GREECE'S ETERNAL SHAME

One expects that Mitsotakis

understands and accepts

that vast numbers of people

will die because he is meeting

with Netanyahu, encouraging

the war criminal, the genocidaire,

giving Greece's approval

for mass murder and ethnic

cleansing. That he knows

all of this and that he

doesn't care.

And that Mitsotakis

believes there will be no

negative consequences

whatsoever for himself,

an accessory to mass

murder, for him who

supports atrocities -

for what reason?

30.03.2025

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BEFORE FALLING ASLEEP

Come, sleep you old thief

of hours and opener of ways

to where the dead dwell,

the western lands, or grant

timeless oblivion until

dawn resurrection,

returning to where

I came and where

I will go, my heart

heavier than a feather,

after you have closed

the gate of sleep behind

me for the final time,

never opening it again.

31.03.2025

DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF A GENOCIDE, DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF THE VICTIMS OF THE GENOCIDE

Refusing to remove the guilty from power,

they contemplate removing the victims

from existence; there can be no guilt

when there are no victims, when

the dead, the dying and those

still to be killed are ignored,

unseen, unheard, even

when everyone can

hear the screams.

The victims

can't exist, neither

as piles of dead, rotting flesh,

bones gnawed by rats and family

dogs whose families have been killed

long ago, as survivors still huddling in ruins,

nor as a people, a nation, because then, because

then those lost in contemplation would have to act.

30.03.2025

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FROM THE HAND OF AN OLD FLEMISH MASTER

The world beyond

the windows is at a distance

from my existence, 

contained,

serene pale blue sky,

white clouds, brown fields,

like a painting from

the hand of an old

Flemish master

hanging on a wall.

30.03.2025

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THE DAILY QUOTA

40 children and 21 women killed

by Israel in Gaza per day

in the last twelve days.

921 people altogether - or so

the news article said; when

I write this, the number

will be higher, Israel

working towards its

daily quota.

30.03.2025

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REMEMBERING AN UNBORN POEM

A poem hovers at the edge

of the mind, amorphous,

trying to take form,

to come into existence,

to be written down,

given permance

as much as there is

in this universe

born from the void,

on this planet where

libraries and bookshops

are burned and the arsonists

celebrated, each burned

book declared to be

an act of self-defence.

But, the poem, hovering

on the edge of the mind,

trying to be born,

never becomes more

than this, a poem

that remembers it.

30.03.2025

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IT'S NOT THE HISTORY, IT'S THE WAR CRIMES

In 2025, people don't support Israel

because of what was done to Jews 80-86 years

earlier in Europe by Europeans, a genocide,

but because Israel is cruel and sadistic

and gets away with genocide.

30.03.2025

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TEN HOURS OF WORDS

Ten hours of words,

writing and writing,

translating, acts of

- what? Do I believe

something of

importance will be

different? No.

But I have, like

any container

filled, emptied

and filled again,

gone through

change.

Where will they end,

the abounding words?

Here.

Until the land

outside the windows

is as dark as the world

has been made by those

who have descended

from humanity

into barbarity

and dwell in

impunity.

29.03.2025

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CATKINS

Spring, out of the mud

and fallen branches

and dead leaves

and dead grass

of the summer

resting in its autumnal

grave, a resurrection,

catkins the first

movement of fingers

no longer chill

in your hand.

29.03.2025

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ONE MORNING, NEAR THE END OF THE WORLD

One morning, near the end

of the world, or its salvation,

chill like the flesh that has

stopped living, cold like

the conscience of the one

who made dead flesh out

of a living human being;

one morning, near the end

of the world, or its salvation,

waiting for the gravedigger

or the resurrection, touch

that will bring back Lazarus

to his sisters beside the tomb.

29.03.2025

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09:45 AM

One poem after another, a lie

of walking away from writing

them, translating them, a lie

after another, and how many

hours ago I wrote that writing

is an addiction?

29.03.2025

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THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO SWIM

Those who fill the world with blood

will drown in it, and their tanks

and their drones and their jet fighters

and their bombs and their missiles

and their sniper rifles will drown

in the blood and the sea of blood

will sweep away what they build

with bones of their victims.

29.03.2025

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09:39 AM

It feels cold, but

this is a warm day

for March.

four degrees

plus Celsius,

and the people

killed last night

in Gaza

are colder still,

and you,

my lost ones,

how cold

the frozen earth

above you.

29.03.2025

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MERE KNOWLEDGE

The mere knowledge of the gift

makes him amorous - no, let's us

use words naked as lust itself

and call him horny. Yes, that's

a word that describes his state

of mind, and days would go past as

Chinese water torture for him -

without the other gifts...

18.-29.03.2025

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UNDER THICKER SHROUDS

09:11 in the morning,

gray, overcast, misty day.

But there are people

under thicker shrouds

whose eyes see nothing

which faced the same

sunset than mine,

the worthy dead,

the steadfast

and the afraid,

whose lives were stolen

and who would have

given anything

to see those clouds,

this mist, to breath

the chill air.

