Misplaced in Cyprus (a poem)
Someone by chance, happened to tell me you’d left
gone to live in Canada, with your wife
and I quickly brushed it off
changed the subject
but a part of me was ‘oh, okay,
‘you’ve finally done it, good for you’
I was walking along Lady’s Mile beach
looking for our shack
when I saw it in the distance
As I started walking towards it
the Lady’s Mile wind, whispered
‘oh, you’re not here, oh…’
My feet were getting tired
I thought about turning back
but I’d travelled thousands of miles
what was a few more hundred meters?
When I got to the shack
I wasn’t even sure
if it was our shack
or if there even was a shack
and I made the whole thing up
It’s kind of strange
you don’t live here anymore
like you’re missing or something
but I gained my freedom from you
a long time ago
and everything else
is fiction
Fashionable affairs
I wonder what it’s like to feel stuff, to really, really feel stuff, about you. I can’t remember. I’m detached from my reality. They tell me here, it’s fashionable to have affairs whilst smoking European cigarettes. There’s no need to divorce, you can have an affair, and nobody needs to know, and your marriage can appear all shiny on the outside, like crystalwear. I asked my aunty about mosquitos and she said there are no mosquitos in her house, her suburb is clean. The first day there was none, then two, then ten and now I’m really itchy. Clear area, yeah right. I’m not sure I’m meant to be feeling like this, like justifying my life, to a country, like I’m shouting at the soil or something. I want to tear the Cypriotness in me out sometimes, but then other times I want to keep swallowing, like wine. I like walking, a lot. I helped my aunty cook koupepgia. I love my aunty. I love sitting and listening to her speak to her friends on the phone about random stuff. I love the sound of her voice. When we were done with the cooking I said ‘yeah! I cooked koupepgia‘ and she said ‘no, you only wrapped them.’ Same thing, I replied. 
It’s all the same, good housewife, bad housewife, mother. It’s all relative. Here it is fashionable to be a good Cypriot wife. Really fashionable. You can have a career too, but to have a clean house, is fashionable. I wonder what they think of me, I mean, really think of me. An old man pulled over while I was walking today in my shirt skirt and asked if I want a lift and I am sure he wasn’t just being nice. Do I look like I hooker, I wondered. I mean, I don’t look like a Cypriot. They dress in the latest fashions, acrylic fingernails and toenails, straight hair, immaculate upkeep of everything, car, house, kids, marriage. Fashionable. Do they think I’m nuts I wonder. Am I nuts? Or is Ella nuts and I’m just channeling her and her shit. I miss people, especially it would seem, friends from Australia that also have Cypriot blood pumping through their veins. Can I fly home for a minute and hug you?
Poem:
I think I’m homeless again. Hmm. I think I’m homeless. Hmm.
I miss you
Poem:
I missed the bus today(I think)
Even Il Posto has moved on. I went in there expecting to find Ella sitting at a table eating a club sandwich but instead I was greeted with renavation, shiny modern Cypriot perfection. Cyprus has moved on. When we would land in Cyprus six years ago a bus shuttle would take us to the terminal. Now they have bridges, real bridges. A proper airport. No more roundabouts, just freeway. Cyprus has moved on! We’re still stuck in the past but Cyprus is long gone. Affairs are fashionable. Affairs.
I leave my aunty’s house to go write in a clear space. 341 Creative Studios, Book Box. I can’t find my words at my aunty’s house, I have to go. There are too many photos of ghosts on the walls. I think I saw myself up there too.
Poem(kind of)
I think I missed the bus
A Cypriot boy the other day told me
to catch it on this side of the street
all the way to the old hospital
But I just saw a bus
going in the other direction
that said ‘old hospital’
I think I missed the bus
but I’m not sure though
Cyprus is unpredictable, like me
even though it says on the sign
that a bus for the old hospital
is due at 2:15, it may not come
I should have been on the ball
instead of thinking about Australian men
although he’s Cypriot
and I don’t do wogs, so…
But how was I supposed to know
that the bus might come
in the other direction?
How would I know that?
I’m an Aussie
and our buses come on time
on the right side of the street!
These Cypriots need to get with the program…
Another bus came twenty minutes later. I made it to book box to breathe…and get better views, of myself…
*Disclaimer: no poets were distressed in the writing of this work
My You Tube experiment
With the release of my chap book ‘Love and Fuck Poems’ I thought it timely to try out an experiment I have been meaning to try for some time. Many people have told me I should post my performance poems on You Tube to increase my profile and I thought, why not, let’s try it. Since I am in Cyprus at the moment I have decided to record myself performing my poetry at different locations in Cyprus. The first is Mediterranean madness on a Limassol Beach. Stay tuned for more.
