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.

Who is Alice ?

Alice is that little bitch
that dropped acid
and fell down the rabbit hole,
but that was many years ago.
Now she is old enough to fuck
and likes her men rough!
She wakes up in the morning feeling numb in places
and washes the dried blood off her lip
while two monkeys of the male species sleep in her bed.
She takes a smelly shit
gets up without wiping her ass
and walks in the kitchen
looking for a knife to slit her wrists.
Who is Alice?

Putana

a new life through death awaits!
in this pirate's den, where
I will enter

prostitute!!
you shout at me
your whore,
i am
a human being,
i was
please don't forget
when you see me like this,
strike me right there,
in my heart,
stick your sword,
Right here I want you to

And you became for money,
without pride
without ethos
without morals, passion, love, kindred
without... for money.
You say one thing and you think another,
you lie for money
you pretend for money

tarnished existence

never to enjoy without being seen to enjoy.

But you are the worst kind of whore
because you don't get fucked.

Mutiny

We sail through a sea of blind rage,

filling our sails with a wind of blind hate.

The crew is tired and the skipper disappoints them by reminding them to trim when they trim,

to prepare to go about when they prepare to go about.

Our morale sinks in the gutter as the spray from the sea soaks us,

Our companionship fades as we shiver in the cold wind.

There is a strong desire for mutiny on deck,

to hang the skipper on the mast with the Genoa line,

to fix him a cross with the spinnaker.

‘Skipper, the crew needs a good word, some good news, some humanity’

 And the wind grows stronger,

The waves like a wall approach from every side

surrounding the boat like a ring

for a moment all is quiet and we look at it before we start working the lines,

with our hearts overwhelmed by a sense of doom.

I do not want to drown in these waters.

I do not want to fill my lungs with rage or hate.

But my mind slipped overboard and drifts away,

my hands tie the knot,

my arms winch the struggling body.

And the drunk…

How eloquently put, how many beautiful words you know

Your words make no sense

And the drunk laughed and sung with a loud steady voice

Such is the truth,

one more wrinkle in the drunk’s face,

one more white hair added to many,

a burned eyelash by a cigarette lighter brought too close to the face by the unsteady hand.

And the kids played with hulas all morning, laughing and crying and laughing and crying looped under the watchful mind of their mothers.

Today there is no school,

no mentoring,

no advising,

no homework,

no lunchboxes,

no pencil sharpeners

no smell of coffee on the teacher’s breath. Just endless pairs of motherly eyes and minds watching…

This face is full of

clam cell lines,

beach shore lines,

traces of time shifting through the morning light that doesn’t touch the corner of the bar.

Such is the truth,

such is the logic lost in a sea of dejection,

glassy dreams,

hollow hope,

fake smiles,

nice words,

tidal waves of jokers beating you straight…and the kids played with hulas…

And the drunk made wrinkles and burned eyelashes.

C22

Your mouth is dry, your sweat evaporates and the rays of the sun pierce your skin
As you walk through this illusion of a forest the soil underneath your feet turns to sand
As you walk through this anhydrous place your eyes tell you that you are plagued with waterfalls
Your eyes tell you that you walk through a belligerent oasis
Your eyes tell you what your senses know it is not entirely true.

The vultures search for you
The vultures search for your children
The vultures search for your grandchild
They search

As you walk through this illusion of happiness
through this neon road
you can sense the darkness falling like a cloak
covering your eyes
so that you do not see the dagger of misapprehension.

I am your savior
Says the voice
I am the one to alleviate your thirst, to ease your pain from the knife in your ribs
I am the oasis in your desert

‘I am you savior, I can alleviate your thirst, heal your wounds’

The vultures’ death eager eyes search for you,
your children,
they eagerly search for your grandchild in the womb of the daughter
they eagerly search for the daughter in the womb of her mother

If only your pain never ends to feed their unending hunger.

And the deluded pilgrim asks when praying

For the pain to stop
For the vultures’ well being

In a paranoid dance macabre how can a god answer both?

(shh!
They search in the womb.)

Breathe deep

They made the amorphous soldier a General and gave him an army.
I am in this parade and I watch him riding down the street.
He stares back at me with his decadent smile and his white viscous flesh and glazed eyes.

Do not come near me
Do not breathe on me
Your breath caries your rot and the smell make me vomit

The amorphous General led an army of corpses into the hearts of the living

I grow tired of hearing the same stories with different words and different characters, but the plot remains the same.
I grow tired.
I grow old and I lack the strength to fight.
I lack the strength to point the finger at those who feed the army of the amorphous General with the decadent smile and the viscous white flesh ridden with maggots.
He torments me when I sleep.
Every time I lie on my back I see his face approaching in the dark and I can smell his rot in his breath and I wake up screaming.
He led an army of pestilence into the souls of the living
On his skeleton horse
He waits for me to fall asleep, he waits in the dark, he waits for me.

I grow tired of the young and the old telling me the same story
the same plot remains.
I believe I do not grow tired of them but rather I grow tired with myself lacking the will,
lacking the strength to fight,
I feel ashamed that I cannot find the courage to point the finger at those who dip their bread into another’s salty sweat and clotted blood to feed the army of the amorphous soldier whom they made a General
and gave him a skeleton horse
and in the middle of the night he visits me,
positioning his viscous face millimeters away from mine,
tormenting me with his nauseating rotten breath waiting for me to scream
and then he steals the sound of my tearing voice and builds a whisper

“Welcome my blade coward, and die a million painful deaths
Welcome my blade, COWARD
and DIE
A MILLION PAINFUL DEATHS”

Don’t trust the captain

I’m on a path

Like you I’m on this road
There is no light

Seven moons hang low in the desolate sky

We wait for the morning sun,
The bright light of day to ease our tense senses, we stand there waiting

None came,

The moons disappeared and
seven purple suns claimed their throne in the desolate sky

There are the screams of horror
I have no fear
Like you I feel no fear.
Only horror.

Do not trust the ragged old man who claims
‘I’ll take you to a place, uncharted water, uncharted land, I’ll take you’
He is the captain, a boat full of me- and you-like people.
He is the captain, I see him laughing on that wheelchair bumping on tables in the diner and running over our feet.
Do not trust the rugged man on the harbor.
There is only suffocating horror underneath the dimmed light.
No vegetation, a desert, echoing remnants of a tree scorched under the eternal light of the seven purple suns.
I catch a part of my thumb through the corner of my vision as I lift my arms and bring my hands to my head shutting my ears desperately trying to stop the sound.
Pointless.
In a jig we dance, on this path, you with me.
There is no rope tied ashore,
there is no boat no more,
there is no hope of ever returning
and the realization brings me
horror.
No fear
With you