29.03.2025

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AFTER NINE HOURS I'M DRAINED OF WORDS AND THEY ARE DEAD

I lied. Eight hours

of poetry was not

enough, it took

nine to drain me,

own words and

words transformed,

and now in the chill

morning I dread

the toll of the night,

the harvest of human

flesh taken while I

wrote and transformed

the words of the exiles

and the dead, like some

lesser god of ancient myth,

trying to give amends

by turning the wronged

into a bird or a tree,

while bombs and missiles

rained and took away

the words from mouths

of entire families,

pens from the hands

of aspiring poets,

breaking their fingers

and breaking their skulls

and breaking their brains

and with them, breaking

the world. And now I

listen to silence, the cuckoo

that counted my years

is silent like the forms

under the shrouds,

the forms that moved

and spoke their fears

when I began.

29.03.2025

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ENOUGH WRITING AND TRANSLATING

Eight hours of writing

and translating,

it has to be enough,

I will go and make

a fourth pot of coffee,

take up a book, read,

then come back

to count the dead

and share their names,

the people murdered

when I played with words,

like words could change

the world made

with bombs, bullets

and missiles.

I witness, it's the others

who will change the world

and with swords

will make swords

fall from bloody hands

and turn them into ploughs.

29.03.2025

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THE FIRST NEWS VIDEO I SAW THIS MORNING

A Palestinian girl, perhaps

seven or eight, is mourning

her murdered father

this morning in Gaza,

one of many;

she is mourning,

and he is dead,

will never again

say her name

and make her

brush her teeth,

will never again

tell her a bedtime

story; this

will be her

bedtime story

for the rest

of her life,

her, seven or eight

years old, mourning

her murdered father

in a hospital corridor

filled with mourners

and the dead.

29.03.2025

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A CUCKOO IS MY COUNTING MY REMAINING YEARS

I realize a cuckoo is calling,

counting my remaining years,

but how long has it been calling,

unnoticed by my ears, my mind,

how many years have gone

uncounted? I don't know,

I give up counting, myself,

as it goes on, towards

a known future.

29.03.2025

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NOT UNTIL THEY FIND IT

Israeli regime's supporters declare

that Palestinians should stop resisting,

give up the fight, give up their land,

and I say Israeli regime's supporters

should stop supporting genocide,

occupation, Apartheid and torture,

they should stich up their mouth

and go seeking their lost conscience

and not unravel the stitches until they find it.

29.03.2025

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AN EARLY SPRING MORNING

Morning is clouds and mist,

pale and gray and bleak and cold,

but it's a long, long morning

after a long, long winter,

and pale and gray light,

and bleak and cold landscape

better than darkness craddling

the frail hours of a dim day

late born, early gone.

29.03.2025

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PEOPLE DIED

Seven and a half hours of writing

poems in two languages

and translating poems,

and while I toiled with my

words and sentences,

and the works of poets,

people died while

I wrote and remade,

people died.

29.03.2025

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ISRAEL'S APOLOGISTS

They excuse the genocide

old as a toddler bleeding to death,

just like they excuse the Apartheid

old as a great-grandmother among

the shrouded bodies of her exterminated

family, just like they excuse

the occupation old as a grandfather

gathering pieces of his grandchildren

from among the ruins of his home,

with atrocities as old as an octogenarian,

brought out in their wheelchair to shield

the tanks and the jets and the snipers

and the drones and the politicians.

29.03.2025

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NEITHER IS THE TRUTH

As long as I can remember, the Israeli regime

and its supporters have portrayed the Apartheid state

both as the only, endangered refuse of the persecuted

in the entire world, always threatened with

a second Holocaust, and at the same time,

as a mighty, invincible state of warriors,

each citizen of the first rank a modern Spartan,

always ready for war, each generation always

victorious in war, and no one capable of standing

against them. And these two contradictory

visions the Israeli regime and its supporters

declare at the same time, and demand

that the world accepts both of them,

and the West has done so as

long as I can remember.

29.03.2025

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THERE ARE BIGGER SINS

Writing has it's own spell,

addiction, that keeps you

pouring words when much

has been penned and much

perhaps not worth being 

written down, but the words

keep coming, your mind

a mere filter for this world

tormented and fair, and there

are bigger sins than the brief

extension of our thoughts

on paper and the screen.

29.03.2025

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THE GEESE IN SPRING

The landscape doesn't tell

whether the honking geese

are late in leaving

before a a winter that has

brought down its first snows

on a withered autumn,

or early arrived

amidst a retreating winter

revealing autumn's ruins,

but the calendar wrought

from bone and stone

and made into paper

tells me it's the spring,

and their own calendar

of much older creation

tells them the same,

and hearing them,

I believe mine.

