`
Expatriate Child
You turn your back on a brother
Who used to beat you as a child
A sin
Turn your look elsewhere
Maybe he too is somewhere else
In idleness
But I want to find you again
Not look longingly
At history
A precancerous phase
To the touch of our sole,
A migraine
Let me just tell you
Lest you should see why I pain
And get used to it
Give me only an “I love you”
And Iʼll stand on my legs
And continue
If you tell me in the rhythm
Iʼll stop smoking
And sober up
In case I can find you
I map a soul
And advance
Advance like a child
That alone looks for
A truth
A magic truth
In the anger of its guilt
In fairy tales
For it is always a child
That has a fair interpretation
Of magic
In the hooliganism of the many
That sloth will not
Be ours
Thatʼs why listen to me carefully
For the first and last time
I beg you
In the soulʼs yelling
Is the childʼs repatriation
Save it again
And give me breath again
In the heartʼs consistency
To love myself
On the edge of a margin
I walk, in the turmoil
May I slip away
To rebuild a human
And a true life
As if by magic
With just a slight, simple
Move for the rain to clean up
The sin
`
*
Poems
I never liked my poems
Not that I ever tried to make them please me
Nor have I ever written
Poems – with chords
Hordes of words and phrases
To inundate the brain of an intelligent reader
And gladden him
If only to realize his inferiority
Vis-à-vis the shallow and thankless grandeur that
He himself wishes to identify in an object
Loveless lassies fantasize a prick in a pen-holder
As an only outlet for the pettiness of their dreams
Illness, Culture, Disgust
I am sick of the very idea that
I who have never written anything
Am compelled to self-criticism for the sake
Of others
Who wanted to make me civilized
Like their bloody selves
“European intellectuals and
Illiterates
Of all kinds
Providers of ideas
Be castrated;
Indifferent tourist women fondle indifferently
My private parts
While I dream
Of the day youʼll be flowers
At the tomb of the Father
Who wants my objectionable creations
Text-lustful shirkers, youʼll be indignant
Suspended over the ornaments that you placed
On the tree of your knowledge
The love of knowledge
That you declined at the sight of grumbling
That you wanted at your back;
Culture
Cultured angels of hell that you see and want to resemble
You smell paradise;
You donʼt resemble, you donʼt want to
You play it as you wish
And again you become paradisiacal whores
Of sighs”
`
*
If you soar
Our own destiny,
On the breadline,
Wonʼt change like that of some
Have-nots
Our own destiny
A sea saltiness
Will wash up the longing
Of nights out
Donʼt run, stay
Temper a soul
Strangler
Of other times
If you soar
In the skyʼs heart
The sunʼs flames
Will burn you
Plainly speaking,
In the earthʼs passes
In grains of sand
The wheels
`
*
Regeneration – feminine gender
Hail fate, callous as a straight line
That pays taxes
And for roles
It lives in spindles shares out bits and pieces
And smothers tears
On the anvil
It dresses, eases frisky children
But it canʼt bear
To stay
It runs, vomits is fucked it fucks
And then learns
To solve a problem
One fine day itʼll breast the tape
And quench a womanʼs
Thirst
Sheʼll come out of the living room, her own steering wheel
To live a passion
And gets cross
For these little kids bad news
She stretches a turn
In the straight line
Sorrow will go, rage will remain
For now and so
It must
She joins in the game, the fair game
She looks at the man
And doesnʼt melt
She opens the door, changes course
Turns her back
And is saved
She is reborn and in the struggle
Is vexed and
And doesnʼt pay
She asks again to experience dizziness
She loves but
Doesnʼt bleed
In the clearance
Handling of the deepest dye
By people for them
An effect
By sensible people
Emotional heroes
In the clearance
Heroes of another time
Knights of some cancerous
Fossil
Brothers-in-arms
And firm advocates
Of a name
That in matters of yore
Current as well as lively
Theyʼll be at a loss
Sometimes I think
How small souls are
Will they grow up?
They donʼt know what else to tell you
They havenʼt learned to listen
And they hurt you
Let them see what they can
But do show them how to listen
Because Iʼm afraid
`
*
In Eveʼs time
Chronic the time of timeʼs fear
The passing of time but not of fear
Determines
It plays, caresses, and goes off, it dizzies
Flirts and
Sends me into a trance
It lives in pieces, it tears me to pieces
It burns my eyes
It steams
It thirsts for wine, is hesitant, but it does want some
And it dissolves when it sees
The lily
I canʼt stand in Eveʼs time, I get angry
I begin loving, getting drunk on another womanʼs apple
Thus I donʼt even have the Nile
For a god
`
*
At the stream
The days come and go like bullets
Right before your plain look
Nights will come when certain night-birds
Will run like the stream at that time
Youngsters but with adultsʼ minds
Will step on the untrodden swamp
The plight will disappear
The dizzy illness
With a sweetest nod
Sweet as water acid as medicine
Will the stream run with us
Itʼll tell truths
And those night-birds
Will be like you and me
But others swill also come and in this dizzy state
Will say that we are all the same
We are not the same
We want to be equal.
Chin up!
So listen sweetie, I want you with me
To see you at the stream
Be yourself
Refuse to change
Donʼt lose this look of yours
If one day you give in and want to tear up
An old adolescent story
Know that Iʼll still be at the stream
A night-bird knight
With a pen
The pen grinds the spears, it reminds one
Of an old familiar melody
That wants to bring to the troubled mind
The first truth
With force
But you shanʼt give in nor tear up
Such a lovely story
From a mixture of an old, ordinary vase
Are cut out night-birds
For life
`
*
The crown
Somewhere beyond itʼs snowing, the crowd is steaming
A glass of brandy
And he gets tipsy
Women flirt with him though not to their taste
Young and old.
He talks
But out in the cold, the deep landscape
He longs for a caress.
He yields
He bites her lips without her knowing
He knows it and
Deceives her
He turns to the other, heavy-headed
And sees her look
Playing about
“Sorry deary, my fault
I shanʼt take off
Your crown again”
He changes his mind, the symptom is the only
Memory organization,
Zone
Young whore, living on the anvil
The soulʼs naphthalene
Girdles him
And should a man customer of proper delusion
Take him along with him,
He hurts
Heʼll stop, heʼll flush with money, heʼll leave
Heʼll cry
And laugh
But the day will come and without threat
Heʼll ask to live
Like the rest
He remembers
A clear look boiling the blood
But he says nothing
Connoisseur at night, he mumbles for himself
But he canʼt stand it
He throws up
Sorry ladies, and sorry gentlemen
He ceases, itʼs himself
He loves
`
*
Not dry up
In the hush of the night
A candleʼs reward
That I donʼt dry up
In the soul of a melody
And in a horde of words
To relax
In the dayʼs clamour
In my morningʼs dawn
To work
In a kiddiesʼ generation
And in the rhythmʼs foreign land
Will I go about begging
If I donʼt read I wonʼt find
The raw materialʼs aim
I shanʼt dance
In the hush of the night
A godʼs reward
That I donʼt pass away
A childʼs agitation
A longingʼs fury
That I donʼt dry up
In the rainʼs melody
A drachmaʼs struggle
Will I divide
`
******************************************************
Nikos Papadopoulos was born in Athens in 1990. Read Political Science, Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Theory in Paris. Author of one book of poems (Another Destiny, 2017).
