Unsaid
He was ready to say something when He looked behind
our shoulders and agreed with those who stood
at the edge of the crowd. He left something unsaid, as
if the lyrics of the song that from young age we had
so much loved, words of ancient dramatists and of uncles
with jet black curling up moustaches and it was a sin
to think of beauty, murder to dream of Paradise.
We were ready to learn another song, although
it insisted to remain silent in our thoughts as if not to be
ever sung; the door opened and the other, the deranged one,
run to the courtyard with his arms loose and his eyes were
focused on Übermensch with his tight lips as if He was
angry and the butterfly insisted to fly over His glorious
head creating a perfect halo.
I like those who give right to the future and sanctify
everything passed because they want it to die with
the present.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562906

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGFRGLVH

Syngrou Avenue, 1930
To George Theotokas, who discovered it
When the smile that breathes beside you defeats you, tries to bow
and doesn’t consent
when the vertigo that remains from your travels among books
detaches from your mind to the pepper trees on the left
or the right
when you leave the petrified ship traveling toward the
seafloor with broken rigging
the archway with its golden décor
the columns with their meaning that narrows them
when you leave the deliberately carved bodies
for measuring and amassing riches
the soul that doesn’t match your own soul, no matter
what you do,
the toll you pay
that little feminine face in the cradle gleaming in the sun
when you let your heart and your thought become one
with the blackish river that stretches, stiffens and goes away:
Brake the thread of Ariande and voila!
The light-blue body of the mermaid.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/

Then the great silence took control
and the sun started going down
amid the fiery sky in the west.
And the sky turned red. And the soil red like blood.
Nothing was heard on the whole earth.
And dark phalanxes started appearing
slowly-slowly coming down the slopes.
The war dead started appearing
from all the plains, the gorges, the mountains,
the roads.
They unfolded into black long lines as if
they were going to battle
and they proceeded dragging along their feet
and they staggered with their bodies leaning forward
as if they had walked for a long time
as if they felt tired of waiting for so long
and they marched and limped and they stirred slowly
at the far end of the world.
The earth quaked every so often then it cracked open
and a black-green hand poked out of the soil
and stretched its rotten fingers.
The dead stirred and stood up
and they stepped on the other dead and walked
and they dragged themselves on the earth
and grabbing onto the army coats of the others
they rose and joined the phalanxes making
millions of walking dead.
The horizons turned fiery red as if the world was on fire.
Dead men were coming from the trenches,
from subterranean stoas, holes,
they were coming from the mass graves dug in
the plains
where they buried them in haste as if they were shoveling
a pile of manure.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Loose Ends
All night long, sleepless,
you promised not to cry
to drive downtown
to the family lawyer
and tie up loose ends
suddenly, you sense his presence
so intensely in the car
on the driver’s seat
he used to call his kingdom
you feel as if sitting on top of him
his erection deep inside you
like when you saddled him
back then, in the secluded
Horseshoe Bay Park road and
you pull the car to the shoulder
rapid heartbeat overtakes you
a sweet elation runs through
your spine down to your torso
conspicuously moving
forward and backward

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750

We’re the immortal and uncivilized
the cities are dens of serpents
and refuges of all the cowards
of fighting and self-defeat, dens of
wolves, dogs, sheep and shepherds
wail and wail again at their homeland!
Fences are always our enemies
when they enclose the world
wild verdure and nettles sprout
behind them, misery in their shade;
the traitor’s conniving wilts all
the mindful ideals and shuts all
nightingales of the heart.
The sin always dwells like a scorpion
inside of them, never the brave lion;
the fence marks the evil man and
the good is but a baby in opium;
work the earth again in your gallows
rejuvenate its good and sins
pounding it with your hammer on the anvil;
Pass over fences, give to your
mules wings and ride them like witches
the world is whole and endless
where the lands end the seas begin.
From atop of each mountain that
you’ll climb you’ll gaze at other
higher mountain peak, a
different, mind boggling world
and when you’ll reach the highest
of the highest peaks you’ll still
understand that you live under
the same stars.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

E
The seasons and the people’s passing
leader of music and gate keeper
was created in the crucible of wailing
with the caressing of the Evening Star
with precious tears and
wreaths of the sun that vanished
before dusk
with bits of joy gleaming
in the sunken wrath of people
oh, whispers talkative, talkative
songs of girls that touched
the flutter of Helicon wings
oh, the face won over
the downpour of eternity
F
After the death of authority
we waited for the king’s celebrations
messengers of the lost war and
the orders of the slaughtered
on these sunken mountains
we waited for the vow of youth forgotten
along with the adventure of the roads
we carry the light and the spade
of the eighth day
entrusted in us
by the bitterness of God.
With the silence of memory
that consumes us
wrapped like an ivy over our bodies
with the music of love
spent along the bands of stench
with the full of holes prayer
of the Esfigmeni monks
G
The deeds of the eighth day
are thrown into a stone water well
all around them: thorns and poison
and the skin of the tree snake.
They don’t yell because
they are archetypes
of thunder and thunderbolts.
When thunderbolts strike
subterranean roots
onto the virginal mirrors of silence
matches are stricken by the fingers of God.
Small birds with ready wings
flying to the breath of the seventh space
become invisible
not consumed
in their defeated castles
that on the day of echoes
they render useless
the formidable trumpets

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763408