, what next.
Were I
To entertain confidence,
The road ahead would be paved
By dreams and grace filled places.

Hence, as lids get laden
Goodness surrounds me,
Extended by the solidarity of brick against brick.
Something, unknown to me
Since childhood,
But comforting none the less.

Dedication (For Our Home)
Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 55sec / 433kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2001

Everything is still.
There is no longer pain,
Anxiety or fear.
There is no longer wanting or darkness.
There is open hope.
Unassuming,
Unconcealed or shielded by metaphor.
Free to express and to dream
Of better times for the self,
And more power to the reality of all people.
Gratitude, is what I have come to know in each breath.
And were it to change or end tomorrow,
I would sigh the rush of the resolved
And relax into the light of His return.

Dedication (For Helen)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 1998

Simply cupped,
Hands shake in their capture
Of each other’s
Weakness.

We are not what we seem.
We are the more,
The un-quashed voices
Of hearts
Pounding their way towards the beginning place,
Where honesty applauds
More loudly
Than Baroque patrons of old.

We are ourselves,
Beyond that of strangers
Whose glances are washed away
By the turning of a head.
And in part, we are the moment
Raised high
Like a banner
Announcing our stake in this – life’s lottery to be…

Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 1997

All you have known is gold.
The silver spoon of a mobile
You hold like a new born
Of importance – beyond life,
Of depth – beyond God,
Of people – but nothing.
All that is memorable
Is the braid.
Plaited to the wrist,
Your means of breath,
Has become your delusion of oxygen
It’s irony of non-air is like the poisonous Fumes Of Old.

All I have known is cotton, steel and plastic.
Of a brother’s failure,
Of a sister’s pain,
Of the self, forever before me.
Temptation by the now is everywhere,
But I cannot forget what I have seen.
Your shallowness is my nausea,
And I will be judged for judging,
But so be it.
For my heart tells me you are wrong
And this I cannot ignore.
Other things I might,

But this, I cannot.

Audio Version (Podcast – MP3 / 68sec / 534kb)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 1994