This You Tube experiment is just one of the things I am trying out in order to promote my work. You can have great art but if you don’t package the art in an appealing way and target it to the correct market it doesn’t go anywhere. But sometimes I feel I am only at the base of a huge mountain and I just want to give up and go onto the next project but something keeps pushing me on. For me this book is about so much more than love and fuck, it is the significance this writing has to my culture, and woman within my culture. Times are changing and the Greeks are still clinging to the old ways but Cyprus has moved on: it’s moved on! I guess this book has become more like feminist literature and if I can inspire a repressed or unhappy woman to change her circumstances and to be unafraid then I have done my job. Let’s see what becomes of all this! Till my next post.
I’m trying to remember, when I last felt like this…
Is it supposed to be like this? My grandmother is gone, and the now the street, is kind of dead. When I was watching Cyprus from the aeroplane a thought came over me. It was: ‘Cyprus, I will conquer you’. It was dusty and hot when I landed. The drivers on the roads are maniacs. There are no rules. Everyone is smoking, very European. When I disembarked the plane I told my cousin that this time, this visit, I feel like I’m over Cyprus. I’m over it. Because I’ve found my place in Australia, I have my home. 
But then as we were driving, it hit me that I was actually in Cyprus, a 24 hour journey from Australia and I turned to my cousin and said, ‘Oh my God.’ and she said ‘what?’
‘Oh my God I’m in Cyprus’
‘Yes…’
‘oh my God I’m in Cyprus’ and I kept saying that and shouting it and then this feeling swept over me and I said ‘I could stay here forever. Oh my God, I’m not over Cyprus. I never want to leave.’
Is it meant to be like this? I walk through my auntie’s house and everyone is older. I remember when I came and my cousins were five. Now they are twenty. 
My grandmother used to live here and now she is dead. I went for a walk down the street and I saw something. I saw you driving to pick me up, when we were young, really young and foolish. I saw Ella laughing down the street. That tree wasn’t there last time, that road was different. My cousin said to me I haven’t seen you in ten years but I feel like I saw you yesterday. I remember when I last felt like this…I’m under your spell again, Cyprus.
Cyprus here I come
I am drawing a line in the sand
and I am not looking back
to you
or
at you
I’m turning a page in my book
The next chapter is titled ‘Aphrodite’
She is calling me now with her
myths and her fairytales
waiting for me, to blindly dive in
to abandon myself, a rebirth
into my destiny
I will buckle into the plane
fly across my pain
land on crystalised beaches
I will gather my words
on Limassol Beaches
bury them in my book
and watch them bloom
Ella, wait for me
I’m coming to find you
Erhome, agapi mou, erhome
For those of you who don’t know, I am departing for Cyprus on Sunday for a few weeks(maybe longer) to work on my novel, Misplaced. I have been writing it for six years and a quarter of the novel is set in Cyprus. I have visited Cyprus before, always staying with relatives, but this time I’d like to mix it up a bit and experience Cyprus as a tourist, so I’ll be staying at hostels for part of the time, making my way around with my laptop at hand and not much of a plan. I am a little scared, it’s the first time I’ve gone to Cyprus alone, and it’s the first time I’ll be away from my daughter for more than one week. I’m trying to embrace that fear though, and I’m trying to get excited about finally cracking Misplaced open. My mentor, Anna Kannava, who sadly passed away earlier this year, told me before she died that the key to my novel is the island, Cyprus, that what Cyprus represents for me is ultimately what it will represent for Ella, my protagonist and for the entire novel. She said I had to go to Cyprus. Going on this journey, I know, will be painful and exciting, but I know I will come home with a clearer picture of Misplaced.
In the meantime, Love and Fuck Poems is still going well, and I have 11 book stockists now and the list is growing. You can buy a copy online through polyester bookshop or you can buy one from me via paypal and i will write a personalised message in there for you! Click here for details. Also I have received two great reviews for Love and Fuck Poems, one from Overland and one from slam up, and I also received a review for my performance at the Overload Poetry festival. Ohh, I do look angy there, don’t I? I’m really not that angry in person, that’s just my performance persona! Thanks to Michael Reynolds for the great photos! More photos on my gigs page on the right bar.
