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metaorology

2011-11-16T16:27:00.009+01:00

it appears fall
is here to stay
in a way it is too late
but that is almost too easy
for you and me
caught in time
in a way that it has always been
too late
we do not talk about us
it seems we have left it
all
to a sort of pathetic fallacy
so there is already so much
to interpret
time runs out
we have the objects we bought together
sitting around the house uncomfortably
still trying to find their place
the laundry hanging near the window
with its perfume of talc
cold and white
surrendering to us
for it sees
and seems to behold
a future
to nurture a trust we have never even
dreamed of
and thus we finally know
surrendering is an act of great faith
take the weather for
example
one walks around as though there were somewhere
to go
one walks around trying
to be penetrated by the weather
trying to make
sure it really is fall
for there is a great sun
and a great cold so one never quite knows
what these winds have come to carry away
as far as night goes
i take my body out for a walk
not quite a journey
but rather a vertical
movement into the
moment
i stand wonderfully empty so the wind easily pushes me ahead like a
ghost
i read the signs
the posters
the ads the menus
when i pass by a travelling agency
i stop for a moment
to check if they propose
home
on their window
no
then something odd occurs
my arms grow back as though there might be
things coming my way
to take
my feet
my legs
weak at first then strong
my empty coat swells up a little
under bones muscles
fat nerves and tendons
a parthenogenesis if you will
my breath accelarates
my chest grows back
without your hands on it
goes up and down
up and down
and my eyes open
to let everything in
and out
i deduce from the cries
of
mourning
bereavement and
a shattered heart
when i come back
full of body like when we first met
don't ask
don't say the word your eye spits
don't tremble as
leaves
carried away in the wind my love i no longer know
the nomenclature of the heart.

reliquia

2011-09-24T02:37:00.004+02:00

what a banal scene
a white kitchen
table
which could have been
marble
but is plastic
a cup of chamomile
to conciliate with sleep
a hand cream
a lipstick
pills
a magazine
autumn is a great season
for falling
in this place the surfaces are worn out
we've only been here since may
yet they must have known
beforehand
things live
beyond our intentions and
superstitions never abandon us
in the bad times
i wish for
a sterile place
aloof from life
and its fall outs
not the arcane scars
of time rushing in
and running out
on unarmed objects
which bear the signs
of what faces manage to
hide
except for some twitch
a little fluttering muscle
which can go unobserved
i want good
rigid materials
which resist heroically
or break completely
marble
cherry oak or olive wood
crystal
things which go on after us unscathed
or vanish
i want this
and a naked
rigid language
not this confused esperanto
this abstract hope
of indefinite margins
not these ambiguous
soft ductile words
to take and spread cowardly over
our truths
like a shroud.

abyssus abyssum invocat

2011-08-22T13:27:00.001+02:00

Bastava che l'ombra sorgesse dall'angolo più quieto della stanza,

O vegliasse dietro la nostra porta socchiusa -

La fine pioggia ai vetri, un pezzo di latta che gemesse nel vento:

Noi sapevamo già di appartenete alla morte

Margherita Guidacci

the room is dark

entirely

and almost empty

except for a pain in the center of the bed

a body dropped onto a mattress

with no muscle

an empty body

filling the bed with

dark matter

just a shape

carved in the space of a room

and no light

no sound only

time and a great pain

working its way inwards

and out

towards life.

allelographia v

2011-07-21T20:55:00.002+02:00

i am writing fast
with a great fear breathing behind my neck
a great urgency for
my tongue grows poorer
by the minute
i have seen most of my adjectives blown to dust
leaving a trail of bare objects around the house
comparative degrees and superlatives dry out
so shit can no longer relate to shit
and the future tense just flew out the window one evening
entire words just vanish
so i write in a great hurry while i still can
massacres occur at night
i go to bed and pray hard
to wake up in one piece
but instead
in the morning i leap up with a fright
and it takes terribly long to drive a heartbeat to its right pace
i no longer remember why i am here
the city is too beautiful
to enter inside me
it just stands there still
like a theater stage set where i happen to wander before the show
and the people in it seem terribly well
i walk and envy
them for carrying entire lives on their faces
with all kinds of feelings
which i cannot have
i see something in their eyes
which mine don't have
i despise the good weather
which has invaded us
imposing health and youth
i despise this terrible terrible guilt
which eats me alive
but most of all i despise this strength
this frightening will to power
which keeps me on my feet
i despise my feet planted in the ground
and this unfortunate hand
which touches everything
it sees
i want vertigos
i want to see the world spin around me
fast
and the pain
to throw me to the ground
i want the ground to subside
for me
as though it had a heart.

allelographia iv

2011-06-24T21:00:00.004+02:00

What is your substance, whereof are you made

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since everyone hath, every one, one shade

And you, but one, can every shadow lend.

