from Fuck the Future: Six Poems and a Selfie

He Thinks It Will Sprout
          for nora for andronikos

IN THAT PLACE EVEN LIGHT they appraise with
generators. All who return—from That Place—have
hit ink on the wrist’s inside, on the shoulder, on the
neck, a “Fuck the World”.

—Nobody respects the leader who cries in front of the
waves. 

I’ll wait for rainfall, and let it rain stones.



Like a Truck Ran Him Over

NOW THAT TIME HAS BECOME VERTICAL, the
clocks uncoil, like ropes, and snag my throat. The migratory
birds won’t hear my cries, like I don’t presently hear my old
self digging sweaty in a foxhole. The future took an upward
incline. 
—What went wrong, who printed the topographic maps all
crooked, how did the minutes turn to gravel, the hours to
rocks, the years to mountains steep. 

Friends: the scant water trickling down the rock.



He Hit Water on the Left Again

Here, inside the iron, I’m ducking to fit tight—to get
comfortable—the pistons guide me, with steady blows—
Steady as she goes!—from one department to the next.
Mornings I leave for work early, iron everywhere around
me, bare branches and unplastered walls. I’ve faded inside
the electrified cloud.

They broke crystal glasses on our grave.
Τhe birds scattered in the dark.
Steady as she goes!—dogs in the night, biting at the
wire fence.



Go Abroad then Why Do You Stay?

I TURN LEVERS—they refuse to obey. My thoughts
are memorizations of the construction manual.
—The road took you downhill.
It carried me behind the sky’s good side and here I
plan my route on loaded clouds.

Broken years ahead of us, bodies broken and it’s
raining.



Untitled (selfie)

SENDING OUT AN SOS, though the signal won’t be
clear, I know. Problem is Maria got a morning-and-
noon job, it fell to her to compensate for losses.
Myself, I’m off to work early morning, then back.
Evenings I spend time with Angelos. You’ve got to
play, fight, hug it out, go for a walk, shower-time,
then put him to sleep, everything quiets down in the
house, the lighting changes, we get to talk just us two
love at last, a cigarette, a glass of wine, that’s it, it’s
quarter to one already. The rest of life I carry in my
backpack, hither and thither, on trains, in cars, on the
bus.

Sending out an SOS from a second-floor apartment
on Kassandrou St. You get used to the noise, don’t
you think? Although with so few wardrobes in sixty-
five m² you must come up with new ways to store
things—et cetera et cetera. You should actually be
thankful. Whatevs. Let us not vulgarise things. When
at night I drift off and my neck loosens, slim and
fleeting like cigarette paper I say: Maybe I’d
understand better under the pines. I’d definitely understand
better under the pines without this “twelve
already”, “I finish work at four”, “go to sleep, how
will you get up at six in the morning”. Ι drift off and
say: Yes. Without all those numbers I’d definitely
understand better. And I carry the pines in my bag,
hither-and-thither, in trains, in cars, on the bus, like
the imprisoned beast that carries the jungle in its
mouth. Because even the smiles of my friends
progressively resemble abandoned marble quarries.
Because we are the dead who keep working side-by-
side in white engine rooms. The ten-hour shift drags
us down and we sink into the decibels. Because white
sailing ships cross our brains vertically under full sail,
scattering breadcrumbs to the wind.

Sending out an SOS for my neck that digs itself
progressively deeper into my back, for my common
knowledge, for all my readings only half-understood,
mostly memorized. For this arid era with its myriad
numbers that certainly opens your mind.

—But does it with its teeth.