Photo by Michael Reynolds
When I get back from overseas I will be performing with doublebassist Nick Tsiavos again at La Mama Poetica and also at Polyester Bookshop with Ben John Smith. If you are in the city, check out the scrolling text at Federation Square for the Overload Poetry festival. One of my poems has been selected for the exhibition: Australian literature would suffer a great loss if we stopped seeing each other.
I will be connecting with writers in Cyprus that I have met online and there is talk of me doing an impromptu show, but I am really not sure how Love and Fuck Poems will go down in Cyprus. Maybe I will have to stick to my more conservative poems, for even they, may shock the Cypriots. We will see. I will keep you all posted. I hope to be blogging regularly while I am overseas and I am particularly interested in recording some of my poems in locations in Cyprus and putting them up on You Tube as part of the You Tube experiment I have been wanting to do for a while. But you’ll hear more of that when I am Cyprus!
Fucking against the wall
We’ve kept ourselves hidden, for months.
Emails and text messages
the one x you placed by your name
You can only kiss me from this distance
I can’t stop missing you
But I know where to find you
All I have to do is rock up to your gig
But I know that would be it
I’d see you, you’d see me
Instant. Intense. Inflection.
Tranquilizer.
After your gig we’d say a general hello
and our eyes would say everything else
I’d walk you to the dark carpark
that backs onto the laneway
and already we’d be kissing
You’d grope at my hair
and we’d cry
whisper ‘I love you’
and ‘I’m sorry’
our hands, rummaging
desperate, for each other’s touch
You’d lead me to the alley
the cold, rough, wall
and we’d fuck there
You’d take out your cock
lift up my leg, slide into warmth
It wouldn’t take long
With our heads pressed together
tears flowing, hearts rejoicing
we’d fuck against the wall
It’d be so good we’d fuck
we’d just fuck, quickly
fuck, so hard
come so hard, so hard
all that built up tension
or those answered questions
erupting, exploding
in this one, euphoric, moment
But we’re just fucking, baby
We’re fucking against the wall
And we’ve been here before
It’s too tall, baby, I need to stand tall
There’s no way to the other side
That’s why we have to hide
You can only kiss me
from email distance
We’d just be fucking against your wall
We’re fucking against your wall
When are we going to stop
fucking against your wall
I’ll be performing at the Overload Poetry Festival, Monday the 12th of September, 8:30pm. You can buy Love and Fuck Poems from my gigs, online and from these bookshops.
The dalliance
Lately I have taken
to drawing love hearts
in unusual places, and spaces
on the steaming shower screen
doodling on my daughters drawings
lots and lots of love hearts
around me, surround me
I even wrote your name,
drew a heart around it
and placed it on my shelf
I’m not sure why I’m doing this
I don’t believe in fairytales
and all that mushy stuff
I’m quite happy to stay single
for the rest of my life
Are the hearts meant for you?
or are they meant for me,
you see, for the first time
in my life, I’m in love
with myself, except
we’re doing this dalliance
with our words
not asking the questions
that need to be asked like
do you still have a girlfriend?
or do you want to catch up?
I’m not sure why I don’t ask
but since you, I don’t do
destructive behaviour
but I think of holding you
close to my heart
I imagine bumping into you
on the corner of Swanston and
I miss you like crazy
crying in your arms
and the past
is swallowed
by the city wind
but maybe filling my heart
with someone else
I lose the capacity
to love myself
Maybe there is only room
for one inside this heart
and I’m not giving my space up
for nobody
yet the other day when I was hollow
I smsed you and you told me
to hold the phone to my heart,
that you were sending me energy
and I prssed it there a while
felt myself filling up
with your goodness
I wonder sometimes
when we’ll stop this dalliance
Or when I’ll stop drawing hearts
Or when I’ll finally know
who the hearts are meant for…
My laptop died
September 24, 2011 at 5:36 am (Creative commentary, Cultural writing (migrants)) (broken laptop, Cyprus, koraly dimitriadis, love and fuck poems, player)
On a more positive note I met up with Anna Kannava’s brothers in Limassol. For those of you who don’t know she is a close friend of mine who passed away earlier this year and she was also a brilliant artist. Anna was the one that told me I had to come to Cyprus to finish the book. I dreamt about her last night too, which was nice. I always like dreaming about her because we’re always hugging really tight and saying nice things to each other.
Her brother, George, was interested in helping me record a poem. We recorded two but one didn’t turn out because George wasn’t recording but I didn’t realise till I got home! It was a great video. Hopefully we can recreate it. But we also did this one, Player, at a cafe my the sea in Limassol. Enjoy!
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