This is an English translation of a few poems from my collection titled ”Ruins of Dreams and Memories Against a Blue-Black Background”. I admit that I’m not an expert in translation and indeed I feel that the poems lose some of their ”charm” in English as they were originally written in Greek but I think the effort is worth it.

1. Towards a Faith

I don’t want to go out today

to see the world and its ruins

to listen to broken voices

resounding in the streets.

Today I want to stay tucked

in the comfort of your embrace

in the warmth of your breath,

in the depthless glow of your eyes.

You know that life is heavy.

Waking up every morning to countless bouts of disappointment,

realizing that the fairy tale was nothing but that-

a fleeting wish upon the remote stars of a distant sky.

Something that will always be missing from this world

is the anticipation of the future,

the hope for a coming joy

that will not be momentary

but will last for years,

inexhaustible from carefreeness.

I can hear music coming from the narrow alley.

A familiar melody accompanies the chaotic noise

of a worn-out city

‘’Old streets that I loved and hated endlessly’’.

This pain is not our own.

We are the sullen thieves of emotions.

We lie about how life wronged us

but in truth it was us who wronged life.

We endangered the integrity of experience.

We scorned the complexity of knowledge

and we undermined power’s call.

We lack faith in something bigger,

something more beautiful and elemental.

A human and material faith.

Not transcendental but embodied.

Deteritorialized but tied to expectation and remembrance.

‘I never believed in God’

But freedom isn’t a God

It’s a vindication.

2. In the Crime Scene

I found you

in the crime scene naked

holding the scepter of loneliness and separation.

You were the witness of the first act

of a tragic and inconceivable play.

You stuttered an otherworldly sound,

when I approached you

I was brought to my knees

by the force of your testimony.

I want to see you tonight.

To admire your blemishes.

To listen to your suffering.

To give over to your truth.

Teach me how to speak

in Your language.

The language of lack.

Or rather,

teach me how to communicate

the expropriation of language-

the void.

So I can digest your history

and recognize you in it.

Again.

A repetition that counts non-existence.

An articulation lost in difference.

Two bodies mutilated but full

of rage and intensity.

We stretch our muscles

to the sound of the melody

and we smile.

The moon, atrocious and threatening.

calls us to a purifying orgy.

I can see that you want to dance

but you hesitate.

Your legs are sinkers, you struggle just to drag them.

Let’s stay here. Again.

You talk to me once more about the eruption

of desire that will dethrone

your ego.

But you can’t even drag your own feet.

We are the daydreaming crips who look up

at the black sky.

So let’s stay here. Again.

3. Shadows

A shadow covers my eyes.

I cannot see you clearly.

I cannot restore you.

I’m losing and forgetting you.

Your taste eludes me

and so does the expression of your face’s asymmetry,

this lustful blemish

that made my cunt

pulsate from an improper horniness.

I can barely see you, curled up

inside a faint aura of nothing

standing remotely

and daring an incomprehensible gesture

that I cannot read.

I never really loved you after all.

I never believed your words

about your life and my body.

About others’ sacrifices and the error of existence.

About war and love.

About freedom and the great event.

Words. Fleeting and pointless words.

Lies? No it’s not that.

There is a truth in everything.

But words that are disorderly, shoddy,

like these verses that I‘ m sharing here.

4. Emotion

To love is to hurt.

I’m emptying my guts in a toilet

so that you exit my body – exorcism.

I yearn to feel, I crave a sensation.

A hoarse cry that murmurs a terrifying tune.

Blood that runs from the eyes.

Deep mahogany kiss, balm on the shoulder.

A rotten wound tethered to paranoia.

Silence is freedom.

An offensive howl

echoes in your thoughts,

slaps your words

that weave your imagination.

Poppy and datura

mix inside your body.

Primordial delusion of disaster.

Fire and tears- deluge.

Slow trembling of the nerves.

A blow in the brain.

You give in to violence – a pious gesture.

Crippled dream that never ended.

A rickety guitar whispers.

Confession of a lie made-up and ever-missing.

Darkness and rage – you’re beating the floor.

Dance! Feel the pain! Express yourself!

Your small hands tear the linoleum apart.

Eroticism and the end of desire.

I look back to our musical years,

the melody of forgiveness.

But it won’t do anymore,

it was erased and now only one note remains

that will establish revenge

Incomplete aphorism for your life and your truth.

Inhalation. Breathe in the chaos.

Everything is here stacked, mixed and raw.

5. A Night Like the Rest

The rain murmurs

a bass rhythm as it falls

on the rusty banisters of the balcony.

Can you hear?

In the green wind’s vortex

a tornado figures

that gets entangled with the water.

Can you see?

Perhaps if I don’t drink tonight, I’ll see the stars more clearly.

Perhaps the pain will become more redeeming

and life will start to resemble a bit an amusement park

that gets crowded every-night.

Perhaps if I walk the way to the hill

I will feel the wind sucking me in

like when I drink that old wine,

I will feel the rain washing my skin.

