Boyfriend of the Year

By now I think you understand,
I’m an emotional melody unsung

Release me

There’s a place
In the woods
Where the dead come alive
And the living melt into the foliage.

To look at the moon more often

Why write? he thought.
There’s enough ink on paper, already.

Ομίχλη

Ήταν μια που τζιείνες τες μέρες, τες παράξενες τζιαι τες δύσκολες. Χάνεις ακόμα τζιαι τον ρυθμό του χρόνου.

Οι αθθώνες

Να μου φέρνεις θύμισες
ριζωμένες σε χώμα,
να στοιχίζω τους αθθώνες
στο περβάζι μου,
να ποτίζω, να κλαδέφκω,
ν’ αθθυμούμαι πάντα

Στο χωριό των Μαρωνιτών

Απέναντι από την κεντρική εκκλησία (το χωριό είχε άλλες δύο), του Μαρ Γεωργίου, είναι η ταβέρνα Γιάννης. Είχε 34 βαθμούς Κελσίου και στις δύο μεριές της χώρας. Αυτή, βέβαια, είναι η τρίτη. Υπάρχουν στο νησί δύο τουλάχιστον πατρίδες, κι ανάμεσά τους, αναποφάσιστος, ο Λίβανος. Βάλε και το ίδιο το νησί μέσα, την πραγματική πατρίδα, λέω στον Γιάννη (όχι τον ταβερνιάρη, τον φίλο που μαζί ταξιδεύαμε), γίνονται τέσσερις.

Η αγκαλιά που εν ημπόρω να σου δώκω

Η αγκαλιά εν ευκολη για σε;
Η αγκαλιά, θέλει θκυο σώματα μαζί.
Η αγκαλιά εν μοίρασμα, τζαι φυλακή.
Η αγκαλιά, εννεν εύκολη για με.

Γεωγραφία/Σκονισμένη Πόλη

Στην πόλην μου φυσά ο Σ̆ιρόκκος,
βραστός τζ̆αι ξερός.
Συχνά-πυκνά κουβαλά μαζίν του αμμοθύελλες που την
Σαχάραν τζ̆αι την Μέσην Ανατολήν.

‘Ανδρος

Αλλά το τηλέφωνο μας εννά σταματήσει να χτυπά; Εγώ νομίζω οτι κάποιος εννά μας ψάχνει τζι’εμάς. Για να μοιραστεί τζιαι τζείνος την απελπισία τζιαι την απόλυτη πλήξη του να ζεις ακόμα,
πολλά μετά την τελευταία μέρα της ζωής σου.

And maybe then you’ll never break another one of us

I’m afraid of everything, even my own nakedness.
That’s the secret.
I shrink away from mirrors lest I see how much space I am able to consume.

Επιλογή σου άθθρωπε

“Επιλογή σου άθθρωπε τη γη να τη μοιράζεις αντίς να σπέρνεις τη χαρά, το μίσος να στοιβάζεις.” Κάμεις την οικόπεδα … More

To better days: A response to protests in Cyprus

“The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it’s the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.”
― Ernst Bloch

February 13, 2021

The thing about the body is that it is an archive
and the thing about trauma is that it drills
an active volcano into the chest.

On Blue Collar

‘to exit the factory and save our thoughts, the only gear we control.’

Roses Blooming Upstream

Now guess I’m a country hating man, for hate is the last Christian supper I’ll ever understand, and how my people can spell kindness with their red right gun arm, oh there’s a bullet coming for the sun, watching my man bleed unarmed, watch my gay siblings sing ‘till dawn

On Gentrification

“Put down the map, white man;
let me show you what you’ve done.
Take out your camera,
but first let me ask,
what have you enjoyed the most? The defensive walls? They look harmonic on the map. Ignore the middle, that’s a scar, the last divided capital, just look at the Venetian shards.

Reunion

She finds the galloping clock
Funny and I couldn’t
For the life of me
Laugh at something
So strikingly serious

Fragility of language

I threw up words on my plate words which are not mine
I slice them deep into their core
Just to see if I can recognize something

In the not-so-dead zone

Besides, she knew that curiosity and crossings can kill the cat.

Απλώς βράδυ

Ο,τι δεν ζω, την νύχτα αναπόφευκτα αναπολώ.

The Sign of Tomorrow

By the hammers
There will be a fusion

DWELLING, FINAL PART

we cannot understand ourselves as real
confused if we should come out, confused if we are the outcome, come out of what, the outcome of what, the outcome of coming out or coming out of the outcome of coming out

Sometimes

words anyway have the tendency of making everything real, they chain a moment by placing it at the mercy of specificity-highlighting all the what-ifs & the surely-is.

Outro

If you want to find the truth
You’ll have to lose some things first

Photography & Literature: A talk with Nicos Philippou

‘Poetry can be a wholly creative process. It has the potential of creating worlds that can be nothing other than the product of the poet’s imagination. Photography, instead, is a transformative process. It can only deal with real things. As such it is often confused with reality itself. But, then, it has an enormous transformative potential. Both, though, are fascinating forms of story-telling which is, after all, the cornerstone of human civilisation.’

We search for time

in the grass that cracks open concrete
and in the seeds that never found soil
but found sea

Φλαμίνγκο/Flamingo

Now she’s flying to Africa.
I was watching her from afar –
the deeper she waded into the lake
the more she looked like them.

I take my piece of sky

During the quarantine, meeting friends, going to bars, clubs or to the gym, teaching in an actual classroom and all that constituted my past life had vanished. I was left with a virtual classroom, virtual relationships and walking or running in the afternoons. It was then that I started really noticing the strangeness of the sky.

Love carvings

imperishable testaments to
perishable promises