The Way of the Furtive and Yellow-less upon the Highest Heights, as they Shine Out Their Glory of Ochre, Tinted Verre and Earth-Toned Cascades of Sediment... a poem and a flash fiction

Loutro Honey

     .. first published, in 2013, in the poetry journal Mediterranean Poetry; revised 2025 

 

As we sail on a tender breeze of the Sea of Krete

I stroke her hair and the gulls flap mazes of ripples

-  Stumbling upon you was like finding Sphinx eyes in hay

-  The manner in which you enchanted me glowed a mirror on my soul

We’ll drown down raki, chew sunflower seeds, and listen to Mr. Fish'

 

Loud opinions in the only village bar of Frangokastelo, just miles from Gavdos

After we stroll through the National Garden and the quays of Port of Piraeus,

You in your nicest dress; we’ll land a ferry in Heraklion, tour the Palace

Of Knossos, follow timetables to Rethymnon, pitch bivouac in the ancient ruins

Of Fortezza, swill the central farmer’s market, bustling crowds, lighthouse, and abodes

 

Of Chania, hold each other’s hands on an effusive traversal of the Samarian Gorge,

Drink water of ecstasy in Sfakia, make love on the beach, jubilate in Agia Roumeli,

Vacation a fortnight on the hidden littoral cascade-sedimentary, ascend Mr. Fish’ ship,

Sip Tsoumpraina Mavri; I will sing you love poetry on a hammock softly swaying,

We will lead goats across the sand-pebble terrain to where the waves rush back and fling,

 

Wash them as Mr. Fish inspires his Weimaraner with most loving company,

Live on Mr. Fish’ plot for as long as we desire, then take home in the enduring ramparts

of the wondrous citadel of Land-Ho, a new Ithaka. Anything you wish will be yours.

And as we lay back, breathing in the olive-oil that is heaven swept, we will love one

another forever and longer and more.

 

by ben bussewitz

ben bussewitz

Educated by the College and several educators of it. Also, book read, and smart.

New York University-- Masters in Fine Arts, Candidate, in First Year (Poetry Track)

Flash Fiction 1024

21 September 2025

The Compete Picture Frame

We started with the photography.  And then we got slanted, and took some of ourselves.  Not on one of these wind-up-dolls, the machine of the scrolls— the one to the place of which the wind-up dolls go, with their wound-up friends, on a wild forgotten kind of time in false dynamics of resolution.  Not one for the polaroids.

This picture was high-definition, in bright shining finesse and clear-alacrity deftness of all the different shades of the full spectrum of colors shining bright.

This is the place we go to, sometimes when we find ourselves at home.  (The story fast-forwards years into the future.)

We are the poet, definitive it time, moving the air like the kind of right dynamics fun that is on the still-frame on the wall of this the one that has got us in it, well, and with kindness and tons of fun still—!

Well, we have found our voices and we have breathed— we’ve got the air and the talent of swimming underwater.  We have miracles and voices, like a full time on the life of ours that is in each other’s fate, like the two of us… there—!

We are parted, at times, and the story of the two of us is right on and goes according to the hook of the air so well around, the air so well surrounded, by two dripping silk olive oil fabrics while swimming into the beach where the waves cling and fling and meet the sand splendidly, in splendid turbid and salty, refurnished and fabric-embracing, time-recreating, our lives on an turbulent and edifying, storm-hour-glass and effulgent, shining of the breeze and smell of the sea, the waves breaking and beating, the two of us rocking and rowing as we slyly and splendidly, forevermore, at times and at times that come again and again, take off to see (our home history).

The light goes twenty years in the forward-motion (like a movie that is fluid in breath, a motion-picture that is stacked with the best, and the brightest still-lifes, as we are always in perfect dynamics, tonality, sonic enhancements of expressive and exuberant clad in ruby shining emerald pined-and-solved— discovered upon the treasure chest of our good music, the whole chess, the whole beauty of our air and lungs and great capitates— well, in our twenties, we became singers).

α

But in our midlife, we do not know what we will do… because we have the full thing worked out, and perfect composure we know, goes in each hallow of the willow trees picture-framed owls, the whole sonic wheel of dimensions full of resounding color on the life of our times in the times of our life the one that is just as it ought to be, and splendid.

We had it all figured out, by 22.  We had the whole thing, just right.

And we had the ending of this fiction in our hands in it was so terrible and elderly, so spawn glassed in in a perfect thing, it was so just as we had it, and we made it this far, right on track, this one stays right in moment, that decade of our (well-so far) best.. we know each one improves.

We ask ourselves, where we stand.  We ask ourselves, where we walk in many directions, spotting eyes and running through lines and memorizing times and movements of deftness of rapid swift capacities of the wildest raging rivers the shining glass of movement of the miraculous compound of hydration, for where will the river go?— you just, couldn’t possibly perceive (even one floating piece of the water) as it… moves.

We moved to a new place at twenty-two, and this is precisely where this begins (about halfway through the story).. of course we make it well-passed the hallmark of one hundred days, our hundredth years (as we are the same age, and in perfect shining colors… best dressed as well).

We have the capacity to shine brightness and know to do it well.  We do not know how.  We have done it, and do it often, but this time, we are deciding where the spotlight goes, the spotlight of the world.  We are deciding what to spend our lives on and for.

We spend them on each other’s watch (as my time is her time and hers is mine), on each other’s songs (the music of life), on each other’s beauty (we keep looking right into the center of each other; we connect and contact-among-with-between-on-within-and-in each other’s eyes just perfectly, like the waves beat unto sand in that sound the seashells make).  We hear the beat of hoofs and suddenly take flight.

The horses awe, of our eyesight.

Memorized.

So, we shalt define our good, long lifes.

We will dedicate ourselves to beauty.  We have decided.  Now we are in the moment.  Not we are devoted, to beauty, and life, in a way we never could have decided, as it was a gift, we have seen, just for us.

Now we slow down and view the picture fully.

We snap ourselves boiling lobsters with some still-frame polaroids, a song for the photograph notebooks and binders and we have won this day.

We shine light on the artwork we continue to make.  And we have won the game of life.  We have hailed victorious in our summoning of the lifetimes we have bent and brought and shaped and sought and have come in to full obtaining of which we have before us.

We shine light on our artwork as we form and create that which is within.  We have come to life, in each book, each turtle-shell, we bring into our world.

The turtle-shells live, all of them, perfectly, coherent and beauty-captured in endless praises and applause… the beauty of us lives in each other and the beauty of our artworks live in themselves (We are their Creators).

We were their Creators from the beginning and each hand you draw, you can read your palms (and be excited), the interpretation is within you, the one you’ve done tremendously, thus far, so read on, read on, as the writing moves along the pages so fluently and in a perfect life, that We have Created the Artist of the Game of Ocean Wave Turtle-Reaper-Catching.

The Turtle-Shells we Reap come to life.  They live within themselves.

They are all perfect.

We have made them.

We have Created them Perfect.

And that is what we were like.

By the age of twenty-two.

And we always shined them bright, and perfectly.  And they have always been perfect, all of them.

That read on, timelessly. [As timeless as the page.]

 

[fin]