Primary Colors

Island Hopping 27 x 19 cm

TO A WAITRESS IN A GREEK RESTAURANT

I really like your plastic bra straps.

They do something, um, just right

for your  shoulders. Is that your old man

out there, smashing an octopus, our dinner, perhaps, against a rock?

Do you like octopus?  Stupid question, of course you do. I’ll bet

your favorite movie scene is the one in which Zorba

leaps up, show-off that he is, and starts dancing

a mighty “Yes!!!” to life. Charming, and it doesn’t seem to

matter to most viewers that a Greek everyman

is played by a Mexican actor with an Irish name,

but the point is, what I really don’t want to

say but should, actually the point is, dear

girl — you can’t be older than 19 or 20,

right?—what about schedule delays,

corruption of every shape and configuration,

what about hot, mosquito-crazed 

nights in a cheap Piraeus hotel  

room with its noisy, ineffectual 

attempt at air conditioning?

An occasional slap dash of Nordic structure just might, um,

bring a degree of order(yawn, scratch)to this white-washed, creamy, garlicky

Orthodox life-style we find ourselves in the midst of,

the retsina and fried squid, the casual disregard for traffic laws,

the way a cruel sunset once stained

the white domes of Ios

a delicate, girlish pink

further enhanced by the special effects of substance abuse

and everything so cheap(at least

in 1984 when this poem, as it were, takes place)—

which leads me to the obvious conclusion that,

given a choice, I’d opt for the oral compulsive 

over the anal retentive anytime:

desire lives the anarchy of its own laws.

I’ve studied this issue. The hand that smashed

octopus against rock is now delivering

our glasses of on-the-house ouzo, and here’s my wife

just come back from the Lady’s

her face with “you bastard” written all over it,

and so I wish you a good night,

and a good life, whatever your name is, everything will be fine.

This is the future speaking. Everything will be. 

Zorba the Greek

from the movie by  Mihalis Kakogiannis

based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis
with Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Papas