Hormonal Discharge

It seemed all nice and pretty at first, but
then it began to morph into beauty, furthering
its imperfection – then hormonal discharge
necessary – then a liquid I didn’t even know
I had in there.

Just like me, you struggled for finesse and
needlery – they stand to life as a fork
stands to spiral architecture.
For once, I wish you to experience
a new, stupor-like felicity, companion to
a youth’s consumption.

Heavens whirlpool fast their fleshlings as
a Holy Ghost of golden sex and smirks,
flowing flesh poised to burst
as expectant as any day it was before.

Abortion Clinics

If, late at night, I
trawl to my doorstep into
smut- soaked snow, is it
fair - to let myself
not understand it all?
If no son of the Almighty One
can escape the glory of his Father,
It seems perfectly reasonable that
the Holy Ghost might be found
lovingly hovering over
our abortion clinics.

Grinding Counterparts

The way a machine accommodates even the
most displeasingly grinding counterparts,
one hand restlessly transferred weight
from angle
to angle, eyes ogling over every rib and bones
that now you might well say are
no more.

If craving inordinately enfiates,
Less is genuine, she must have thought.
Less is always good, for it
stands on its own.

More Poetry Exercises - 25/12/08

I.

Body Exercise: Falling Asleep

The slide can do anything
that my pill cannot. Seemingly
stationary and motionless,
the sharp angle does not reveal itself
until I approach, knowingly, the maw
as late as possible.

I relieve unpleasant shades of past
impacts, the slide approaches the apex of
its race in fractures – what am I to do?
I can’t, if my pill cannot.


II.

Diamond poem (compressed)

Nothing
IS NOT, sterile
waving, screaming, waking
not there yet, worms, exactness, dust
whispering, birthing, loving
accord-ing, moving
Desire



III.

Simile exercises

as blue as a highway treetop
as rough as a roundel
as lonely as an a
as tall as a sky
as talkative as you, in sunny springtime
as eager as a irrident thought
crying like a storm
praying like dreaming with eyes wide open
reliable as desolation
as expensive as lust itself
as mad as a rose
milling around like April to Winter
common as life
regular as a song of boredom
as pretty as the ‘you’
as reluctant as a grown-up newborn
as smooth as semen
as quick as a cirrus
running like a cascade of thought
creeping like a newly formed sentiment
as loud as a dream of the future
as nervous as a coiling mesh of optic fibers
as green as a mind on its wrong day
as angular as a song
as mellow as sex
as sure as a second before understanding
shaking like a brittle bone
as rich as breath itself
as perky as the young to the jaded
growing like a futureless thought

selection1:

as mellow as the ‘you’
as pretty as sex

milling around like life
common as April to Winter

as mad as the young to the jaded
as perky as a rose

Paste:

As mellow as ‘the you,’ similarly
milling around, like life when it is
detestable to you the most,
Uninspired boredom is stifled and
pervasive, common as April
to Winter, cunning disguised within the
perkiness of a rose,
pretty as sex.
You are mad, as the young to the jaded, and
it disapproves of your petty rebellions,
of your
-not so new- similes.


IV.

Laundry poem

Inane, cavernous, a nightmare from
another world, not for humans;
the very opposite of what it was
made for.

For we made it for prettiness and fresh
inspiration, but – no water-
the earth and glow of unnatural
mechanisms belongs to it,
a place of troubled, contorted thoughts.

One does not clear his mind
by a laundry machine.

More Poetry Exercises -17/12/08

I.

Window Exercise

So old it appears boredom,

carved in a square stone –

Higher stands the sunset

dart, cutting edge.

Color after color aftercolor

after – Camera Ob / scurant –

I’d rather float in the open,

in between those two

distant, well lit floors.

Hot beverage beckons –

In before thunderstorm.

II.

Widow Exercise

‘I have water in my glass.

I have water in my glasses,

it keeps nesting in there no

matter how much I try to

hold it back.

I have water in the glass I

hold, toasting to you! who do

not need to stifle your shaking

hand at every sip, who is out

there, rolling on rock

bottom,

Spiteful of me.

I have water in my stomach,

it roams and sloshes like living

fire would.

III.

Mono- syllabic Exercise

See?

Such is why we are one.

It is in ours to be lost in

One of us - any of us – all of

Us.

Be with us. Be us. Be

One.

IV.

Love Metaphor Exercise

It seems mysteriously contrived at

first – it is still, like a newly-hatched

cadence of forward movement – then

it becomes me. You.

V.

Sandwich Exercise

They'll spend the summer

fending off bad thoughts, bent on

crushing the garden—

their failure a putrid testament,

a steam let off slowly.