W. Shakespeare

i write to you from a great heat

so dense no lie can pass through

and this i hope means there may be a truth

one must have failed to see

when the time was right

but this is nothing to write about

all is well only

words become strangers

or old acquaintances one hopes never to bump into again

one wishes to be in a foreign land

but everywhere is home

where the parting hurts

here a great heat envelops us

and we are thankful

to have something constant to fight off

but evenings are sweet

and sticky and there is also music

and people's voices come in from the window

in a beautiful uproar which means nothing

i wish you would also write to me

about what people say

outside your window

and also about the temperature

the humidity the wind

the stars and also the trees and your dreams

if you remember them

but i understand there are things to be done

and time is pitiless

here is a great heat

one could say it feels like we're in a pit and

how should i begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways¹

but what i meant to ask is

do you still wear the sea

like you used to do

and vanish

i do not remember much

other than this

sincerely.

1. T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock

oh my sweet spring

2011-04-21T18:37:00.002+02:00

i hear it all the time
the sound of someone breathing
in his sleep
next to me
all the time
the sound of someone who is here
in a way but away
really
the sound of a very human weight
the sound of limbs the sound of warm sleeping flesh and dreams
i hear you leaving to where no kiss can reach you
and surely no word
or thought
neither good intention
nor bad
i hear burning
hopes
and desires slipping away
in a vague yesterday
does mouth skin tongue
do thighs and teeth forget
what they have been through
for love
no but now there are sins
impossible to avenge
hungers impossible to satiate or to forget
and there are gifts with no one to be bestowed upon
suspended above us
very far but not far enough
and the sound of a man sleeping
breathing me in
and out
there is a music which is yours and mine
which i have wanted to bring with me
everywhere
at every street every corner
every doorstep
and a death i carry impossible to shape
into me or leave home
say for a day or two
which brings me here to you
but steals away the word the glance the caress
is there anything
anything like beauty
impossible to possess
or perhaps to even know
especially when it is spring and
one grows darker
as though one were at home
on a cloudy april afternoon
and all the words
were not.

to surrender unconditionally

2011-04-03T21:20:00.001+02:00

the good days are back etc
it's all a series of
withs or withouts
it never ends and
nobody ever told us how
the sun warms up our solitudes
how the warmth brings out the ghosts
under the skin
i have no way to bring me to you with
no word to reach you by

no truth to spread out as white flag

no other hand by which

to chase your fears

away.

marching

2011-03-20T21:54:00.000+01:00

Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,

first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.

Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.

Luise Gluck

whenever spring comes back to us

it seems like we have never known it

one can recall

a great deal of light

but not quite so bright and surely not so everywhere

and the flowers

an entire city blossoming through its carbon dioxide

through six million neuroses by day

five by night

pink blossoms white blossoms

we feel our skin finally

our fingers move our veins swell

we believe we are alive

or waiting

to let go our deaths

to lose the shivers one had made one's own

is no simple matter

even our words change

though change is inaccurate

they are brand new words looser

and softer

so as to let pass through them

the other

to let us know again and hear
the silence blossom
on our dry branches
to let us remember our pain
in a new way
for rememberance is always new
to know the great cold winds
the raging rain
took away from us
most of our deaths.

τον άρτον ημών τον επιούσιον

2010-10-28T12:27:00.034+02:00

i know i am not nor would i ever want to be
your genesis
i know you have existed
before we have and know
i would not have you stripped of your days
before me of
all your works and days of hands¹
but you should know i sometimes meet
the women who have filled your dreams and
your awakenings
i know your women
i know the wetness of their bodies
the redness of their mouths when they lean towards you
to offer you whatever they have managed to gather
on their way
i know the redness of their mouths as they lie down and say
λάβετε, φάγετε, τούτο εστί το σώμα μου²
and i know the darkness of your own mouth
when you kneel down to worship them
to take your ostia
your benediction
your absolution
i know the darkness of your mouth which trembles with desire
your mouth which tastes of all your women and says
λάβετε τούτο και διαμερίσατε εις εαυτούς ³
i know your mouth on breasts which are not mine and in short i know you
lost inside other bodies
i know the sins you have commited
the forgiveness you have begged for

and i know the kisses of redemption the kisses of reconciliation

the kisses of love and betrayal

i know the lies you have told and also the many truths
the arms in which you hid yourself the hands which closed your eyes gently
as if everything would be alright
and the fingers which have caressed your hair the nails which tore your skin
and even the words
the whispered words as well as the screaming vowels
all of which mean simply
yes
i know your women
i know their voice their smell and their hunger
for you your hunger for them
the planes you have taken to go find them
the cities you have walked through with them
your amorous geography
i know the promises you have made

and not kept
the gifts wrapped in good paper
chosen scrupulously among an infinity of objects
gifts and surprises wrapped and wrapped and wrapped
and yet impossible to conceal
for once placed in a pair of pale hands or dark hands
it was obvious they were plain boxes of love
and i know your thirst for a smile for a gleaming eye
which is the reason for all gifts

i know your women your beautiful women
and the eyes
the eyes you have looked into the eyes which have conquered you
and inside of which you lost your way many times eyes
distorted by pleasure
and pain
eyes in which you have left the part of yourself
i sometimes try to find
and i know you have arrived here
to me
crippled
by the passion you had to burn out
for you are a man and they were women
your women
your beautiful women whom i know well
most importantly
i know your love for them which is deep
and sincere
dear
i see you disappear
behind their faces
i search you
trying to find a small reference to me
a novelty
a scar or perhaps a different way to contract a muscle
around the eyes or the mouth
i do not find it
i know your love
an amnestic disturbance
an infirmity of the memory
you have forgotten your dreams
your moans and screams
but i will be here to remind you
that you are not mine
and i
not yours
that we both belong to this love of ours
which is filthy
and pure.

