Triada Samaras Poetry

Skyscrapers in Your Backyard (ed. 2009)

2009-09-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

Everything is education,
Parents,
The way you brush your teeth,
Up and down

Or side to side is,
Seen and emulated
By your
Little ones.

The way you sit in traffic,
Fuming. Is it polite to curse
The suffocation of skyscrapers
Growing In your backyard?

The world is watching
From the back seat.
So you might say, the heavy traffic
Gives us more time to draw

Honey, and
The windows need
To be shut
Tighter,

So we can hear
Mr. Mozart better.

Or you might explain, yes
It hurts your ears
Honey,
But we can take the subway,
Ooops,
It looks a little crowded down there,

While the hungry honk
In heat and shadows
because Brooklyn
DEVELOPMENT is

In your veins,
Seething now.
The flyers in your mailbox
Brought it to you yesterday.

Do you remember when,
Honey,
Way back when before the skyscrapers
Blocked the sun?

You used to play here
Where it looks just like
Manhattan now,
By that tree.

You were born there,
Do you still remember the yard?
The noise is deafening in your ears
As it pumps the rage to your brain.

In thumps and bumps and you run, not walk
Back to find your yard, back to find your house,
Back to Brooklyn where Brooklyn once stood
There was a time when the man in uniform could not take away.

Your house your life your yard
When small stuff mattered,
But it is too late,
There are skyscrapers growing here now.

You lost track you think,
You lost the tracks
Beneath the yards someplace.

From the back seat
Comes a quizzical stare,
More unbearable questions
Where did you go Mommy?

Back to the yards again?

No, you mutter lying,
Don’t you just love that?
Your veins popping from your forehead
As you squint through your window shield
Looking to find Brooklyn?

Trying to remember it as it once was?

Now you know
You did lose track,
You lost the distant tracks that lie green
Beneath the backyards of your mind.

c. 2009 Triada Samaras

2009-05-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

FOR PATRICK DALY, PRINCIPAL*

Listen to the rain

Wash away the pain

Listen to the rain

Wash away the pain

Drip drop Drip drop

Rain and pain will never stop

Drip drop Drip drop

Pain and rain will always stop

High in the half-lit sky

the Maker opens Her wings

and the water flows down

Down it falls on tan, painted bricks

and on red, baked ones and

on sprawling graffiti

and torn-up sidewalks

On umbrellas old and withered

and on stolen cars

with gold, spindly hubcaps

and elevated rear-ends

pounding with rhythm,

On fading murals

and upon the Spot

Headlights gleam

and make their way

through the dull shower

But the spot

is still a hallowed place

A silvery ghost or

an aura that marks the blot

Where the Principal, Patrick Daly,

died in vain

or in heroism
or simply in the gentle rain

The postwoman makes her way

across the spot

Children run and skip

through it

Baby strollers glide

over it

And dogs dive

on top of it

A tree is planted

upon it/the spot

And all the water

from the vast and cloudy sky

Fills the hole in the earth

where the tree stands

with water and more pain

Up sprout weeds of all kinds

Those that strangle sidewalks

and those with purple flowers

and those that stink

and in the middle

Sprouts a single tulip

with lips so red

and a center so bright

that it glows in the rain

and lights up the sky

Blooming and standing so tall

in a sea of grey

til a frolicking, foolish child

picks it for Mama

Listen to the rain

Wash away the pain

Listen to the rain

Wash away the pain

Drip drop Drip drop

Pain and rain will never stop

Drip drop Drip drop

Rain and pain will always stop

c. Triada Samaras 1996-1998/2005

For, Patrick Daly, beloved school principal, P.S. 15 in Redhook, Brooklyn, was accidentally killed. Daly was the Brooklyn New York City school principal killed in 1992 by gun fire during a drug dispute at a housing complex, as he searched for one of his students who had been missing school. I was assigned to work as an artist in residence at PS 15 after his death and subsequent departure of fully one third of all the teachers at the then traumatized site. I remained there for the next 7 years. TS

Instructions

2008-01-31T13:04:00.001-08:00

Instructions

The secret to this thing is:
There is no one in charge

If you need assistance:
Please call the operator

If you need gas:
Please call 9-11

Everyone’s gone
out fighting

but the troops
need better amour

armor
arms
out
fighting
take a break

My needle is on empty
and
I need some
gas

No
frozen concentrate
or citric acid
please,
I like crushed
tomatoes
better than
pureed.

c. 2006/2008 Triada Samaras

2007-11-23T12:06:00.000-08:00

Running Away

Far away

From home

Your ran

And grey the day you left.

Which is the home you miss more?

The one you left long ago running,

Or the one you never found so

Far away from home?

Far away from home

Your ran

And grey the day you left.

And the bus was late

But you rode it yes you did but

Did you ride it far enough

Long enough

To really get away?

