(Rhodes 1982-83)

I’m coming from nowhere.
I’m going nowhere.
All those who come from nowhere
are not smiling,
they are afraid.
Days and nights are big empty chasms.
I want to scream but I am suffocated.
A strange burden
is squeezing my breath.
I ask for a helpful hand.
A meaning warm and ward.
The rail of survival which like a tale
is appearing as a beautiful daughter
and with movements as in a sacred rite
throws her clothes
and is rising naked
wanted to carry me away
in the supposed witchcraft
of a not ever known pleasure.

My heavy and indolent shadow
wanders aimlessly in dim lights.
I hide the cigarette into the gun’s barrel.
The instantaneous dreams are striking me.
Struggled life
in the one by one of a watch-tower.
Pieces in anvils of a heated lava.
My hands are looking for a wall
to spread their stress.
My brain travels in continuous semi circles
backwards.
One minute when the "Big Ones" speak about peace.
My breaths are limping.
Night sensitiveness controlled
by secret receivers.

They paste a number on me
instead of a name.
They closed my heart
in a razor wire.
They trapped my hope
as a bird in a lime-wig.
And they named me a soldier.

Hopes stuck in gears of silence.
Hollow song
as long as the voice is weakening.
Ungrateful sobs
are turning the time around.
The cold as a skeleton - like a litany.
It makes holes in my body.
The night is moaning in my bowels.
The streets of wakefulness are dropping blood.
Closed society hermetic
where my existence is killed
in a closed circle.

The great death is here.
At the borders which are like prison.
In the sun which is refusing to shine.
In my nailed palms in the cages
In the graves of my screams.
In the stone waves of my soul.
In the times when I make groves in my hands.
In the desert where I cut my hopes in pieces.

Anaemic doors of an existence.
A murmur by the flow of tears.
The supposed safety of a love.
I weaken with an uninspired courage.
Stars in semi-extinguished poses.
Neither love, nor kisses, nor passion.
I’m looking for secret hiding places
in dark rooms.

The time is an eternal skeleton.
Sighs which commit suicide
in the bottom of a dream.
My breath is cut in two
in the thunder storm which is coming.
Neither a trace of sunrise
in the morning fog,
nor a suspicion of sunrays
in the darkish emptiness.
I’m hiding behind my palms,
tragically non-adapted.
Tenderness which is burnt
in holes filled with lime.
Frozen tears
in the abyss
of an unable soul.

Two unfinished letters
like dreams wounded by time.
Lungs full of dust
and a grief surrounds me
from which I don’t know the colour.
The noon light becomes yellow
in the pages of the pain
in the echo of the executions
in the groaning of the storm.
Barefoot in the ground
with a dizziness of sad dreams
with acquaintances just for one night.
I exist without a perspective.
I have no laughter.
I have no tears.
I have nothing.

Everything flogs me to the skin.
And the ward of the night
with its abstraction.
And the copper curtains
of an unfounded creation.
And my pain is walking
in ungained paths.
And my metal veins
away from my engraved chest.
And the second hand
of human valves.
And the killers who are going around
with nuclear whips.
And the worthless buyers
of the stars.
And the pleasure of the executioners
similar with black wings.
And the steam of the blood...
Everything flogs me to the skin.

Sleep looks like death.
The breath smells of death.
I pretend I’m sleeping.
But I wake up and start tearing
a photograph
in small pieces.
The wind takes with it.
They are dancing for a while in the space.
Some stuck in the mud.
Others are carried away
by the rain water.
I’m an indifferent spectator
waiting the only actor
to act for me,
the only one spectator.

The gun’s barrels stand gaping
as voracious holes.
A passage is closed
with a wire netting.
Coherences of honour
like shadows which are dying.
Fingerprints from blood.
There are no angels.
There are no enemies and friends,
winners or losers.
Silence is the only lord.
A world, which is settled by graves.
I’m hung
on a wooden cross.
Armies of the future dead.
Armies of ghosts.

A circle without a start and end.
I have no enemies.
I don’t want to kill.
Sleepiness and fainting together.
I lose a piece of myself.
I drag my destiny with me.
A bullet with my name written on it.
A star which gets lost in the chaos.
It leaves a small light behind,
but it blows out.
A cross without an identity.
A grave without a name.
A medal proof of a good killer.
I vomit in the awarding time.

Dimitris Troaditis