29.03.2025

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THEY ARE THE FARCE AND WE HAVE THE CURE

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts

and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add:

the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Karl Marx(1818-1883): The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte(1852)

I

Humanity may learn lessons

from history, but its leaders

rarely do, they are the farce

that keeps reaping a harvest

of sorrows, tears and blood.

II

And on their heels sycophants

and the press, the learned that

have been bought, telling

the despairing people there

is no alternative to the horror,

when the alternative we can will

into being is the leaders' heads

rolling from the blade of a guillotine,

the sycophant and the bought

led away into chained years of tears.

29.03.2025

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A WEATHER FORECAST FOR APRIL

After a warm March,

the weather report

promises a cold April,

a second autumn

for the mind to

dwell in,

the first tiny riches

of the spring locked

in the earth and the branch.

29.03.2025

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A SPRING "HAIKU"

In the honking

of the geese,

spring.

29.03.2025

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A SPRING LANDSCAPE

It was a gray and bleak

day, yesterday, winter's back

broken yet a late October

landscape for the gaze -

but for the ears, louder

than the wind, the songs

of migrating birds come

back to their summer home,

and the honking of geese

on the stretch of the road

where the songs were absent,

in them what eyes are denied:

A spring landscape, in sound,

after the long silent months

of shivering autumn, winter dark

when the birds had taken flight

before the snows from the withering

land, still bare but patches of snow

for the eye, no sign of coming green,

yet for the ear a landscape of spring.

29.03.2025

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THE BOMBING OF A MARKET IN THE TOWN OF TORA IN SUDAN'S DARFUR

On March 24th 2025, the Sudanese military junta's aircraft

bombed a market in the North Darfur town of Tora,

held by the genocidal RSF / Janjaweed.

The numbers differ, at least 61

or 100, or up to hundreds,

in the bombing of the market

in Tora by the military junta,

but we can see some of the bodies,

charred, in photographs, there's

a video, but there is no justice

in this war between oppressors.

29.03.2025

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ON THE SURFACE OF OUR EARTH

People think they can excuse supporting

one invaded nation while supporting

invader and occupiers elsewhere,

but you can't, you can't,

because truth and justice

is the same across the globe,

from Palestine to Western Sahara,

from Tibet to West Papua,

and yes, Ukraine,

and what is wrong and an injustice,

a war crime and a moral stain,

in one nation is in another the same,

no matter where,

on to which continent, you turn

on the surface of our Earth.

29.03.2025

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THE SWIDDENS OF TRUTH

Truth doesn't burn,

but truth-tellers burn,

are being burnt,

their truth-telling tongues

burnt to ash,

and over the echo

of their voices repeating truth

are being played the lies

of their murderers,

the lies of their murderers

who burned their tongues to ash,

are being played the lies

that turn entire cities into ash,

the lies that turn the tongues

of babies in their cribs into ash

before they can become truth-tellers,

the lies that burn truth-tellers,

the lies that try to burn the truth

watered with the blood of truth-tellers.

Most abundant crops of truth grow

from swiddens, swiddens watered

with the blood of truth-tellers.

29.03.2025

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THE VERY SAME PEOPLE

Supporters of Israel's regime, foreign Christians

and Israeli Jews, mock Muslim Palestinians

asking "If Allah is so great, why isn't he

helping you? Why is Israel winning?"

and I can't but think of Jewish victims

at destruction and concentration camps,

Jesus Christ and apostle Peter crucified,

Roman soldiers and Nazi soldiers

mocking them and their fath,

asking why didn't their god help?

And perhaps it were these very same

people standing armed under the crosses,

guarding the gates and crematoriums

of the camps, who mocked then

and are mocking now?

Who can say?

27.03.2025

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ASKING FOREIGN POLICY QUESTIONS FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION AND GETTING ANSWERS

 Have you seen what is happening in Sudan,

military junta and the Janjaweed committing

new atrocities, bombings, and massacres?

Slava Ukraini!

What are we going to do to stop Rwanda

and it's M23 allies in Kinshasa's Congo?

Hundreds of thousands are made refugees.

Slava Ukraini!

What are we going to do about Turkey,

how are we going to support the demonstrations

in defence of democracy?

Slava Ukraini!

What are we going to do to stop the genocide

and ethnic cleansing by Israel in occupied

Palestine, its attacks in Lebanon and Syria?

Slava Ukraini!

What are we going to do about Myanmar?

Shouldn't we ban sale of aircraft fuel

to the junta's air force, at least?

Slava Ukraini!

Is there anything you care about

except Ukraine?

No.

27.03.2025

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EVERY ACT OF SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE

Every act of support for Ukraine

is an insult towards nations

who have suffered much longer

and ignored or their oppressors

embraced, supported and praised

by the 'Western' countries that

fervently support Ukraine

and no other endangered,

invaded, occupied, oppressed

nation on the surface of this planet.

And it's no innocent insult,

born and kept up out of ignorance

or supposed necessity of realpolitik,

but a deliberate one, one made

to show that most lives on Earth

are worthless to the 'West'.

27.03.2025

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