(After Joshua Beckman)

A Few Poetry Exercises - 16/12/08

I.

dare – genuine – accommodate – counterparts – angle – transferred

The way a machine accommodates even the

most displeasingly grinding counterparts,

Da’re restlessly transferred her weight from angle

to angle, eyes ogling over every rib and bone

of a woman, that now you might well say is

no more.

Less is genuine, she must have thought.

Less is always good.

II.

Body Part Exercise – Hair

The nest of all filth that is

mankind is your hair, my love.

Your rigoring libido oils off

every tip as drops of teary,

aphonous vinegar

that want to hurt me at every step.

The guilty pleasure of my earthly

days is you hair: my love.

When you’re too rapt to notice I

pluck, just one at a time,

let it slither in your glass of water

for the night.

III.

Circular Poem

A love that never ends.

Fork in one eye,

spoon jutting among ribs,

criss-cross hatch all over

your skin.

A love that never ends.

IV.

False Memory Exercise – reincarnation

A few minutes later, it was into flesh

that I was copied. In the damp recesses of

some netherworld, a whirlpool of the

matter I was to become steadily spun,

steadily dripped in the freshly-baked mold.

A few minutes ago, I was nothing: it took

a blink of an eye, to make me nothing again.

V.

Home Exercise – Holy Mary icon

Hail Mary. It is only proper of

you to have such a simple name.

No matter the excruciatingly tirading

toil one might be under, it is easy,

and good, to remember those few

letters.

You have seen your share of ghosts,

more than I have seen, from above the

arch: I feel safer at night, knowing that

you intercede, in my name, to them.

NightLine

I.

Dim above and beyond them all,

folding further it craves clouds

as nutriment.

It will entice them: disembodied, yet

it has a black and white sketch

ready for each and all.

II.

The young girl shudders and folds further

into her thin, dim nightgown as her hand

inelegantly scours the door and finally

yields, her body quickly disappearing into

the open car.

Night air turns intangibly electric as a

single twist of the key accords a myriad of

tiny blue- red- white lights, a concert from

the inside, a ritual of protection from the outside.

Notes on The NighFlight ring crystalline clear in

her ears as she slowly slips into unconscious

peace- the house and its motherly malevolence

cannot touch her here. Angrily glaring

just beyond the lawn, it is not human.

Right now, the car is.

III.

Between Hillsdon Rd. and Apparition Dr.

a snowflake parades. It leads

as on its own, and craves filing

its nails against your porch, all

night long.

Fast, it falls from the night clouds but

then the air - it feels intangibly

electric.

Afraid to burn too quick, it rushes the backdoor

window and slides sideways, ready for action.

IV.

Disillusioned, a clerk of average skill and even

less prowess, indentured to a credit institution whose

name at times he couldn’t utter himself, has a

curious pastime on the commute home, every day

between 19.30 and 20.43: he wedges his head in

between his left hand and window - and looks outside.

He likes not to be seen in almost all circumstances,

but only there he can do so with power.

He can be disembodied eyes, I’m here

and I know you but you can’t feel

me. In my mind, I have power over you.

Yet, tonight it is different. The snow by the wayside

is already spurring a desperate, relinquishing grey and

most windows are sealed black. A twist and

rumble of the tram car,

yet it is different. His eyes are

already closing, the wedge falling apart. As he

slips into unconscious peace, far in the distance a car door slams shut.

V.

Though I am safe below my duvet I suddenly think

there is something terrifying about the very idea

of living in a house – of living.

The permanent uneasiness of disembodied

eyes looms against the windowpane; at any given time

I can still be harmed.

I giggle nervously and fold further

within my duvet. What Friedrich saw in a

monk and the seashore violates me

within my very own nest.

VI.

There, brother! he dashes forward and wraps his frozen

hand around the sculptured forms of a streetlamp,

consuming desire, sliding in circles faster and faster as if the halting of universal entropy entirely depended

on his enticing that frivolous gal, night breeze.

Humming, a line of trucks stuck at a red light or

maybe a tram subdued far off, thanks - but I would

just like to sit here and look at his quick

body fast slivering, his ghost already part extracted,

donning a dewey spacesuit poised for launch.

The frozen hand detaches and he hits the curb full force, ready for action.

VII.

The one difference between

a January night

and any other night is that

you

are not there.

Yet, I know for sure

a part of

this nervous slumber is

in you.

Why

It seemed all nice and pretty at first, but

then it began to turn into beauty, furthering

its imperfection – then hormonal discharge

necessary – then a liquid I didn’t even know

I had in there.

