Refuge and remedy refused is in memory of a tragic shipwreck off the coast of southern Greece that claimed the lives of hundreds of migrants who escaped their homelands for better shores. It is dedicated to the grandmothers of the Aegean, who plucked migrant babies from Mediterranean waters and nurtured them, and to all the courageous acts of the Hellenic health care personnel (Emergency EKAB, Hospital and Lab; Public Health and Management), nurses with comforting words,as well as those who deliver, work in supermarkets and banks to keep the world turning. The Academy for Global Citizens is dedicated to the National School of Public Health, Greece, its political executioners, and the silent elite.

Refuge and remedy refused: vaccines to use lies to confuse

Amidst the storm, an old and rugged captain cries
We are in peril on the sea
Lament with me as I lament with you
My worn-out ship sinks fast
Sails ripped like gause in gale force gusts
Its yellow flag flaps on the waves whipped by the wind
Engulfed by raging rains pouring into its deep hold
Flooding where provisions for the world are heaped
Wheat barley corn that never will make bread
Where disregarded migrants moan and mothers sob
The many baby cries submerged
The splitting deck gives way the mast no longer stands
Symbols, trappings of a captain’s life go down
With all on board, crew, ballast and migrants, too
In flight and fleeing from a land of death and despair
A place where airborne cases rage, of what?
A land of brutal acts
Made their escape with a desperate hope now fled
To reach an alien refuge on some other distant unseen shore
Corroded skins and faces shocking to behold
No cordon sanitaire on islands further north for them
Bodies burning fire and oozing blood
Their life span coming to an awful close
A captain with no chart to keep his ship on course for home
No antidote to stem the blood and uncorrode a face
A leper’s bell no one can hear
No compass and no sextant and no sun
In tears, a powerless captain on a sinking boat
Commits all souls and bodies to the deep
Knowing he will never see his love again
Who waits in another troubled sea called home
On this his final voyage he knows he’ll never shout ship ahoy again
Or order anchor dropped in his home port
But grieving more for those who’ll never reach their promised place
They desperately imagined when dangerously they slipped port
Anchors aweigh he called while guns were being fired
On shore people dropped like flies
His thoughts now clearly embroidered by love
Knowing he will never kiss his caring Penelope again
In another troubled sea that they call home
Never drink her tea and taste her pie, listen to the news at six
A nip for two, her gentle hand his rough old kiss
Not knowing that his mates await his stony smile
He’ll never hear his wife’s few last few gasps for breath
Lying on a narrow cot in darkness and receding time
Set aside, drug drowsed, isolated and alone
Outside a room in which a fight for life on goes
Where drained doctors oxygenate to stem demise
Some little time ago she had denied refused
Said no to masks, to cure
She and her Captain leave-take without goodbye.
How many captains have gone down?
How many patients have denied a jab?
Said no to one, two, to three
Said no to vaccines and have left this world unnoticed
To where beyond the ash and dust we’ll never know
But those with ears to hear will hear
Leave-taking of her Captain and a seafarer’s last goodbye.
And those with eyes to see a captain’s sigh will always see
Hardy Penelope, with storm-worn Captain, hers pass by.

An academy for global citizens

Long years ago, unsteady feet, and shoes bright shining so I could see
Distorted and dull images of all things when glancing down
The lustredoros with few teeth let me in on life unseen
In Constitution square with ghostly Eleftherios standing by
The Unknown Soldier, parliament and changing guard
The Evzone’s foot, so steadily held up high
Poised for a moment one pace and then again
Held securely raised like all the many statues all around
While unconcerned pigeons are being fed with crumbs
Eternal letters carved in bright white Penteli stone
The α and the ω and 4000 years between
Where just outside the language fight took place
High academic Greek or demotic as the people want to speak
A touch of pink at eventide on Hymettus enchanting shade of evening
While outside the Academy and high above my head
Philosophers in marble clad reach to the sky
Whispering unheard words of wisdom
Too young I was to know or comprehend
Instead, I entered one large solemn academic room
Not knowing why or how on this my first stroll in Athens town
I don’t recall who I had come to see, if anyone at all
The room was not for teaching I assumed, no students there
A library no, no shelves, no chairs, no open book
But on a dust piled sill an unused old world dusty phone there sat
Cobwebbed stamps lay on their bureaucratic sides
While dried up ink once blue, sat guard
Was I in a mail room with letters set to go, but no
Envelopes from everywhere were piled high
Incoming and unread, unopened contents
One perhaps mine
Stacked high along the walls and on all four sides
Hidden messages to which no one had replied
Or ever would do so
I took this to be my New Greek guide.
Five decades on and still the Academy, seldom replies
Yet still the gods prevail in this a land preferred by Zeus
A land they chose
Where words of wisdom still go unheard
With hubris, now the legal tender of the day
Where Socrates would take again the hemlock and not stay
I chose to stay in hope that I would learn the truth
Of empires lost and of peoples who always lose
Find out the reasons why nations have their glory stripped
Cities condemned by war
Why everything that made them great is thrown away?
While those who could have saved it all
Are condemned to die by hemlock, or are crucified
Many of the best of brilliant minds who dared
To say no to power and stood up to the status quo
Now set aside.
While philosophies are falsified, where verities withhold truth
What did I really learn perhaps I’ll never know?
One thing I know is I don’t know!