Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three Nov-Dec 2026.
Unpaid times, poems by Dimitris P Kraniotis.
Unpaid times
You pained joys
Ostensibly
In briberies
Of unpaid times
That didn’t wait
You locked tears
Exceptionally
On cheeks
Of many insinuations
That surpassed you
You hit lives
Continuously
At unguarded crossing
Of unspoken desires
That never arrived
Naked short stories
The writing left
And the silence remained
Stuck in the sand of rhyme
That kneed
With haiku ashes
Odes of mixed expectations
In difficult times
With intermediate stations
Naked short stories
That couldn’t endure
The mainland’s “decorum”
And dressed poems
That were punished
In beaches for the nude
With forbidden entrance
Untitled end
I lay down with two dreams
I woke up with three more
Two cats stroked
The words I didn’t drink
A dog tried
But I refused again
I stumbled but I didn’t fall
(I thus want to believe)
I swore a poem
To write without the end
To walk for days and nights
In verses that sink
Fever governs the verb
And leaves dust behind
Naked I erase the titles
Untitled like the death
End without breath
Life all over again
© Dimitris P Kraniotis
Dimitris P. Kraniotis was born in 1966 in Larissa Prefecture in Thessaly (Greece) and grew up in Stomio (Larissa). He studied Medicine at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with MSc in Medicine at the University of Thessaly. He lives in Larissa (Greece) and works as a medical doctor (internal medicine specialist physician). He is the author of 12 poetry books: “Traces” (Greece 1985), “Clay faces” (Greece 1992), “Fictitious line” (Greece 2005), “Dunes” (Romania 2007), “Endogram” (Greece 2010), “Edda” (Romania 2010), “Illusions” (Romania 2010), “Leaves Vowels” (Italy 2017), “Tie of public decency” (Greece 2018), “Minus one” (Spain 2022), “Wrinkles in the coffee” (Greece 2024) and “Hearing the same sound” (Kosovo 2025). He is also the Editor-in-chief of the anthology “World Poetry 2011” (205 poets from 65 countries). His poems have been translated into more than 40 languages & published in many countries. He participated in International Poetry Festivals. He is Doctor of Literature (Litt.D.), Academician, President of the 22nd World Congress of Poets (UPLI), Founder & Editor of the World Poets Magazine, President of the World Poets Society (WPS), Director of the Mediterranean Poetry Festival (Larissa, Greece) and Chairman of the Writers for Peace Committee of PEN Greece. His official website: https://www.dimitriskraniotis.com/