The Beautiful & Brutal - The Perspective of a Balkan Backpacker

[Greece ~ Albania ~ Montenegro ~ Croatia ~ Bosnia and Herzegovina from 13.09.2023- 27.09.2023]

Shrubs dance in the gentle breeze,

Which echoes through the old fortress,

Battling with the ornate opera of the ocean -

Romantic and resolving,

A space of calamitous calm 

And uncompromising solitude -

Producing salted tears of inner and unknown peace.

A place where thoughts both begin and cease 

To belong.

The ocean's song

Of vastness. 

Bells chime through salmon chiseled streets,

Transversing into worlds enclosed by venetian blinds -

Built by mythical minds.

Crickets carrese the liminality of life

At Mikpo Cafe.

Roasted beans bob along to harmonies of a faraway harp,

Whilst the eyes of Greek carp 

Poke out from sun-kissed water -

Staring at the city's bricks and mortar.

Far from the sphere of time,

Reflections float through translucent waters

That capture eternal ephemerality;

A state of being totally free.

This tiny island of Paxos is paradise -

Portrayed in the smiling faces at The Blue Grotto Taverna-

The perfect pizzeria.

Sunshine is captured here

In bottles of crystallized beer.

Spirits are seduced by the crispy smell of salted squid -

Served since 1976

To the world's wondrous mix.

She wishes time to wait for her -

For clocks to snooze, 

And people to simply listen to the Joy Cruise.

Shards of grey and azure move horizontally through a figurative flute - 

Creating a crescendo as the waves knock against eroded stones.

Nature mournfully moans.

Crabs retreat

To Titan's seat,

Avoiding becoming a delicate meat

Served to tourists desiring fresh sea food.

This murderous mood

One might whimsically obtain,

When they could simply abstain,

From killing the creatures of Atlantis.

Buoyancy believes in the majestic mountains -

Lingering and nebulous,

Like nighttime guardians.

The thrones of goddesses 

Glimmer throughout Greece -

Casting spells of magic and peace.

Boats bewitched,

Bask in their ambiguous beauty,

Whilst wondering souls sip on Aperol Spritz.

The sunshine sings here.

Happiness sheds a nostalgic tear.

I fear forgetting this moment in time,

A moment so utterly sublime.

Gjirokastra wakes under the embers of a fallen castle,

Imprisoned by UNESCO prestige,

And historic seige.

Tradition resides in relics across Albania,

Yet this place is preserved for curious people;

Those who discover their dreams,

When strolling, so it seems.

Bunkers never beseeched,

Etched into the mountains,

Whisper of war

From Kukes to Vlore. 

Suffocating chills chastise months of canteen waste in 1999, 

When rations dictated the tumultuous time.

A population starves under tyrannical triumph.

Riots and revenge are woven into the fabric of folk dancers -

Stomping on the ruble of rule,

To show Hoxa that communism is the fool.

Big brother drowns in the beauty of the Blue Eye,

Leaving photo frames eerily empty,

So that spies can no longer see

The practice of democracy.

The gentle pitter patter or paws

Keep the antique paths of Kotor's old town company

In the eclipsed hours of echoes;

Heightened by a coastline bass

Delinquent in dreams.

When dusk turns to dawn 

And yesterday's sounds have soaked into the city's formations,

Faint murmers of memories sing 

From abandoned shells -

Forgotten in perfect preservation;

Echoes of erstwhile elation.

Meanwhile, down the coast in Budvar,

A similar yet more serene day is unfolding -

Not yet tainted by the trudging stampedes descending from TUI cruise ships,

Infiltrating history with quick cash tips;

A fleeting American kiss from the lips

Of looming leeches,

Indulging on Gelato scattering Montenegro's beaches.

Ancient mosaics, remains, and relics

Rest in minutely manicured museums -

Waiting for human minds to acknowledge their archeological merit.

Such capsules of history

Tell debauched stories of a deceased dynasty,

If we choose to look and see.

Ocean encrusted oil jugs,

Rest religiously in the shadows of icons.

Their bodies embroided into the perilous patchwork of purgatory;

Souls dissolved in the salts of the sea -

Beautifully rising and falling,

As though moving mountains

Rolling on eternally.

Dubrovnik's old city captures the craze of fantasy franchises; 

Fiends of Thrones gasp at the hard and bare 

Bricks of an imagined world,

Whilst sequin adorned tourists pose for their influencer's instagram.

Selfies reflect in sunshine sunsets 

Swimming in tipsy beverags - 

Speeding up the pulling of leverages;

Sudden social interaction,

Now created through a snap and sloshed photo caption.

Hues of grey reflect in the pigmented sea,

Casting the cries of Croats upon war torn territory -

Eager for the traveller to see.

Meanwhile, emerald isles alight in vulnerable solidarity. 

Speedboats bob in anonymity,

Enduring the elation of lightening

When thunder vouches to sing.

Sirens begin to ring.

Locals retreat to the harmony

Of a well orchestrated stove,

As spices skip before a simmering snooze;

Cumin and coriander's romantic ruse. 

Tourists trudge on in ponchos and flip flops -

Clipper clapper, 

Clipper clapper -

The monotonous drum of city mapper

Beats into the dungeons of Dubrovnik.

Detained dragons befriend in fright.

Such fantastical thoughts greet the grotesque

When the myopic mind has seen sadistic spheres of society,

And unlocked the underbelly key -

Plastered over with perfection.

A unanimous utopia

Downgraded to a democratic dystopia. 

An enclove of resounding rays,

Brutally ricotiat down moss-lined ravines -

Rising with the steps of sojourners;

The world's intrepid learners.

Light enhances archived magnificence -

Frozen yet flowing through time,

As though a replayed pantomime.

Pixies peep from forgotten coves,

When goblins sing at night -

Summoning the small people to antique lands,

Soft with grape encrusted sands.

Quilts from Olympia,

Hand-sewn in hues of green,

Just discovered by this holocene,

Are cubsistic in shades,

And block the breeze of recent raids.

Local memory fails to fade 

Or bade

Farwell to the barbaric biting of Bosnia.

These blankets of security, 

Are discussed over cups of Arabic tea,

To ensure that the Balkans agree

To a butchered peace;

Of estranged and paranoid people.

Under the Serbian seige,

A city is put to rest -

Targeted by a Chetnik sniper nest.

An Olympic Bob sled.

Sarajevo sees thousands dead.

Ethnic cleansing

And mass genocide,

Meanwhile the world steps aside.

Ignorance of the un-allied.

Holes of horror adorn high rises,

Which shy away in the shadows of the past.

People still simply aghast. 

Graves are perpetually cast on the hills of Bosnia and Herzegovina-

Screams subdued into a simmering tinea,

Taunting today,

And telling tomorrow 

The truth 

To the global youth.

Lands ravished by war.

Lives crushed in cold blood.

Territorial gain, 

Played out through human pain.

Brutal and beautiful 

Such is life.

Solidarity requires human strife.

Together we roll on under the sky,

And try to be kind until the day when, we too, will die.