1. T.S. Eliot, The love song of J. Alfred Prufock
2. New Testament, Matthew 26:26
3. New Testament, Luke 22:17

anachoret's

2010-10-12T10:30:00.007+02:00

For Chara

When - if not now?

Christa Wolf

surely it must have been august when we met
after a drink or two
in the old city
i believe it was on a balcony though it may have also been a rooftop
or a bench
what i do remember is the humidity
for we were vaporizing and us
terribly amused it seems by our shoes
which were the same shoes
worn out in the same way
the rest has faded away for
many years have passed but i know now
as you do how little importance such memories hold
i am glad we have met again
you will certainly have many stories for me
and many gifts as do i
in a way it would appear i haven't moved
from where you left me that night
was it august
but i remember places and people
perhaps i have been away
good god i am not ready nor have i ever been
like those before me and those after me i wobble
my way through these endless possibilities of what has
once
been the self
as though there were something to save
or something to be in guard against
and you know well i am sure how
one takes to disaffection hesitantly
one thing at a time
for there is a time for every thing
first a sound then a word and then entire songs
and people vanish or
one could say
are merged into a great loneliness
great as dreams
for dreams do not just disappear
they are displaced by something equally big and equally consuming
for a moment it seems possible
obligatory even
to temper delusions
since magical things really do happen in the limited space of four walls
of a door and a window
or even in that lesser space confined in a body a face

but soon it is also clear that

there are fears neither word can tackle nor hand

it is clear that word and also hand

are not exempt from perdition

that word and hand

may skim over our night lightly

and quietly fall into darkness
as i write this i almost remember you
and i believe

that in the morning

you too wear your eyes like a tiger

wears its hunger

and go out.

prelude

2010-10-01T08:34:00.006+02:00

...among men

you will sometimes find a lump of polished primal grief

or the lava of frozen rage from some old volcano.

Yes, that came from there. We used to be rich.

Rainer Maria Rilke

it might rain

i see the window and all that it contains

a great range of greys and people menaced by water particles

trapped above their heads like their lives

how do you start a day so ill-omened

if yesterday has taken you aside

to teach you that the heart cannot

show you

will not show you the way

or find for you the small word of courage

a yes perhaps

will not put it on your tongue

and push your mouth into a smile

though you would have very much wished so

how do you go about a day so gravid of greys and people
carrying their private storms
their quiet diluvions

how do you carry the burden of such void

around this city

i wish for the wind to lift me whirl me above it all

and throw me back into your arms

i wish for your arms to be open and warm

for your heart to put a small word of forgiveness

or trust on the edge of your tongue

to forge your eyes into a beautiful yes

after all.

i(s)landed

2010-08-29T18:59:00.015+02:00

i fall into the night and
the night falls upon memory
no place is darker
no step more uncertain and
how do i prepare for a voyage of this range
which reaches a great metamorphosis
where i become a line
carelessly drawn on a map
a kind of limit
a frontier of barbed wire that
accurately witholds all our pasts
inside this circumscript area
which is nostalgia
(though one knows really how rememberance
like love
spills towards joy
or affliction)
i foster instants no human eye may behold
or profane tongue profer
around me i see the great roads which lead to
nowhere and
my every thought reclaims a place on your tongue
for only there can i comprehend it
i close my eyes and all i see is the boundless blue
and white
which is you
lately
even this distance acquires flesh
and blood
grows into muscles and veins interwined in the manner of algae
which somehow try to reach you
promising something similar to that which men call
home
with no doors or windows
all open on the sides and
neither ceiling nor
floor
like our sea
dear
one knows man is no island
nor do islands have handles by which to lift and carry home
as a trophy for this love
or as a frame
a shell case to put next to bed
please
let us know no gratuitous
gratification
no long sandy beaches
but steep slopes
rocky descents from which fear
throws us down and
into the great reefs
of waters deep
as the aches of the heart
cold waters clear as our intentions
cliffs dark as our deeds
thus i recall folegandros
thus i recall an infinite blackness pierced by a million flames
which may be the sky of milos
or the drops on your skin
forgive this disarray of memoirs
and my black and white love
(love
one knows love pushes towards light and towards obscurity)
i recall
us
enveloped in a thousand layers of cycladic salt
which may also be
our sweat
or perhaps the salt which gushes out of this great
great hiatus between us
this great tear gland.

short-circuit

2010-07-11T22:39:00.026+02:00

it seems i am losing myself
which is i must admit most delightful
all i have left is a sort of song
for the cicadas to sing at noon when the heat surrounds us like death
when flesh and blood are wound
a song for the jasmine to sing when the evening sinks in slowly
to humble us
for beauty is bountiful and we are fresh and blood again we are hands
to clasp hands with
despite fear and the future
a song which is breeze from the window at night
when i am here and you are not and
i think of our sighs
i think of our sighs and think dare i say
sighs will have sighs i think of
our eyes which meet and look
look
and see
our eyes as seas as clear mirrors or deep
deep wells over which to bend and quench this fire

this dewy thirst this wilderness
of the heart

i think of your heart and mine i think allow me to say
of palisades collapsing like hiroshimas
of our hearts naked and pumping their wounded substance which is
i dare say
pure love and
i think of your words which meet my words
and mold them into how shall i say
poetry
i think my god of your hands on my body and suddenly
language is terribly
terribly barren.

death shall come and shall have your eyes*

2010-06-30T18:24:00.015+02:00

If I could bleed, or sleep!

