Panos Panagiotopoulos - One Poem

Hope Is

Hope is granular,
latent seeds in non-linear fractal poetry;

inspiration comes, today she wears a man
in a blue polo shirt and faded jeans with pockets full of antibiotics,
commencing a speech he's been rehearsing in the bathroom mirror for a lifetime,
personifying hope; today she's a helpless, pigtailed, freckled adolescent
who supposedly dies last, but children know, though they can vaguely remember
as they stray further from womb memory, they know that
hope is granular,

latent seeds,
lodged in the contours of non-linear fractal poetry,
sandbox verses spinning at 80 miles per second;

people exchanging yawns on the subway,
apathy explained in tabloid headlines;
people around, like gears, interlocking,
apathy explained in strobes, reflections on their sunglasses;
bottled dolphins on the subway, pretending to read
books they would later pretend to understand;

lodged in the contours of non-linear fractal poetry,
spinning at 80 miles per second,
sandbox verses that are latent seeds,
water canisters

in the hands of monastic street poets, street painters,
reclaiming the world or just the piece that they step on,
street artists with their noses pressed against a window,
staring at people eating sushi for the first time in their lives;

they come knocking on your door, they come rapping on your window,
famished, wounded and naked, subcultural static with a vision
and cold canisters of purified water;
feed them,
bandage them,
clothe them,
even if people don't do that around these parts nowadays;
give them a blank page where they'll conduct their manifestos,
greasy but honest fingers hugging the quill, dipping the tip in mustard
and mayonnaise;
point them to a wall and they'll paint it with love and sham geometry
of womb memory, planting latent seeds,

spinning at 80 miles per second,
lodged in the sandbox verse of fractal poetry;
hope is granular.




Panos Panagiotopoulos is a Greek writer whose themes range from erotica to social criticism, all dressed with free verse, text which is meant to be spoken; verses of cynical flavor but little cynicism. His poems have also been published in Carcinogenic Poetry, Eviscerator Heaven, SpokenWar, Orion headless, Gloom Cupboard and amphibi-us. He resides in Athens, Greece, and is passionate about writing and his son.