Immigrant (riding the bus home)

There I am riding the bus from the centre of Athens

It is a lovely day

Summer was late this year.

I want so much to feel good.

This morning

three in number

stubbed a man over a camera he was carrying to film the birth of his child.

The media vultures splashed it on tv screens all over the country.

They said they were Arabs

They said they were north Africans

Now hooded kids with machetes chase whoever fits the colour

on the streets.

A Bangladeshi kid hiding in a bin was stabbed to death.

Most of the foreigners have no papers and they don’t go to hospital

They sleep on their wounds

in abandoned houses,

on floors crawling with roaches, mice, lice and all kinds of shit.

The locals call for more policing but not against the hoods.

Five blocks north the hooded lifestyle anarchist dwells in micropolitics

They want direct democracy, no governance and less policing.

Three coppers beat seven living shades of someone’s life.

Protesters retaliate breaking shop windows, burning police cars and vandalising banks.

The locals call for more policing against the hoods.

Fuck this, the world’s gone mad.

But some will say this is cliché

Some will say I say this to provoke,

some say that political poems are crap and mean nothing

well fuck that too.

I don’t give a flying monkey’s for what they think.

This is not about me.

I only write what I see trying to get home from the centre

I apologise if I cannot do it differently

Forgive my ineptness

I have no new method to present it.

This is about me.

Being a foreigner you are always a second class citizen.

Being unemployed at home you are a second class citizen

I am damned if I go. Damned if I stay.

Everybody around my age group wants to go.

I am broke,

she is pregnant.

We scrape a living,

she smiles,

she is hopeful.

I am thankful for that.

She asks me to join her on the balcony to watch the kids playing on the streets.

Silly me does not

I argue with someone on the net.

I stopped

I hacked the connection from the flat upstairs and the signal comes on and off.

It’s on.

I argue again about unimportant things

I am affected by that too

I don’t sleep well

One more thing to think about and prevent me from sleeping well

At least this one will go away soon

It is temporal.

Like a brothel, acting the thespians, touring the countryside.

The world calls for beautiful imagery,

disguise the suffering,

with something

like a pretty image in hell

dunno, maybe a girl’s laughter in absolute darkness.

That might do it.

I go back on the bus

Two guys in front of me talk about last century,

Argentina,

They saw the same thing happening before

on some place else,

we are repeating the same shit

all over the place

Such a human trait that is

I fall asleep on the bus guarding my empty wallet.

Then the swallows come

we chase them out

burn their nests

and wear their wings on our heads.

The price of it

The cost is running high for it

when you refuse to receive help

when you need it the most and it shows

When wool is a blessing

but all you got are bread and salt,

nylon bags

and the wet earth for a bed

When you refuse to brag about what you did not achieve

When everyone else brags of what was given to them,

acting like they are entitled to express an opinion loud,

with animated gestures,

and when they are wrong,

they are forgiven

Like it is ok.

Well I want some of that too.

I also want to stroll down the street,

without a care in the world

To sleep.

My eyelids bite my face hard and I cannot think straight.

I want to stop for a moment and let the warm sunlight hit my face.

It is like I float in it.

Like the kiss of a loved one.

I want to realise that it is spring time before it’s gone.

I missed it last year.

The swallows are only tolerated on pretense of spring,

Most don’t like them nesting under the balconies

They find their singing irritating

They swear when they clean their droppings,

break their nests,

complain that they make too much noise.

The swallows nesting are only tolerated on pretense of a luck charm

They are never accepted

To hell with it.

I would leave you for the sea and her incandescent diamonds

tanning my skin.

I would go there alone, to live like some hybrid animal

jerking my feet clumsily

holding my breath underwater

looking for meat.

I would have my body dressed in her humid salty breath,

my hands constantly smelling of fish guts,

like the air in port,

when the fishing boats come in.

You can just about make out their shape on the horizon,

surrounded by flocks of seagulls claiming their treats.

I would leave you for the sea

but it is with you I feel at home with.

Unique

It is a myth for a person.

Persons are not fingertips

Billions of us cannot be unique

have unique smiles,

gestures,

grimaces

emotions

Unique is something you say to get the girl

some love to hear that

others immediately sus you out.

We are all the same.

There is individual beauty.

Physical and cultural diversity

We are like glasses of different shape

and colour

with a chip here

and a crack there

but what we carry inside is what connects us.

Someone let the tap run and filled us with the same substance

Only the human spirit is unique and that is a collective

It is mathematically impossible to look for it in you by excluding the whole

Once appreciating that you may understand

why some love you,

hate you,

cannot stand you,

want to be with you

and vise versa.