If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Sylvia Plath

baby not even the heat gets to me these

hot days
i know

and know you know

i am alive

by pure coincidence
by a set of strange conjunctures
like you i apprehend pain clumsily then go finish off some other chore
and like you i
have three meals a day
now try to imagine
this string of casual smiles
which has forged my eyes
this way
i am a magnet pole
fallen in a box of needles
no i am a woman
or a box
and you are a need need needle
please inject me with what you will
that i may exhale with relief
please come to me
to wipe off these embarrassed smiles
to put to rest
these squinted eyes
(death shall come and shall have your eyes).

* Cesare Pavese

vesper

2010-06-27T20:44:00.005+02:00

θές με ὡς σφραγῖδα ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν σου,
ὡς σφραγῖδα ἐπὶ τὸν βραχίονά σου·

ὅτι κραταιὰ ὡς θάνατος ἀγάπη, σκληρὸς ὡς ᾅδης ζῆλος·

περίπτερα αὐτῆς περίπτερα πυρός, φλόγες αὐτῆς·

ὕδωρ πολὺ οὐ δυνήσεται σβέσαι τὴν ἀγάπην,
καὶ ποταμοὶ οὐ συγκλύσουσιν αὐτήν

Άσμα ασμάτων

since i believe i know the language of your eyes
which travel in faraway seas
which change color
like the day
your eyes which daybreak and sunset
you must forgive these tears which exit when you exit
for they are warm as your hands
and travel on my face as your fingers
for like your hands and fingers they let me know that
i am somehow here now
and indeed you must even forgive this
obscurity that descends upon me
when you leave for i understand now
that life really is what it used to be
and yet with your hand in mine
i walk through it with stronger feet
touch it with a touch more affectionate and
when i see it slip
away from me like it always has
i let go softly
and this is my newfound gentleness
my new face
older but in a way i believe embellished
by such gems as
courage
and the hope
that one day even this great darkness
will yield to us.

crossovers

2010-06-08T21:46:00.004+02:00

when you come in through my door
it is always the first time we meet
i watch you
as you teach me how to move silently
gracefully through the objects i have worn out
so that they become quite new again
i keep track of the books which your fingers caress
so that when you are gone i can pick them up
and read them out loud
(so that you may find in a sequence of words or in a
pause
a little gate through which to pass over to me again)
noticing how my voice is more voice when near your ear
or into your mouth
my mouth more mine when on your neck
your arms your chest and other nouns of desire
and when you go out through my door
and into that private universe
of yours
around which the earth rotates
i lay here as i lay now
annihilated
mysteriously suspended
somewhere between
the gravity of your body
on mine
and the beautiful lightness of your heart.

anathema(n ta)

2010-05-28T17:34:00.013+02:00

there is a kind
of pain
which one no longer feels
which has left yet has left many routes inside the body
itineraries weaved and coiled like veins
a sort of circulatory system
oxygenating the cells of memory and error
pain one no longer feels
like one does not feel blood
one had not asked to be loved
yet was offered loves
upon platters of gold
and being hungry stretched an arm
and was punished for gluttony greed lust despair
or i don't know what other sin
(though one would have preferred entire bodies
to cut heads)
one would have liked to say
i have loved men for their arms for
one fits in them quite perfectly
quite like one fits inside the sea
perfectly
yet one says
i have loved men for their arms
for when they are wrapped around me i exist
(arms that slide around necks quietly as snakes
then tighten their grip
until they cut off all blood
and all oxygen
and i exit).

vernal semiotics

2010-03-22T09:37:00.008+01:00

i have kept a place for you in all my nights
in every room i have lived in and
sometimes i know you are here
by the sound of blades sharpened
like senses
by a silenced voice a broken word
by a quivering body
which i assume is my own
and many other oddities you would never believe
at night i sleep very little

the mornings frighten me terribly

i have never felt such great fear for such minute details
everything is charged with a hundred connotative catastrophes
the end becomes imminent
when i hear the door i jump up
as though my suspicions were entering the house
which house
i live in a memory
but never mind these petty grievances
they say spring is here but one
knows a season is not a different graduation of light
one wants to open like orange blossoms
like lemon blossoms back home open
τζι' ανασταίννουν
but
i wanted to talk of love
of your black hair
your almond eyes
love arrives too late
when everything has failed
when the skin bears no memory of disobedient hand of hungry mouth and eye
indeed too late
(after all the deaths one has had to account for)
to plunge its roots in the fractures
of the heart.

