time
disappears
when you spend it on a beach
soaking up the rays of the sun
[through three layers of spf 50
only to burn burn burn anyway]
and swimming in the ocean
[or is it a sea?]
but somehow
there’s no need to be
running running running
we’ll get places when we get there
[and this island is small enough that it is likely
we’ll still be on time
if we leave a little late]
how quickly we get used to
the nice things in life
a filling and gorgeous breakfast
out on a shady balcony
overlooking a small square in Athens
and lazy writing right afterwards
only two days of that, and yet i think that is what i’ll miss most
but who knows what the island of Kalymnos has in store for us
or the ferry ride to Rhodes
or Paris or Madrid or Lisbon
or even all the trains we have yet to take
but i see why kip in the past has insisted
on staying one place
and living
like a natural-born citizen
of wherever we are visiting
kip and i have spent a fair amount of christmases
and new years[es]
in foreign countries
and i
personally
have spent a few july 4ths
far away from the united states
perhaps this could become another tradition
because, damn, i wouldn’t mind
never having to look at another nationalist capitalist display
of red, white, and blue
touting patriotism as a personality
to be sold and bought
at any price
it is very nice
waking up on the fourth
and not being reminded
of our country’s supposed “greatness”
because we are on a whole ‘nother continent
which believes more like we do —
that the united states has done
just about
nothing
to earn the term
great
[or maybe they don’t think about our country much at all
which is, perhaps,
even better]
after walking around
and around and around
the tiny streets of Greece
trying to find one specific place
that may
or may not
be closed
an evening in a roof-top hot tub
[even if it is colder than expected]
while gazing across the way
at the lit-up acropolis
and thinking of all the birds you saw
while wandering
and all the great food you had
between your thousands of steps
that’s
the way to end a day
i still can’t get over
how much this city,
though so different
from my concrete jungle,
can remind me so much
of home
from the pigeons
and mourning doves
and stray cats
everywhere
to the instances of
so many different
languages being spoken
and written down
to its walkability
and metro system,
even the tourist traps
are cute reminders
of my home’s downtown
[feeling at home
even in a foreign city —
the story of new yorkers abroad]
the Acropolis was built
stone by stone by hand
and when it was eroded
by siege
or nature
or time
it was rebuilt
stone by stone
by hand
and these days
though the hands are working
machinery
the conservation process
is rebuilding things
to seem
as they would have been
thousands of years ago
still
stone
by
stone
being dehydrated
while walking around in Greece
is nice because
you don’t have to use the restroom
nearly as much as usual
but it’s not completely great, because
you’re dehydrated
in Greece
“seat must be occupied
during takeoff and landing”
it feels like there should be
a metaphor
in there
somewhere
but i can’t seem
to find any
allegories
currently
having not written
my full 300 words
in damn near five days,
i expected to struggle to even get past
the first hundred mark
but here i am
skating over into the two-hundred zone
and i should have known
i should have known
it’s not that i’d forget
poetry-writing
or block it up
for future poetics
it’s that i haven’t been able to get things
out
in days
and i am a fountain
about to unleash
a river’s worth of flow;
a dam
that is bursting at the seams
with words and stanzas
and ideas and dreams
[and, of course, metaphors and similes]
there is a flood of poetry
erupting from me
i really should have known
kipventures 