SELF-EXILE ON OLYMPUS

I still connect bright dots of night sky
into false constellations; revealing
gods who became human one too many times
and thus forgot themselves—kings of
nothing, frozen, waiting in vain
for their death watches to pay bleak respect.

In self-exile on Olympus, I sought grandeur
between heroes lying drunken in dry bushes
and rotting ambrosia leftovers in their dumpsters.
Their dirty laughter echoing into the day after.
Fruits hung from the trees like cadavers
from hooks in a butcher shop’s cold storage.

I plucked weeds in neglected gardens
while they tottered, patrolling their mountain
like stray dogs with matted fur in muted streets.
Below them, cracked stones of their temples-
turned-markets were entangled with
angry breaths bartering overpriced vanities.
All those shimmering colors of past glory,
used into dull gray, as Playdough—kneaded
and squeezed into oblivion.

Their dreams flew once with the confident
wings of a yellow bird plunging forward—yet
crashed against a window, was wrapped in a

trash bag, then buried with the
heavy scent of blood and Windex.
Sometimes, the end is quite mundane

.

Konstantinos Patrinos holds a Master of Arts degree in Social Sciences from the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. He is a high school teacher for Political Science and Philosophy. His Master’s thesis on the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard was published by Logos Verlag.