Our art: the ego’s most horrible disguise...

I always climb towards horror with greasy boots,
starving now from flame
fluently secular
fluently
in tears...


Human Figures by Prehistoric Artists
(Algeria, Tassili N'Ajjer)

Nikos Karouzos

Dross of Immortality

I always climb towards horror with greasy boots,
starving now from flame
fluently secular
fluently
in tears
eternal chorographer of
my diction
and unquestioned
garment.
Badly spent illumination in
mauve and other delays,
of an ignoble
horizon
barking the creed of the dog,
or an unbecominghallucinatory
Universe,
pharaonic queen through
mathematical piousness.
I am what’s
involuntary of existence
my physique is not a flower, it
is rawness,
I am disposed toward a thousand years
even if I fall eternally on bloody seconds;
the winds have pointed me out.

May 1989


Nikos Karouzos (1926-1990)

I Penetrated Matter Howling

Two seas pursue me: life and death two currents which, damn
them, are in my heart . . .
I am trying to find in my dog-
drunk head
/second possessive pronoun/intelligence – can’t be found. I didn’t petrify anything. Lets play the winds let’s sweetly
play the damned.
What a sensuously-seasoned
infant the poem and poor Jesus
wearing orange stained underwear is hung up every
year in spring.
Our art: the ego’s most
horrible disguise.