blessed be the meek for they shall inherit nothing

2010-03-08T23:07:00.024+01:00

i see your face has changed after all the dirty rivers
and wastelands
it has been a heavy winter the crops have drowned
ebbing your brows down and in
towards your eyes
which retreat in their dark vortex

your hands too look rather different
all tendons and bones surfacing
veins protruding like seaweed
as if to indicate a way out
an indefinite future
or an insurmountable present where
death is no longer an event
but an ingredient
what sweet bread you make in this prosperous house is dirty
what good soup you boil turns in your mouth to mud*

there has been no past
nonetheless
you know
when the sun hides behind the buildings
you know by the glimpses on the windows
there must have been something profuse and inarticulate
which on this occasion we will conventionally refer to as
love

by now
what lie you have said has come back to choke you
what lie you have been told you have been stripped of
i believe i am talking about sense
purpose or any other dream one embarks for

i see you trying to recollect the moment of deviation
an instant of collision
i see your body recoil upon a violence i fail to perceive
perhaps a succession of words or a ghost for
when they said time heals all wounds what they meant was that
time is a wound great enough to encompass
all pain and
all blood

i gather by the way your head tilts forward and your eyes lower to the ground
you are trying to find the pieces of that which has once been whole
i gather by the way you smile that
where there is ash there must have been a fire once
i think i hear you murmur something
though it may just be
your heart
trying to bruise the silence.

*Olga Broumas

very well thank you

2010-02-19T22:43:00.012+01:00

Cosa m' hai dato di bene che ora

non sia veleno o vite d' altri o fronti

di sasso che mi dicono "non sei

nostro, va' via"...?

Franco Fortini

no hunger

no thirst to quench

and no water

no fire

houses are impenetrable

like time and i are impenetrable and

we are

small mnemonic exercises
limping to and fro
acknowledging our specters
in a mutual sigh
we see
our vocabularies shrinking
to a few interjection particles
memory has also betrayed us
we are residual faces
remnants
the debris of another existence
remotely practiced
with impetuous blanks
white immensities
impossible to populate
impossible to brush away
immune tabulae rasae
untouchable aloof
to be taken in embraced
to be granted a room in our hearts
and no color
no music to mark them with
not even madness
at night
we take our dictionaries to bed
looking for the one word of consolation
which must have been promised to us one day
but we don't quite remember
then we sleep very
well thank you.

mnemosyna

2009-12-15T02:14:00.019+01:00

καδδ' ἱδρως ψυχρος χεεται, τρομος δε
 πασαν ἀγρει, χλωροτερα δε ποιας
ἐμμι· τεθνακην δ' ὀλιγω 'πιδευσα
φαινομαι ἀπνους.
Sappho

let me not talk of dead loves

let me not talk of futures wind-swept 














of referential white














chrysanthemums and the scripture of your frowning forehead














(never will eyes darken like yours)





i understand that there may be constellations














beyond those on your skin 














and let me














not talk of eschatological late afternoons but














i remember yes it was december














the light fading with our hopes words














words 














your echolalia 














words words the world

blown to pieces














and you looked at me then looked out














the window














and said something 














as if life














were to go on.

allelographia III

2009-11-18T10:11:00.025+01:00

...rather let me walk straight on to this great figure, who will,

with a toss of her head, mount me on her streamers

and let me blow to nothingness with the rest.

Virginia Woolf

it has been a while now
you might say i have gotten what i wanted
much of the time passes so very fast
like freedom
and allow me this sneer
when writing words like freedom and time
do you (please) remember how that secret poem
said all that has passed has passed
well
all in all
one goes on
must go on at all times and
even when dead one goes on still
and surely there will be other
days other words and other feelings etc
but what is funny
is how things have grown other faces of other truths
so that i might be
say
going somewhere
walking the streets or
doing this or
that
but also
(quite certainly
it is
sunday morning again running towards your house under the rain
you look at me through the window)
yes also
going nowhere at all
doing nothing.

allelographia II

2009-11-16T22:32:00.005+01:00

having arrived here at this late hour
majestically wet
with wine
i lay down whatever poor weapons i carry day in
day out
the bed is made
not a single crease
everything waits to be undone
but what will i do with all these shadows
the sky too
is an abstraction
of fear
or parsimony
my sips of love furtive
and i am very warm then very cold

i imagine you too are polishing old summer days
thinking of how walls close in
under the sticky stains of friends
and lovers
until you have no bedroom
no house and no future
and having arrived here
at this late hour somewhat alive and very
broken
what with intentions transfigured

and the mystery gone sour

my hands are tied yet i say
yes yes
yes

please understand no bitterness by this
no trembling hands
no extraordinary pain
of loss.

allelographia

2009-09-28T22:16:00.013+02:00

Unexpected: at some corner, a tear ambushes you.
Miroslav Antic

nothing is new

the night rises

pours over me

tries to pin you down with a name

a photograph

i don't know

i would gladly sing to you the secret song

take you away through the secret path and into the secret garden yet

there are many songs

many paths and also many people

you come home one evening

everything is the same the table lamp

plays with the darkness

and your palm twitches

and the moon twitches and barks

drooling for your bone

nothing is different and yet

loneliness has somehow deviated

where to and will anything ever be the same

your throat pulsates surely it will explode a glass of wine perhaps

forgive my confused pronouns i am not sure

who i am talking about or whose head lays on your chest

aside from my skin

contours are very uncertain

like defeat comes in many words

and many silences

i hear a dog howl from the

edge of hell

dreaming of a language with a thousand different

words for

home

and i want

to say something.