And the bus was late

But you rode it, yes you did so

Drink your milk now

Get some sleep.

Do you hear your baby crying?

You rang the doorbell

Yes you did,

But you had lost the key.

c. 2007 Triada Samaras

2007-11-15T18:42:00.001-08:00

The conundrum

The artist groped through the paint trying to see

With her fingertips the things she could not say

The more she could see

The less she could say so

She spoke in whispers

Even to her secret self

Asking, where does the paint

Want to go?

The more she could say

The less she could see so

She stopped the brush

To catch her breath often

The paint drifted about the canvas

Like waves on a lazy boat

Lapping here

Landing there

Landing nowhere

In particular

The artist played

The game she learned long ago, pretending

Her brush was deaf

Her fingers mute

And the game of smiling

When it was not called for

She stopped the brush

To catch her breath, often

The more she could say

The less she could see so

Asking where does the paint

Want to be,

She spoke in whispers

Blaming paint

Even to her secret self.

c. 2007 Triada Samaras

2007-11-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

For Election Day, (the other Valentine's day) Nirvana Constant contact Try it free A fifth of a Chocolate cookie Valued voter Keep it simple Made by hand Share me with your Significant other oh, Sweet Valentine! Will you be mine? Giving is our Nirvana Freedom from the endless cycles Suffering birth death And even the cookie rumbling Sometimes or one too many Be Mine! The darkest piece I await you here On Cloud Nine! c. 2007 Triada Samaras

Poem for a Garbage Can

2007-10-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

Poem for a Garbage Can

There is no garbage in this world

No mess-ups

No wastes of time

Just grist for your mill

Look down it’s all around you

Nothing is ever used up

Only returned

Tell me something new with something old

Remember the past

But understand how and when

To recycle

Never toss back at me

What you think I want you to hear and

Don’t try to pick me up

I am older than you think.

c. Triada Samaras 2006/2007

(This poem lives on an actual garbage can in Carroll Park, Brooklyn where I painted it.)

The Liars and Their Lips

2007-09-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Liars and Their Lips

What are the liars thinking

When they are moving their lips?

Do their words get jammed

Stuck on their salted roofs

Of the parked jaws

Or does it get easier

To lob them ever?

Naturally after a good match like

Mercury in a tennis ball lightning profile

For your messenger to leave its tongue

Your referee to signal

The passage of a cure time

A sigh maybe you just need

To take another good deep breath

A nap before your turn

To play again

Let it out

The lies and all the rest

Then try to teach your children

To distinguish

Between the white lines you made

Before the

And, and all the rest

You said

You never said.

c. 2007 Triada Samaras

2007-09-15T23:18:00.000-07:00

I heard a train

I heard a train today in the bathtub, and

The mold on the ceiling bloomed into a

Purple flower garden

The paint chips, all the dancing people,

My job: Summon the poet.

I once saw clouds on the Jersey turnpike

Paint Swiss Alps over Lake Geneva

My job: Remember the fluffy pink visuality and

Leave my love of dreaming alone.

In the tub I heard the Hudson River;

Lie beneath me rushing and cleansing and

I prayed upon the Palisades

To cliffs westward and soaring

My job: Wander from pain

Just long enough

To glimpse it

By train or any means

Seize images

In its momentary absence

Quick! Arrange dreams of gold dust,

In swirls around my sparkling mind

Wallow wade just long enough

To make a few words.

Before taking

The downward plunge again

I am constitutionally incapable

Of sitting still

Very long.

c. 2006/2007 Triada Samaras

The Spectator

2007-09-10T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Spectator

(Smoke and Mirrors)

(For the victims of September 11, 2001)

Let the smoke blow to me

Come, waft from the merciless fire

Come near, from the black gasping pit

From the doomed embers I detect

Wisp to me

The pair of prisms I once touched

Twin pyres now

The abyss has a double

With two falling towers twice as atrocious

Come, where you are carried by the wind

Come, catch me

Black billowing bulk

Seize me

High atop my rocky rampart

Where I wait for you

Let the smoke catch me

Soar or roar or

Cast a colossal loopy-loop

Like an airplane maneuver

Distract me while I wait

Only take no hostages this time

You thief

Coward

Hypocrite

Who soars free

With other people’s belongings

What kind of liberty is that?

You, borne of smoke and mirrors

And flying these days

With no shape of your own

But for the breath of others

Inhaled for your jet propulsion

You leave nothing in the sky

But a smudgy wake

What kind of flight is that?

