My friends are black birds

who seesaw on the terraces of houses that are ready to collapse

Exarcheia, Patission, Metaxourgeio, Mets

They do whatever

Sell recipe books and encyclopedias

They fix roads and unite deserts

Interpreters at the cabarets of Xenon

Professional revolutionaries

They crowded them, before, and took them down

Now they take pills and alcohol in order to sleep

but they have dreams and do not sleep

My friends are tight wires

on the terraces of old houses

Exarcheia, Victoria, Koukaki, Gyzi

On them you have hung millions of iron clothespins

items of your guilt,

decisions of congress,

borrowed suits,

cigarette burns

curious migraines,

threatening silences

vaginal infections

they fall in love with homosexuals

trichomonads

delay

the telephone

broken glass

the ambulance

No one…

Poet: Katerina Gogou