Perhaps you will become totally mine tonight.

I crave the roar of your voice,

the echo of your touch.

Perhaps I’ll find you in a small tavern

drinking for humans’ sweet love

that has you agonizing all these years.

Can you hear me?

I’m screaming at the wind.

I’m pressing my nails into my skin.

I’m pulling my nipples.

I yearn for your tongue.

I want to pass out on your chest.

To not wake up tomorrow.

Maybe even never.

Can you see me?

I miss the saltiness of your strength.

Do not pity me.

Perhaps this way I will manage to pull myself off.

Perhaps this way my life will cease to be

a dull daybreak bursting in remote weathering heights.

Perhaps I’ll learn the meaning of the phrase ethical submission.

And then again, perhaps I’ll hear the rain

whispering your name in my ears

and I will let myself go for a while.

6. Violets

It so happened that I went again

to that field full of violets,

whose influence I missed.

I laid my body upon the bed of flowers

and I felt the soil, moist from the drizzle, on my skin

cooling and exciting me.

I took off my sandals and I dug my toes deep into the vegetation.

I let myself go under the effect of nature like a newborn feline

that seeks new discoveries.

But this journey of freedom did not last long.

I caught a violet in my hand

and like we do with daisies

I began to pick its petals, while mumbling that song

‘’We met with a goodbye kiss’’.

I’m not being literal of course.

The first thing you asked me

was if I had freckles.

-Yes I do. I told you.

But only a few, I wish I had more.

-A few is enough. You said.

I wonder, were you holding a flower

whilst thinking of my freckles?

It would please me to think of you this way

with a flower and a pencil in your hand.

You write. You said.

You’ve also written a prose piece that won a prize.

And you read Dostoyevsky…

How was I to know that you would suck my soul in just a month?

The violets are dancing in the wind.

They are touching my body.

You know the one that has no scars, the flawless alabaster.

Didn’t anyone ever tell you that not all wounds are visible?

Surely Dostoyevsky told you at some point.

But you haven’t learnt to read.

I had the misfortune to learn very well.

That’s why when I finally kill you

I will leave a purple violet on your cold lips.

Because we all ‘’desire our father’s death’’.

Except for Elektra, as I was told by a friend.

And as you will lay there beautiful and immobile

I will lie on the field

And I will dig the tips of my toes deep into the soil.

And then I will recall a different song,

About the earth and freedom.

7. Drowning

I am not breathing.

Every night, amidst the city’s graceless symphony

I hold my breath.

My heart beats

like a broken drum

That someone plays out of tune and slowly.

I’m not breathing.

My feet are going numb.

Outside, in the old tall balcony

I can feel the freezing weather coursing my bones.

Needles are piercing my skin.

Suddenly, I see you go by.

Mystical vision at the hour of the stars.

You’re sitting on the mouldy bench

at the side of the road.

You look like you want to ponder something in silence.

I’m not breathing

I’m watching you with my hands stuck

on the scruffy windowsill.

I want to fall in your arms

so that you can carry me like a child

exhausted from running and playing.

I’m not breathing.

Throwing my heavy body in the relentless wind

I observe your emerald tears

that forgive me

for one more time.

I’m not breathing.

Silence and darkness

paint an atmosphere of death.

8. A Reappropriation

Night dressed in moon-dust.

Heavy and unfulfilled night.

I walk on your grass.

Oh how I crave that embrace.

To feel that tender pain of companionship.

Night wearing the veil of the light of the stars.

Show me the meaning of goodbye.

A right to oblivion.

A false comfort.

Sweet but wild night.

I dream of the end.

Where the light doesn’t shine.

Darkness shall flay my flesh.

And won’t let me ask for the delusion.

Deep night with your blemishes.

I suffer for your departure.

I could never stand the light.

Deafening and inappropriate

as if carried by an army of war that passes by.

The lust for darkness embarrasses me.

9. Nightmare

You wake up at midnight

with a rigid knot in your stomach.

What is that which pulls you from your viscera?

That toxicity in your insides

which is totally yours tonight,

will have devoured you by morning

until there’s nothing left of you but your scent

the last proof that you once existed

that brings to mind your insignificant life

which has yet to change course.

The dreams of yesterday have petrified.

Hidden there in your unconscious

they conspire for your next disease.

As a child they would tell you not to daydream so much.

But it was the reality that crushed you

and you believed that if you shut your tear-stained eyes

and the colourless darkness took you over for a while

the world would be suddenly filled with bright hues.

But the day came when dreams and nightmares became entangled

in a skein of memories, desires, fears and guilt.

And so you stay with your eyes semi-shut

and you look with agony for something that will break the knot apart,

that will disentangle the skein.

What will you find this time?

Some drug, a mark of love, a promise for a hug

Or a nighttime entrancement, ending of a brutal journey

in this over-glorified city that no one truly loves.

Trnsl: Nefeli Papadimitropoulou