swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

pull back before we break
Nico Vassilakis

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We Are Quadrilaterals

We’re all regular people

A raucous blend and clear thumping
ambition

Disdain for the other was the thing
that broke us

There’s nothing left to discuss

By that I mean a lack of originality

The meal might be different but
the plates are always the same

A dead end

A full stop

I’ve been sniffing around a variety
of templates to accommodate all
the shitty ideas we amass

Andt there ain’t nothing new yet

Bejeweled apathy

Preferring to live in virtual life

A slave to technology

Rotten economic theories

You can say we’re fucked

And you’d be right

The Chicken Coop

What is torn remains

To circle a word, to keep focus upon
it

There are fewer exits than
there are ways to enter

An object that holds writing

Even your griffonage faithfully
recounts the event

You will salvage what is erased in
order to read what transpired

Being free is not easy.
Society involves entrapment

You know, I can’t be in charge of
myself

It might seem interesting, but not
enough to take the extra steps required

This shit is unrelenting.
Caught in loops you can’t shake

We are weak. Our beauty is in being frail

They provide the tension, but we
pull back before we break

The advertisements are the show.
Everything else is just there to keep
you glued to the screen

So Equals Do

I sacrifice my place in line for being
somewhere else

Oh climate, oh disregard

While walking out the timber naked
and scratched

Even my own bird laughs

This is what it looks like at this time
of day when a sunbeam hits our
overhead light spraying the room
with prism fragments

It’s a classic distribution of wealth
where you’re stabbed in the eye and
kicked down the stairs at the same time

It’s turbines, it’s dials, it’s clocks
you wear on your wrist

The whole of futurity is pausing at
what happens next

Self-promotion disguised as altruism
is still self-promotion, so don’t add
flowers to make it smell better

Having gone, I’ll tell you there’s
nothing like finding yourself lost
in a place you don’t quite know how
you got there

A little schmear of dementia cream

Enter sleep
In the usual way
Squeezing between
The letters
Of the word
To get through
To the other side

It’s so hot out, you submerge into
water

So, I do

From one environment into another

She said: I’m selling my pork chops
but I’m givin my gravy away

She asked: Does your money fold
or does it jingle

He ate Blast Simply, little candies
from a bag, and watched the
volcano erupt across the street

It’s time again to make an alphabet
out of twigs

A bolt of Thursday filled the sky

This board game is damn warped

I can talk the way tendrils emerge
and assume other speaking avenues
of thought, but today is a spicy end

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Nico Vassilakis is a visual and textual poet. His recent books include VOIR DIRE (Dusie Press 2020) and LETTERS of INTENT (CyberWit 2022) along with other pamphlets and booklets. Nico is a contributing editor for UTSANGA and has had his work exhibited globally. He lives in the middle of nowhere in Illinois with his wife and animals.