speleology

2009-09-02T17:48:00.003+02:00

though i dispose of no axe

let there be no stone unturned

no darkness dispossessed

be it fire or be it ash

what untold tempest shadows your eye

vex me.

strada, stradoulla

2009-06-13T01:38:00.016+02:00


At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
"Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging; 
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark...
T.S. Eliot

if the tiber runs swiftly

like the breeze passes through

loosened hopes

as if to show another way

untrodden

why then will my eyes never thaw

i walk and walk

as though there were still destinations left

and if ever

i find a place to pray

it will be for those lost inside their tenses

but now

i very much like how

the sun dives behind the world

i sit

roll one

smoke watch my feet

my hands

the sky

over the gasometer a hundred birds fly

away

one

for each life never lived.

bundle of kent

2009-06-01T16:35:00.014+02:00

everything the sea does

i want to do too i want you to believe in my words

i have picked them up from

deep darkness look look

the hand knows what the eye has seen like the

sea

mother i will billow i will swell i will wave ripple and caress the dry shore

the summer is here we are thinking o

forgive us take pity

i secretly want to surrender and o

to be allowed to produce a single

tear

then the rain comes without a

word

(i want my old heart back).

maenads etc

2009-05-26T11:16:00.009+02:00

i see you

sitting on the floor

your back against the backyard porch

head tilted back wreathed in acerbic vine leaves

sweat running down your chest like acrid grape juice

dreaming of a future which will not come

where you stay awake always

eyes like hungry mouths

where your hands do not tremble

your words do not stumble

where you are the man you could have been and i

the lucky woman who

in the breathless dog day

will lie down under the shade

of your beautiful lies

and sleep your pain away

i see this and want to reach out

take your hand in mine

and let you in on the secret i know but

will not admit

all stories are love stories

all poems

poems of love.

teach me please

2009-05-12T11:02:00.005+02:00

how to leave quietly

how to understand solitude

under such sweet sun

sun of homes

dusty city street sun

only time is intact no

not even time

and time again blossom

teach me please how to spring

and leave quietly when

we watch our identities splinter

our hands torn from trying to keep the chips together

i want

like jason (bathed in the river at midnight)

to offer

my libation of honey and throat blood

(burn what is to be burned)

then retreat from the scene without looking back

must i believe in this dictionary of dichotomy

when

i think i see

(by the way you align your eyes with the horizon)

your bulky dreams

(is it with them you spleen at night)

in those wild hours

(has there been a tamed hour in (h)our history)

i speak and my words come back to me

like faithful dogs.

nod, juan

2009-03-04T17:55:00.003+01:00

you wear your dandy clothes

your gaudy weltschmerz

among this and them

you too want to lean on your sword calmly

watching the water trail

a damned poet saying of you

il ne daignait rien voir

but often

a sound or an old perfume

shakes you back in

the women have been too immaculate

the wine vinegar

chew on the

rupture words

you like best

sever shatter crack

spit

mend join heal

i bring you like one word brings another

and know

(next time i see you

picking the dark)

i will swallow this smirk

and let you hide in the night

of my hair.

daphne

2009-01-23T15:53:00.010+01:00

i remember well my soft skin

my white thighs whiter

under the moon (his sister)

i have had fingers to grasp with

a spine to bend by

and away

i liked leaving

like the winds that shuffled my hair

i have wanted to believe in stories and history

to make a sense out of this coarse bark

these shiny leaves

have i then been a woman

a recipient

a vessel

for lust to be poured into

an ear in which to mumble

foreign words

would i not perhaps

have wanted to understand

beautiful apollo

men

and desire

shiny phoebus

i wonder if you too

have seen what i have seen

your sturdy arm around my waist

the throbbing veins threatening to explode

i did not disdain your visceral hunger

nor your strength

yet

my liquid origins could not perceive

such movements

i was compelled by flux

did you

i wonder

having me locked into you as though i were your life or death

understand the terrible pain of meta

morphosis

i do miss my mouth

fleshy as though it had something to say

but do not regret

my screams to gaia and peleus

we shall never know

apollo

whose torment was worse

you

rejected by your loved one and i

denied the language of love

but time and this

stillness

have taught me

forgiveness

punishment

has been the only myth

and

i believe i see now our lives

arbitrary as our respective

arrows

gold through marrow

and lead through heart

(though they talk of eros' wrath, they forget the nature of wrath itself:

erratic)

but phoebus

sit down under my shade

(not as archer but as healer)

and play your lyre that i may understand

you have gotten what you longed for

to anchor me

your arrogance wreathed by my broken branches i

once impermeable

now doomed

to absorb your water

evergreen

revoked even of my legitimate grief.

