Poems prepared for the 9th edition of the Patras International Poetry Festival (2026) and part of a forthcoming poetry collection.
The sea is one
The waves are pelagic phrases
that the bow cuts into uneven sentences,
leaving the meaning to the wind,
that hastened our journey.
The salty splashes are the letters and punctuation
escaped from marine orthoepy,
they dry in our hair and on our faces,
sting our eyes and crack our hands.
The meaning of the sea is carried far away,
to the foot of Mount Ida,
where no one is accustomed
to the power of the waves.
Some die without knowing the meaning of the sea,
others keep it silent, but I tell you:
each wave raised above the horizon
shouts about the sea between the shores of the earth
and about the sea between your ribs
being the same sea;
each wave raised above the horizon
is the reminder of the magnitude
whose peak lives in the flesh.
A Party with Mermaids
I didn’t tie myself to the mast,
nor did I pour wax into my ears.
From the barrels I took pickled olives,
feta cheese and sweet pomegranates.
I sang and danced on the deck
like a madman,
without fearing their voice.
Seeing my audacity, they didn’t leave,
nor did they drag me into the whirlpool of the waters,
but they sang and danced with me,
covering me with their wings.
We spent nights in a row
hidden in secret coves
and enjoyed ourselves as much as we could.
We were the last to see the foundation of the old world,
where the sea continued into the unknown.
Lens
Grandma Tantza, called Ritza after a mischievous goat,
would hang out her immaculate sheets to dry,
before lunch,
and I, as if at the theater, would hide
and show myself behind them to the world
with broad bows reciting Homer:
…and they went away together,
having each other dear in their hearts.
How proudly I breathed
the bitter cherry perfume of my city,
the salts of hydrogen cyanide stuck to a stupid receptor
that suddenly declared: amazement!
The goat took its daily portion of the shovel between its horns
for disobedience,
Ritza held it high and loudly that the end of the world was coming,
the wind filtered the red waste dump
through the white diopters put out to dry.
Kalinikos
At my birth the Sun squinted,
burning the earth with a ray,
which was the starting line
of the farmer’s walk competition
in a red meat suit.
Thus I crossed the threshold into the world,
and at the legal age
I began to trample it
rolling my ideas in the wilderness
until splinters and feathers remained.
Walking is a hindered dance
with steps struck by the back of the earth.
The son of Zeus, I will sing,
the strongest of men,
whose steps are worthy of praise.
We believe him is in the abodes of the immortals,
but he has great honors,
through our arms and minds,
through our hearts and through our steps.
Great is his power,
and great is the blessing he gives
to mortals who were born
when the Sun squinted,
burning the earth with a ray.
Observation
We have heated up the circuits
believing that this way we are alive,
wanting to bring to life
currents born in binary codes.
We have drained the stories of this world,
we have banished the founding faces,
over Tartarus we have poured concrete,
we have demolished the stairs of Olympus,
with autonomous robots we have sucked up the mystery
from all corners,
machines validate our humanity,
we don’t have much more to click
on motorcycles, pedestrian crossings and bridges
until we call ourselves autonomous units.
But neither the gods nor the titans sleep,
nor does Christ sacrifice himself in vain on Sundays,
nor does the all-seeing eye remain closed.
No time for love
In the economy of the universe,
the fact of us seeing eachother passing on the street,
has the same value as spending a lifetime together.
What is the stake of throwing matter
into hallucinating distances?
Who wanted Kronos as a child,
so hungry and oppressive?
Gravity molts
with each generation of astrophysicists
and we don’t know about it if it is a force
or just a side effect of love.
This love is not like ours,
but a quantum whim
as the palate feels after a glass of fresh water,
following one of sea water,
perhaps all the answers
are in the sea.
Sprouts and Branches
I have not left your side,
only our bodies rust and crumble,
but the hall of the heart never darkens.
It is a sign that its occupant is a perennial dweller,
and his mathematics run parallel to those of atoms.
At the water’s edge I beseech you to call him,
so you may see us both drawing ourselves from the same trunk.
And if you should see others akin to us,
do not grow angry at their joy;
nowhere is it written that love in two
is the only law among the stars.
Parade
Faces pass before me with glassy eyes
looking down on the world with their old circles.
Ranks rattle and wealth makes the gold ring
come on, choose one to serve faithfully,
until everything you desire will be yours.
Contracts are written on skin and signed
with long needles stained with venom and bile
on the heart scared of life pumping life.
For a bright future as your soul,
which will fill the hangars of the chosen face
and feed its pride over the centuries, sign!
Come on, write on your living heart the bond of death,
death is of two kinds,
and some are born already dead and haunt us
so that the world is not empty.
At any price comes anything, especially slavery,
called duty for which the exact time is announced every day.
The dragging chains are no longer heard in the fog of amnesia,
the legs, dried by time, have intertwined into a trunk,
illusions hang from the upper branches.
No, it is not that living tree of knowledge,
bad weather torments this one
like a pain in living flesh.
Come on, swallow the knot and sign, life does not wait for you,
the faces pass before me with glassy eyes
looking down on the world like stained glass shattered by meteors.
Those who say that light comes from them are lying,
angels and demons fear the sea in the same way,
its storm is cataclysm and apocalypse alike.
Scala ad caelum
Where I fall asleep a sharp tower rises
to a star that flickers blue.
Beyond the insomnia of the breaking of silence
is a traveling city
that burns madly
with billions of tongues
a gigantic cantata in the cold spectrum.
Only the dream creeps through its dense core
bathing in whirlpools of electrons
and nuclei stirred by a rushing desire.
The occult fusion of planes gives birth to channels
through which I flow
cold drop by cold drop
backwhere I fall asleep.