Odysseas receives a text

When you are away and I need you
when I really need you
all the screens mock me.

when you are away
the only way to talk to you is memory.

"are you there when you are not there?"

trying to find a memory as convincing as your absence is trying to remember something enough to implicate the same completeness as the physical presence of you.

Like imagining of that "yes" (that you are).

when you are away I find you in the memory of my body being squeezed in your two palms on my waist in how they fit below my chest like my book in that leather cover, that speaks of you in the way it feels soft and important.

when you are away
you have the skin of words and the eyes of smiles I remember.

"There are fireplaces for clumsy people you know.Yes. They are called central heating"
the shape of that very real laughter
jumping out of a fictional you.

when you are away the reality of the things we say to each other becomes loud and aggressive
becomes sleep and tea and drinks with friends
becomes a void with its own language that knows no words
but for the thirsty despair of my every inch that you be back.

Because an attractive woman is always worth sleeping with

You can't blame him for trying.

Of course you can't. My apologies

I hadn't realised my face and my ass are

Always 

worth more

than my friendship, 

a feature of me that I have actually chosen

and that lives in my mind, 

a lesser part of the human body as it can't be slapped in public

as no man can be made to feel special for being 

chosen to enter it.

How could you have been so oblivious. 

And my apologies for not having changed for you, for not having tailored my way of 

smiling 

talking 

standing 

being 

to show I understand that that's the only thing you see.
Because I'm naive you see.

Because even when it's not,

an attractive woman is still worth more sleeping with.

Foreign Languages

Can we speak in eyes?
It'd be easier for me to speak.
Can I reply in laughter and shower steam?

Speak to me in hugs.
Then everything not understood will turn into intimacy and drip over me.

Hear me in silences.
Because the words are for everyone and you are the no one else that my mind is filled with.

Carry me in kisses.
Only the sliding of that slightly thicker bottom lip of yours on my hip can hold the weight of the million things you do to my mind.


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"Foreign Languages" earned an honorary mention at the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (February 2016): http://sentinelquarterly.com/2016/04/foreign-languages-a-poem-by-christina-varvara-palmou/
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Línguas Estrangeiras

Podemos falar com os olhos?
Seria mais fácil para mim falar
Posso responder com riso e vapor do banho?

Fala-me com abraços
Depois todo o não-entendido transformar-se-á
em intimidade e gotejará sobre mim.

Ouve-me com silêncios
Porque as palavras são para todos e tu és
o mais ninguém de que a minha mente está cheia

Leva-me com beijos
só o deslizar do teu lábio inferior na minha anca pode suportar o peso das milhentas coisas que fazes à minha cabeça.

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Ξένες γλώσσες

Αν μιλούσαμε με τα μάτια
Θα ήταν πιο εύκολο να σου μιλήσω
Θα σου απαντούσα με χαμόγελα και ατμό που βγαίνει απ' το μπάνιο.

Μίλησε μου σε αγκαλιές,
Ετσι όλα όσα δεν καταλαβαίνονται θα γίνονται οικία
και θα κυλίσουν να με αγκαλιάσουν.

Ακουσέ με στις σιωπές,
Γιατί οι λέξεις είναι για όλους
και εσύ είσαι ο κανείς άλλος που κρατάει τη σκέψη μου.

Κράτησε με με φιλιά,
Μονο το πέρασμα των χιλιών σου στο σώμα μου μπορεί να σηκώσει
τα χίλια εκείνα που κάνεις στο μυαλό μου.

Thesis

My thesis is a kite that waits for the wind to fly while I am a short man standing in the valley of surrounded mountains on a quiet midday in July.

My thesis is a coffee drunk before I go to sleep in that I never drink coffee before I go to sleep but if I did it would keep me awake till two, full of exhausted inspiration.

And my thesis is this boy that keeps on asking you to go out so you always have to find something else to do instead. Only my thesis is that boy when that boy is friends with my friends who say I should give him a chance so we go on awkward ice-cream dates every Thursday.

My thesis is like Kesha's producer.

No matter how much abuse I get we have £24,000 worth of tuition fees binding us together.

My thesis is like beer because the idea of it seemed amazing but now it makes me fat.
Or like rum because sometimes it makes my friends intolerable when everyone's drunk on it.
And like monopoly where you start off for a hotel in Paris and end up wishing you'll get to build anything at all.

My thesis is Curt Cobain's girlfriend. He says "come as you are" and she says "something's in the way". He says "nevermind - polly " . She yells "where did you sleep last night" eventually I am sure she pushes him on drugs.

And my thesis is a literary inspiration. Proust must have had to write one when he wrote "in search of lost time".

It is what Cameron must have been going through when he fucked that pig.

which is why my thesis is a conservative. The only way it could be so confused about how austerity on my time and thoughts is actually not growth and personal development.

In rebellion
This is the Jeremy Corbyn of poems,
a cornerstone for what I d like to call the Procrastinasionism manifesto.

