`
STORM WARNING
How much longer will you endure
On this snowy slope
Where skilful skiers
Ski slalom and downhill
Masters of verse
Who duly avoid
Any sort of speech impediment
Sooner or later
Youʼll find yourself on a cliff
Having forgotten to put a full stop
Or even worse
Youʼll incur a funny fall
Omitting key questions
Youʼll make a spectacle of yourself
To the eyes of a demanding public
Thirsty for all kinds
Of wondrous humiliation
Give up while thereʼs still time
A snowstorm is coming
And we are now consigned missing
Among so many dots
`
*
AUTOPSY
When they lifted him out of the sea
It took him days to dry up
They pounded him like an octopus
For his soul to soften somewhat
But he wouldnʼt utter
A single word
He didnʼt want to be cleared
Of his last wish
And the saltiness on his body
Youʼd think it was sea sweat
As he went in and out of it
With the fury of lovers
Who know that each time
Might well be the last one
Between his teeth
He dourly held a conch
Of the sort he collected as a child
A memento of the deep
A talisman for those
Who wished to walk
On the sea
`
*
RISKY
You are practicing new methods
Of contraception.
You refuse to accept
The sperm of my creation.
You tell me to masturbate
Or you ask me, even in time,
To retire
To withdraw
To a homeless end
You refuse
to conceive my poem
Poems are risky
Fetuses
You fear a monster will be born
Sexual pleasure suffices you
But you baulk at difficulties
You canʼt bear
Raising a child That will be made fun of at school
A child inept
And retarded
`
*
WITHOUT MY FUTURE
I come without my future
Poets I admired
Turned their back on me
Girls I loved
Feed statues in squares
Petrified desires
That became public spectacles
At night I keep awake
Singing dreams out of tune
Innocent I never returned
On beaches I had laid
In the moonlight
I no longer recognize
The voice of my faith
I am not he
Who the cock calls
Every dawn
`
*
LOOKʼS PARALYSIS
You try hard
To clean your face
Of peopleʼs looks
But they disfigured
Your image so much
You can no longer remember
How you saw yourself
At the time your eyes
Squinted at the invisible
Now you see your face
With their eyes
And itʼs too late to change visual angle
Or acquire a new face
Observing their look
In your life
Paralyzed your own look
And you were left looking at yourself
Through other peopleʼs keyholes
A man who didnʼt believe
In his own eyes
`
`
*
FOOTNOTE
This poem Iʼm now living
Will not end
With words
`
*
SAFETY MEASURES
Tell the poems
Not to stay too long out in the sun
The verses blacken, blacken
And the white margins
Get narrowly red
From the anguish of burns
Live in the shade
Or at least put up a sunscreen
Protect yourself the best you can
For this hole in the soul
Is growing day by day
And how will it be absorbed
All this life illumination
All this divine waste?
What will be a filter
To ultraviolet horror?
Now that weʼve discovered
That the marks on our body
Have changed colour and size
And appear as end titles
`
*
SECOND COMING
He tapped me on the shoulder
Like an old friend
“Back again! How come?” I asked him
“I decided to amuse my Second Coming
In your town with a drink
Besides, coffees are bad for the nerves
And after you twist and turn in your grave
Neither there do you calm down
You also annoy the dead
And they ostracize you
To the living by profession
“There are people who tell your fortune by reading
the coffee dregs
But I drank my fate at one gulp
I didnʼt deign to study the signs
Or even let them whistle their reply
So I went without funeral rites
“Let alone that the residue also lurks
And you never know
What yesterday tomorrow has in store for you
Whereas with a drink you perk up
And you acquire that sticky speech
As if chewing the truth
And after you spit it on the ground
In oracular bits
Whereas your hand
More certain, lighter
Will find its way to the heart
“But letʼs not waste time
Letʼs drain our glasses
“If you dare chance your life
By playing poetryʼs roulette
Put the gun in your mouth
Which you dirty with words
And make your soul sing”
He left his mite for a tip
To the waitress with the uncovered
Rustling of her thighs
And vanished in the depths of the night
Throwing his straw hat
Up in the sky of Preveza*
I held the gun in my trembling hands
And weighed the weight of decision
But I didnʼt know
Whether to measure it
With dreams or wrongs
And what weighs heavier
In the soulʼs balance
Blessed are they who play
Life on their fingers.
For the time being I write poems
To limber up my hand
For it to be warm and ready for war
When I decide
To scandalize lifeʼs believers
*Preveza: a town in Epirus