My act that wants to be a cog, but it would have

to take the place of at least two of yours; it ends

up rolling down my doorsteps hapless, seemingly

ignorant of other cogs but still there, waiting for a

magnetic pull to work its magic.

If you give me an extra second I swear I will

make it work this time, I will attach it to an

internal organ but then I’ll think – why?- and I

might decide it works better as a eked frill than

a functional appendix.

My word - ends up glued as an extra line in

your well-balanced poem, awkward waving

after the final goodbye, embarrassed glancing thru

windows of a car stuck at a red light- twice.

Short Life

Post stretches of strange desert fire I

chose to leave the short life as conch

shell in a miasmatic twilight, up to

the moment I will know why I made

myself go this far without noticing.

Wind blows from two simultaneous

directions, I cannot tell which one

scorches the most. I envy and miss You,

who sleeps half in a tomb decay does

not dare, half in the shivering heart of

a quasar.

Sagebrush scratches the lacquer at my

calf as I bury the conch shell- which is

just a shut, stone-dry deaf mussel but no

one will notice- in the chilly, uncouth bed

which currents wrestle by way of laughter.

In the double iris grasping the water

gloom I was giving it short life, rash that

scratches into seasons which are no more;

Come rust my joints will ache and

we will be incommensurably distant.

K.S.M.E.

Soba is the ideal food to put life back

into perspective: its splintered taste, its

aged textural plainness reconnects one to

the simpler, pure occurrences of daily labor.

One does not eat soba; one –thinks- soba.

Spread in its reed basket, it livens the fun of

angling feelings, it lays bare a diorama

of my own thought patterns, which seem to

grow more and more confusing, tenderly

cute yet spiraling by the minute.

It seems, somewhat, silly to cling on a

sensation as frivolous as taste, which lasts

zero and is, in fact, zero in itself. But you are

like that; the delicate, lovingly shallow is

your dominion. This, of you, I like the most.

If, as you say, you do not wish to become

a conundrum of unresolved issues just like me,

How will you interpret my sign of commitment?

Thick hair arranged upon our table,

Spelling K.S.M.E.

“Swan’s Lake (A Child’s Sorrow is Time)"

A woman from Oklahoma, engaged in

a banally depressing monologue, in between

an empty drone and a hollow shout assumed

the poise of a sixth grade teacher while

resting the viola in her lap and, arrogant:

“You, what is a child’s sorrow? You are

meant to provide questions not answers, but

Let them all know - a child’s sorrow is time.”

I beg to disagree: A child’s sorrow is a

swan’s lake. As he grows older

willow branches will wither in scum,

discarded needles will threaten every step,

his lake will turn into a cement swamp;

finally, driven by fury, he will butcher

the swan and find out it was just

a pillow of second-rate goose feathers

all along.

Maybe, after all, a child’s sorrow

is

time.

Silverware Handling Session

Dry, congruous, neatly white,

a pedophile of sorts, he’s so

frustrated ‘cause he knows they’re

not his children to play with.

He just borrows them for a few

years, as long as “them” pleases,

as long they’re a leash,

effective.

Runs smooth across surfaces etch-

ed in millionth year scum, I feel

dirty just being there, glued to my

chair and smiles too, he smiles

the senile lecher, hater of

all that is to the least human.

How much of that is in

me already. Fingers run across

the table surface etched in

oilseed rape, the slick

fingerprints of many undesired ones

are already there, skittering.

Dripping from a slit.

Thoughts retract into a near

childhood, and the spirit in red

winding beside and past me

(Why must our impulses, desires

be shared by him, by others?):

So much faith in such a tiny soul,

So much filth for such a tiny hole.

Through Dry Land

A few buildings by the Adriatic are

collections of chipped white walls, tiny

reptiles scuttle through sand and brush;

A seabed of pine needles distances my

temporary dwelling from towing waves,

somewhere out there.

We might rent a bike and ride along the

drizzly seashore boulevards, lounging for

lunchtime. You could wrap around my

waist and I wouldn’t know if to be

content, sentimental or what

You, incessant, bore me at times but

it is a sight, the fork clashing against

your teeth, firm, acute sour unlike the

eyes, grey that is melt eyeliner

- No, nothing in particular, why?-

What I like about you is how

you are rosemary, parched and sere

on the extreme fringes of a dust trail; you

overlook the lack of nourishment,

you are always your small, regretful self.

FreedomNote 02

June has come and gone and I

left my little green booklet home, safe.

Green is gracile, fast to wither and

would be terrified by the white

and blue abundant in August seasides.

It is supposed to be a chain of thought,

this one, but there is breeze over

my head and the salt is so fine I might just

sit here and let the chocolate run down

my elbow, straight to the pavement.