Cool wind at your back

All is clear for you

So let the human ash

The human treasures go

Let them dip to the sea

Dip to the deep

Where they plunge

To bathe beneath the Coney Island billows

Wash them away

While you

Wretched vapor

Sun-speckled bits of words and dreams you stole

Plans you never made

Love you never felt

Leave behind your stolen booty from the thousands

Leave behind their forms

Their creations

Their beliefs

Their silence

Leave behind their dust to sprinkle the flowers

Then

Blow to me my friend

Where you shall meet the barbed wires guarding my heart

And hear the terrifying

thump-thump

Which is its marching beat

In this divine labyrinth

Where far away and softly

Blood and oxygen combust

In healthier conditions

Ride the maze of veins and arteries

Confounding your noxious odor

Byways of resistance to oblivion

Whose living lines span more connections

Than all the circuitry at the twin towers

And weave together more intricate patterns

Than the mortal lacework framed in steel

There, in the ventricles and the valves

There in the vessels

And secret chambers

There in the farthest reaches

The darkest places

You will encounter

Human love with its simple truth

The radiant warmth

Of ceaseless compassion

Sparks safer to fly

The human campfire or

A vital organ

With steam securely capped

There in the combines of a lone human heart

You’ll find yourself hopelessly lost

Surrounded by the

Greatest incinerator of evil

Here nothing will ignite for you

Heartbeats will eradicate you

Pulses will pulverize you

Pumps will carry you away

Carry you away

And divine spirit will render you nil

No memorial service for you

So,

Blow to me my friend

Where you shall meet your match

In a single human sound

thump-thump

I let my imagination carry you away

thump-thump

Smash yoy into pigment and drip you away

thump-thump

Find my words and verse you away

Amplify you and sing you away

Sing you away

My ears hear you whistle by from a quiet rooftop

Blow to me

My eyes watch you sail by slowly

Blow to me

Where my human memory

Can forever hold onto the flames

And faces of those you took

Where my human thoughts

Can still turn you into a silly boogey-monster

Blow to me

For, when there is nothing more

To fuel your fire

You exhaust yourself

A long exhale

A deep sigh

And your flight annihilates you finally

Away you blow unfettered

Into the blue sky you go

Absorbed by God’s breath

No one but you can envision yourself

As anything else

A passing cloud you might become

Just bear in mind

The human rib you tied to your willowy form

Like the tail of a childish kite

You needed to take flight

From the inferno you floated

Cool wind at your back

Blue sky on that morning

Only one human heart need tell.

c. Triada Samaras 2001/2007

(Originally published in the Hellenic Voice 2002, and the Haverhill Gazette, 2002.)
I witnessed the events of 9-11 first-hand from my Brooklyn Browntone rooftop with my two sons, then 14, and 11. T.S.

Skyscrapers in Your Backyard

2007-09-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

Skyscrapers in Your Backyard

Everything is education
Parents

The way you brush your teeth
Up and down

Or side to side is
Seen and emulated by your little ones

The way you sit in traffic
Fuming
Is it polite? to curse
The suffocation of skyscrapers growing
In your backyard?
The world is watching
From the back seat

So you might say
The heavy traffic gives us more time to draw
Honey and
The windows need to be shut
Tighter
So we can hear
Mr. Mozart better

Or you might explain
It hurts your ears,
Honey,
But we can take the subway
0oops,
It looks a little crowded down there

While the hungry honk
In heat and shadows because
Brooklyn development is
In your veins
Seething now
The flyers in your mailbox
Brought it to you yesterday

Do you remember when
Honey,
Way back when
Before the skyscrapers blocked the sun
You used to play here
Where it looks just like Manhattan now
By that tree
You were born there
Do you still remember the yard?

The one they mauled
To give more space to
The development
Too hard for me to explain why
Honey,
It’s all a nightmare to me now
A different kind of yard

Maybe real grass, but
Some I can’t seem to find here
Too small with no
Convenient parking and
I can’t remember how it looks in the flyer
Or how this nightmare actually ends

I think we need to forget this trip
Forget this avenue
Honey
Too many darn skyscrapers
Blocking the view

Let’s try to go home now
Burn the flyer they sent us
Write to the mayor the governor?
No honey, they like the big yards not the small one
The noise is deafening in your ears
As it pumps the rage to your brain

In thumps and bumps and you run not walk
Back to find your yard, back to find your house
Back to Brooklyn where Brooklyn once stood
There was a time when the man in uniform could not take away

Your house your life your yard when small stuff mattered but it’s too late
There are skyscrapers growing here now
You lost track you think
You lost the tracks maybe
Beneath the yards someplace

From the back seat
Comes a quizzical stare
More unbearable questions
Where did you go Mommy?
Back to the yards again?

No, you mutter lying,
Don’t you just love that?
Your veins popping from your forehead
As you squint through your window shield
Looking to find Brooklyn?
Trying to remember it as it once was?

Now you know
You did lose track
You lost the distant tracks that lie green
Beneath the backyards of your mind.

c. 2007
Triada Samaras, Poet/Artist