Prisons

Sometimes my soul shouts I'm a poet so loud
I'm afraid my skin will rip and something
real will grow out of its shredded dead body. 

Imaginations

You asked why? Why did she need to know

I think. I think of me as her. I think of me as you.

I think of the weight of a million tons of steel pressing against my whole existence and the hole in my chest resisting the weight like an unbreakable chest of hearts.

Am I proud.

So me as her. Me as me. Which one kills me the most. When will that part constantly dying
die out completely.

Then maybe communicating will become that simple exchange of words that is for the happy people.

As the hole is resisting your eyes look down and out and then me with an expression that as far as my dictionary is concerned stands confused. A man that is guilty yet innocent by conviction.

How do I explain this to you. How do I say I could be her without admitting my leaving.

I can't admit what admitting would be the breaking of me and the man of conviction.

Then the hands. The lesser hands. The more important. I am not her. But my mind wont stop.

I have too much imagination for an alive being. 

"My suffering comes from my sole ability to suffer."

My dear sir, you are one of the many and I am the only one of my species. It would take a lot of fascination for my species for you to be there. But you are a man of the men. My lack of trust in your species comes from the unfascinated existences you carry inside you, what I call the anti-life of happiness, a summer cabin to rest forever.  I stay for

there is left no home for the solitary but that of confusion. Be it in you. Be it in me. Be it in her. The realisation of this entrapment makes me freer. That is what a free man seeks to relieve him from the pain of his vainness, some undeniable dissociation from the illusion of choice. Choice carries us like a wave on the palette of the sea, a freedom soothing for the soulful man until the wave crushes inevitably on the shore. And then comes the wish of having been a fish thoughtless and unhuman. In that thought so natural I find that

There is no happiness but that of moderation. Moderate thoughts, moderate lives, moderate emotions blackberries, porridge, cheap beer, chives, early nights. I leave you to contemplate the leaving or the staying. And by that I mean the numbness.

It's the numbness I need to contemplate. That lesser required. Then I cry.

I suddenly want to leave the examined life to those men without homes in the wasteland of anti-thoughts and immigrate to the nothingness of a life unexamined. 

What all the men must have said

You are very beautiful.
You are very beautiful when
you cry.
When you cry you are
my beautiful.
Because I feel the power
I have over you.
And only then
Only then
Only when I see you
on the cross
eyes all red
hands all bleeding
your love out
the one you have
and the one you could have had
Only then
I love you.

Ακαταλυψία

Ακαταλυψία είναι εκείνη η μοναξιά που με κυνηγάει η αφόρητη
όταν ειμαι μαζί σου
με ποιάνει απ' τα μαλλιά σαν μάνα που μέ πιασε στο πεζούλι να κρυφοκοιτάω το λάθος
και με φερε μέσα να σκεφτώ παιδικά τη ζωή την αγύριστη
μήπως και συλογιστό το βήμα μου το ακαταλαβίστικο
απ' την αρχή του.
Παραμένει άπλαστο και κάθομαι με μάτια σπασμένα και χέρια άχρηστα
να μην φτάνουν ν'αγκίξουν εκείνο το πορτοκάλι σκιστό να ξεχύσουν την ελευθερία από μεσα του
μήτε ν'αρπάξουν εσένα αυτό που με σκοτώνει
να το χωρίσουν στα δυο.
Εκείνη η μοναξιά φταίει για τα πάντα η ανελέυτη
που έρχεται να με φτάσει όταν ανεβαίνω την ευτυχία να με ρωτήσει
που πηγαίνω ανήξερη να ρωτήσω κι εγώ τον εαυτό μου το χαμένο.
Ανεβαίνω
όσο δεν την καταλαβαίνω την κουβαλάω μαζί μου
κοντοστέκομαι να ρωτήσω τι θα με σκοτώσει πρώτο
η πάυση
η ανάβαση
ή η προσευχη.

Nausea

Is a thought.
the unsupported weight of a self
A house of strangers.Is sharing the silence 
Is craving.Is realising.
Is the Again
maybe
the inability to exist but as a solitary unit.
Defiance to my every compulsion
Hoping.
Is carbon monoxide thoughts that you breath and leave you alive.
Knowing.
Is finding you in the verses of my poems.
Not knowing.
Your making love. 
Eyes. The eyes of all the men I've loved in yours.
Is nightmares you brought me and felt true.
Is reading not surprising me anymore
A phonecall.
Trying to fit into the language of your love.
Would it hurt?
Is inadequacy.
What you get when you stop before it happens.
Maybe no eyes of people like mine.
Oscillations of love 
delusions oscillating.
A picture I was happy in.
no paper to write.
Sitting up to go home after.
The walk back.
The drifting asleep like a numbing muffling sound of the world fading into the morning.

Maybe you need to be a poem

You say you don't understand poetry.

Maybe you need to be a poem to understand one.

Feel like a pile of words with no obvious pre-existing purpose

than that
in my head they make a universe.