I only get it to sweeten

the lemon, anyway.

It glimmers in my hand like eco-

friendly mother of pearl, it’s only

an idea, I know, but it took

more than five minutes to get

it out of my head and, nowadays,

I’d say that’s quite a labor of love.

When you get a chance, try

sleeping under a parasol by the

seaside and then, open your eyes

slowly; It’s lapis lazuli blue,

It’s fresh and unadulterated

visual pleasure.

FreedomNote 01

Green and asphalt grey are

the hues of summer,

A dent in a hose and a

grain of sand in the eye.

I still cannot understand how my

friend could walk barefoot on

concrete in mid July;

Used to tell me there are lizards

who do just that, somewhere in Africa.

That must explain it.

Now, I’m pretty sure it’s summer enough

for everyone to feel it under their skin, show-

casing the many manners for banishing cold

and welcoming a degree of restlessness. But,

since when did the yield turn green as well?

Such changes are worth noting:

I take my Stabilo out of the

front pocket and rummage for

the green book (a Christmas gift I

forgot in a drawer ‘till June).

It’s my world’s medication time.

I’ve always been a good child.

I don’t drink and drive but

I have my own, peculiar pastime;

Sporadically, I think and write.

The Living's Adolescence

I called you from the staircase bottom while

Pictures of your departed ones looked about,

Longing to taste youth again, and that’s when

I realized my pretty one’s no longer a reed by the river.

Holding back, I kiss you on the cheek under

The smoky eyes of your mother on the wheelchair,

A bog of tired flesh, avidly caressing her life destroyed

Nervous to suffocate her envy in bakery and pastry of all sorts.

A trace of summer heat in available November,

Cherries make beautiful earrings when

Your youth, and delayed decay, rivals with theirs.

Looking west from the hill to the wheat fields

My blood is worked, hated and cried upon a

Sky so outstretched, wide, uncomfortably slumbering,

His wisdom could tear the unaware soul apart.

I must do everything I can to keep us here so look,

I made a coat of new fog for you only,

So that you might not be cold as we run circles

By the churchyard, breath culled by the bell

Ringing its awkward melody to a place of peace

Where the dead, demure, know the pleasures

Of their assigned place, and living is nothing but

A distant memory, of which we’ll laugh one day.

Six Part Canon

If a sensation somewhere between

restless expectation and serene resignation

could be split into five equal parts,

and each assigned to a Muse

of young age and little to no experience:

One could extend white-washed wings

and fly atop the pines, not afraid of falling asleep,

for a worthwhile dream it is, to be finally awakened;

One would wait in the darkness

of a dimly-lit classroom, poised to spearhead

shadow crumbs, remains of a crusade against herself;

One would breathe within the glare of a blade,

the unapologetic purity of a January snow crystal,

the chance meeting of laughter and a cold lay-by;

One might move in memories, day after day

wishing for means to approach the distant,

until she finds that miracles do happen from time to time;

One could ration her heart for harsher times,

quietly slumbering among snow and strawberries

for the time being, she won’t say “thank you;”

Last is a guest, holding colorful threads within his hands;

they demand attention, require a long postponed

fulfillment, but sleep takes hold and ignorance does have power.

Aspiration

“The maid of pearl and ambergris came from

my Sea: borne thick in the blubber of a sperm whale

for nineteen summers, she fed on expectations

and, in sleep, sipped upon the putrid waters of every man’s

murky dreams of sensory satisfaction.

Upon her twenty-first birthday, the maid left the chilly

reaches of her snow-white seabed, and stretched for

the surface- for she desired a mortal to know her

and lick the crusty salt festering on her wounds

- wished for life to be renewed after death.

As soon as her hand felt the searing touch of sunlight,

the filth of mercury and sawdust,

the uncringing boredom of daily toil and menstrual labor,

body turned to foam and mind

swallowed itself inside out like a horde

Of thoughts annihilated upon conception.”

Into my private sea

that weeds quietly festoon, and shelter is provided

for all pleasures the senses might conceive,

too soon the bowl is empty and I

must pay a dear price for killing that maiden’s nest.

Greetings

Best regards,
I learnt yesterday that a poet has to have a blog, so here is mine. This is where I'll post most of my poetry and little tidbits as they become available. I am a 23 year-old Italian currently living in Edinbugh, trying to get his art criticism career off the ground; nonetheless I categorically eschew intellectualism and problematics in my artistic writing, so please sit back, relax and let's see if we can get this thing off the ground in the long run.
Other places in which you might find my writings:
www.indianbaypress.com
www.theroseandthornezine.com