Sitron Panopoulos
(England)
Arc De Triomphe.
You will never be one of them kid,
you won’t fit in-
and though you long to belong
your path is different.
Your voice will not drop like theirs
your steps will not grow sturdy
for your thoughts cannot rest
on these misty streets
in these moist valleys,
under summer rain.
To father’s disappointment
you will not enter his world
where men with big hands
meet
for quite drinks
in afternoon pubs
and talk of nothing.
For you
a fleeting cosmos
lighted and ready,
foreign ports,
Parisian beds
and many friends
to press your heart against
For you
wall cities
to keep you safe,
Berlin winds
to soothe your thoughts
marble chests
to lay your head to rest.
For you
nuclear basements
to waste your youth,
lit doorways
your arc de triomphe.
Here
everything
falls into place
here
everything
falls apart
before it all
starts
again
Fear not
the endless autobahns
seemingly steering you away
fear not
the crystal mountains
that make you slip and sway
fear not
the fever
that drives out your dreams .
As all is accounted for
by the Gods
who only grow dark
when you stand fearful
and refuse to walk
the path you were assigned.
La Cunt
Would you still give me
the same eyes,
you gave me back then,
then
still give me nothing?
Do we still ‘love’
like we use to,
or do we have
our backs covered?
Streets of Berlin
Summer after summer the midnight city
was calling me.
To offer me her anarchy,
to walk me through her lighted avenues
where I would breathe tomorrow’s world.
She’d dance me through empty stations
‘sway with the young,
the perverted,
the spirited.’
Oh, how far do we travel,
for a bit of freedom,
for a different truth,
and a new emotion?
_
The summer we all wore
American Apparel
The summer we all wore
American Apparel
and rolled on fields
within the city.
The sun did not come out
but we didn’t mind –
we had sunshine
in a bag.
We were happy enough
for once,
to sit back
and watch the world go by.
Our dreams were changing,
impossible goals of the past
felt irrelevant at last.
The night would fall on the local bar,
hungry wolves
looking for love.
Sometimes, after closing time,
friends became lovers for the night,
in a warehouse – in Dalston.
Some of us sober,
some of us drunk,
most of us single,
except the one
couple, the couple,
the couple, the couple.
August came and we had to go
to the countries we all came from –
but the couple were a passport
short.
Then,
a party on a roof,
until the sunrise,
the morning light,
that blinds the eye,
the lover that slips,
the head that hits the ground.
Time stops.
The city is silent.
The lover stares
at his dead lover,
lying lifeless,
half naked
in a pair
of American Apparel shorts.
The telephone calls
to different countries,
the tears that fall,
the ones that don’t –
the time to put our friendship to the test,
to see if all the promises we made
were meant.
When good times come your way,
don’t be scared they may not stay,
they may do or they may not,
but my friend –
you fear not.
Wedding belles
They went to the wedding as friends,
not as the raucous couple.
They mingled,
both steady on their feet,
proud and unafraid.
As she walked down the aisle
they looked at each other
and tears
dropped on the wooden pew.
And later in the afternoon
as they lay on satin sheets
their bodies knew
not to assume positions
they had been accustomed to.
Ten years earlier they had thought
life without each other impossible –
now they had learned
to live alone.
____________________________________________
The Author
Sitron moved to London at the age of 17 to study film-making, but instead of making films he ended up putting
his stories to music. Several bands followed, including early collaborations with Patrick Wolf and the late Leigh
Bowery’s band Minty. Then, in 2004, he was invited by the British Arts Council to provide music for Help,
an exhibition curated by the sculptor Gary Webb that would mark the opening of the Olympic Games in Athens.
In 2008 designer Kostas Murkudis asked Sitron to contribute poems to his book Monogram, published by Taschen.
It was then that he made the leap from music to poetry. “It made sense to me because when I’m writing songs
the words always come first,” he explains. “The music is there to make the words sit comfortably!”
After contributing poems to the London-based Undercurrent magazine, he embarked on the current collection
of poems and short stories. In These Great Democracies is a token of gratitude to all the democratic
societies that allow people to live freely – the democracies we have run to in order to become the people we
always wanted to be. This poetry collection is part one of a conceptual music and poetry project, with an album
of the same title and theme released later this year.