I wonder
if I will ever find a language
to speak of the things
that haunt me the most

 don’t turn away 

i did that once and lost a country 
and then lost the language
to name the loss


i don’t have a name,
just a lot of empty places on a map

and everything that has happened to me
has happened inside my own head

i waited for someone to show up and tell 
me i was forgiven 
but i made myself impossible to find
and then i made myself impossible

and of course the war never ends for people like us.

whatever was lost is gone for good this time.

i know because they didn’t show up in even the good dreams.

i’ve been so many people;
forgive me.

if i can’t look you in the eye 
it’s because i’m scared you’ll see in me
only what’s missing. 

i know every border is made up of nothing but hands
that take and take 
until you’re not the same person
you were on the other side

and i know that land can be sick with amnesia
until the only thing inherited 
is the
forgetting.

(i belong to that failing memory,
and all the names i forget
are mine.)

(i belong to the words that escape me
in both languages.

And I dream too much
and I don’t write enough
and I’m trying to find God everywhere.

ouf

my job is to help people postpone death,
i think this is also a way to fight my greatest fear,
death 

Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.
Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it.
Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.

i want to be on of these Dandelion Flowers

θελω να ειμαι μια απο αυτες τις μυριες πιρκαλιδες
που στροβιλιζονται στον ανεμο
καθως πεθαινουν
υπενθιμιζοντας στον εαυτό τους πως,
ότι πεθαινει
ξαναγεννιέται
σε μια άλλη διάσταση.

The truth hurts but so do most other things. I dreamed about you but you were nothing like yourself. When I woke up, I tried to call you to tell you the world wasn’t as bad as we thought but if I ever knew your number, it escaped me in that moment. I hope you forgive me my forgetfulness. I get it from my country. (Or else the ones who did this to my country. I can’t remember which.) I heard from someone that the sky makes room for some things but not for others, and I can’t help but think that my limbs don’t bend the right way. And anyway, I hope you’re happy after all. And I hope the sad poems don’t make any sense to you, kid, I hope you never have to understand. And I’m sending my love. You’ll recognize it by the way it takes up all the elbow room in your new house. (Sorry about that. It’s something I’m working on.) I hope you sleep well, old friend. I hope you wake up and everything that’s ever been taken from you is returned to you in full.


Mr. J.H Found on Your Doorstep, 8 pm on a Saturday

please the time stop. i am afraid

I am Free and i am Lost in this Freedom. Do you know what i mean?

I am too full of life
to be half-loved.