adagietto

2008-11-26T14:24:00.008+01:00

i think of you in your home

you look at your wife over the stove in front of the window

she gets distracted every now and then

while her hands play the happy music of wooden spoons and metal pots

she flies out into the garden you've planted and watered

she quickly checks on the branches to make sure there will be blossoms in the spring

and fruits

there will be

you think of all the meals she has prepared

what meekness it takes to put all that love into what will vanish in minutes

will be forgotten

again and again

her hands after so many years

stir you up like the first time you saw them

what they touch wakes up

as if at her fingertips she had tiny holes from which life streams

she understands you are observing her

in the window you see her looking at you looking at her

the glances mingle with the perfumes

serpentine their way into the children's rooms

the family tranquilizers

she turns around and stretches her arm towards you

you roll her sleeve up

brush her hair away from her eyes

everything perfectly orchestrated

but when you touch her breast

your palm, i think, remembers mine for a moment

and you hear mahler.

polyphemus

2008-11-16T20:04:00.023+01:00

you see me here the way i don't

with a hole in my mid-forehead

a big lacrimal fossa

growing vines after vines

hoping for a chalice as sweet as alcinous' goblet

my panpipe striving to cover

the noise of the gush

that haunts my house

the acis river

constantly insinuating a future

i reason in shivers

once

i knew no fear

for i had no religion

a troglodyte

free

among my flocks

though i fed on human flesh i was pure

for i did not know of the agony of the body

aphrodite oh cruel goddess who gives only to bereave

carved senses unto my rough body with a sharp blade

i learned ache

ah aphrodite sly fiend who blew tenderly jasmine blossoms in my bloody hands

their white a terrible premonition

i closed my freshly-inflicted wound, the eye, and opened it again for the last time

for in that instant (i had not known time before)

galatea

my love

forever took it away from me

(telemus, you fool, odysseus gently tried to cauterize the laceration)

galatea the sea nymph

driven by dolphins in her mother-of-pearl chariot

i learned love then

a paroxysm

a seizure

a disease

as though my immense body was not sufficient for what it had perceived

i tore out a hundred reeds

and in an act more violent than any birth

blew in them whatever was left of me

a fierce pain

music

i believed i had become a man

if so why is it that men fear monsters

or death

charged by the gods with the curse of

an aversion to her home oh

i was left wasting by the dark seashore

singing

and sunrise would behold me wasting still

galatea my love

whiter than snow

smoother than wave-worn shells

falser than water

deafer than the sea

cared not for my riches

my godly descend

my gifts

my stature

i learned derision

oh what dispassionate creature

what cold heart stands aloof from music

yielding to another's first appeal

galatea my love

i learned jealousy

i learned abomination

and murder

father

who has left me stranded here

neither beast nor man

a phantom

oh father mighty poseidon who possesses all water

when her lover died under my rock

when she turned his blood towards you

gilded by her tears

why did you welcome it thus

into your arms and hers

odysseus my only friend

who has taught me wine and night

who spoke of sweet fruits of lethe

dionysus

apollo

summon these fragments.

catastrophe and other strophes

2008-11-06T17:29:00.010+01:00

the man was not particularly hungry

but ate the fruit anyway much like a woman would

gnawing on it to the rhythm of her sighs

to accompany her or cover her up

he ate it slowly with closed eyes and nervous fingers

dreaming of his

evasion

he had hoped in it

as in things time-induced

while pouring himself into those garments

going out strutting

stuttering in his

eva evangelical call mother to tongue

mother

please have mercy o on his mouth that wanted to

be stone still in the cold that wanted

for you to grow on it

like moss

that wanted to suck you

back home

you

know when.

septembered

2008-09-15T14:57:00.005+02:00

i know no time without your languish
no night without your fatigue
i know not my body in other arms
my whisper in other mouths
i have no vigilance if you are not in danger
no voice if you are not drifting away
i have no skin if i like a snake don't long to shed it for you
no fingers if not to trace your geography
no noesis if not to draw your maps
no veins if like ondulating seaweed my veins don't sea into your swollen waters
no sun if i cannot scorch you with me

one day we will end like novels end
with a load of words someone else thought of us for us
as if we were of his imagination.

structures

2008-06-12T10:13:00.004+02:00

the morning mornings
outside
they are fixing the sewage system
breaking the asphalt
making noise
i don't open the windows so
inside
you don't know what time it is
shower
maybe
january or february
i remember a night
then a morning
i had not been there before and
did not know of the view by day
the window by the bed
a surprise
a train station rain
the man by me what is he
dreaming
my earrings are on the desk
take them

you
you are my adjective.

mrs coolah

2008-06-10T15:49:00.008+02:00

i know by the way you leave
you have not been here
my mind works
man kids work
pension
a propension
why i must have died and gone to culinary heaven

dearest
your favorite diplomat i
have prepared us warm protocol

my whites whiter even than my intentions

stay put:

basil mint thyme
gardenia jasmine
rose oh
water

you know a slaughter when you see
one.

the nyhtopapparos

2008-02-27T21:08:00.011+01:00

night as disposition

filtering the touch through a kind of
late hour

snaturing
is a number

subtracting everything

from everyone

so as to be left

with nothing
but music

awaiting for hair to grow
standing alert to
one whose mouth waters as water goes

and when it comes
jolt me say
take it like a wo(e)man

i sleep as though they are morse coding through my head
and wake up to a curious succession of nos
a before
the beforest

i should have left a note i should have left

ora
way too deep into the mainland
i should have been
islanding
i should be to night (no other)
what word is to tongue
what tongue to tongue etc.

the killing, revisited

2008-02-07T06:45:00.003+01:00

contemplating
dark sea water
guessing its impact on my skin
similar to pain
which one
jamming a bruise
which one
ours

precipitating ingloriously
into this
idiotic metalinguistic activity

there's not much of a turnover at this hour of the tramonto.

cut and run

2008-02-04T00:00:00.001+01:00

i can't sleep
there's a ship
there's i am not coming with you
and
i know
and a flower necklace
the sleeper's sleep like
the cat's idleness
she gets her claws tangled in my cardigan
her black in mine
her sloth pushing me around like a word
and i here but not
with no experience in such matters
turning around
around around
arrivederci corto maltese you bastard
and around
the cat stands on her hind legs, woman style
aah pandora you fucking whore it's you
she casts a smirk at me
her eyes like ice
how to fight back
an arola tango
buenos aires
i'm dancing with gadamer
methodically
turning around
your truth
beat that while i go get coffee.

j(o)uvenile delinquency

2008-01-22T18:03:00.003+01:00

i have known you
you waiting
to be marched through by majestic trees
by beautiful trees waiting

(waiting) to know yourself
looking out the window
consenting perhaps even
to bear the deadweight of your memory

a noncitizen
leaning over his atlas
pins and flags in hand
very hungry

and knowing this
by virtue of the 3rd or the 4th
(someone hiss)
i no longer know here from there and

in the meantime we are
watching out
closed but almost open.

cassandra

2007-11-18T13:12:00.000+01:00

i used to call her cassandra
say then cassandra
what about men
they look at me as though i were a strange fruit
no fruit what then
a tree
what is the difference
as it grows up it grows down
and no gravity pompously claiming me
the ignorant eye knows not my death
from my winter.

hale

2007-10-15T16:16:00.000+02:00

more at ease
suspended in the pauses between our words
the rushed scintillas of what
we are actually talking about

ill-equipped
we see and
know there has been a shift
a very bad case of
hope

you(r) bare arms
raining down
the window between us.

xii

2007-09-25T19:00:00.000+02:00

having spaced time out
skipped a beat or two
having stomached the upside
upheld the down

behold

hands immobilized
hair tending to reconcile with the ground
ground receding
preparing for the blood cascade
will it maybe shoot out my eyes

and was the artifice slick enough

i need not account for fire theft yet
i put no ardent craze out
(your edenized
your evergreened
fata morgana)

needn't answer for slaughter nor for messing with sacrifice
after all
whom to give the bones the fat the skin to
and to whom the flesh

having timed space out
having bowed to your fears
i (hydrophile) collected your tears

and thus
i see bile
expect it to rise any moment
now
expect to find me standing.

here now

2007-09-22T10:59:00.000+02:00

would i care
i would care but
would i leave
i would leave as leaves fall in fall and then
who is the rabid wind that howls
who the unwieldy cloud that hangs
i will spin no yarn
smooth no restless hair on scorching forehead
caress no weary eye shut
will not move
for how does one move
who is an empty sea shelll
who has become an ornament
a toy
to be brought to one's ear
promising
sounding like another place
but never producing it.

i want to under

2007-09-21T03:20:00.004+02:00

stand you

i study your obscure language
A.S. Pushkin

why do you keep still as if to say
i have seen
why come in peace when
form is flame-tested
sand sea-licked
i postpone you as index finger postpones speech
imploring
not to be understood
but untamed.

the other woman

2007-09-10T21:44:00.004+02:00

often we would wake up in places where we had never slept
and into arms we had never trusted
while she, being a close relative of the sea
would never have felt awkward in anyone's arms
and with grace transparent and wavy
with silence sharp
would descend
the stairs
the years gone
the petty words
boldly, devoid of all things mundane
into depths somber and

we floated.

& nunc & semper

2007-07-16T00:07:00.001+02:00

fade in
is a good way to begin with

the city is covered in skin
nods sweetly

intercepting the slow how slow
longing (not so much for
the pile given
the taken away pile
as) for
the one instant
which one
what can you make of it
of dreams forgotten
fermenting an elsewhere
while here
a secular later
a great many particulars one will not assimilate
one will be thirsty and yet
will heed patiently
as if
time were to get better with wine

(fade)
the night's gentle patronage
will not suffice
for this greediness
for
these silly hands
this clumsy body
(out)

half asleep
half
a high-pitched yes
yes please

will it give us
a new way of paying old debts?

(more) rocky donnie

2007-07-15T00:19:00.000+02:00

has come to us from a faraway place and time
does magic

wants to be on the tip of her tongue
like a small small very small
something.

espresso inc.

2007-07-14T22:39:00.002+02:00

it's what we do
it's how we go on about our everyday chores

defending diligently
things unfamiliar to us
wearing the outside on the inside
and not the other way round like we had said we would
growing older
while everything is growing older

myth has it
lillies and
the galaxy
come from the milk (splatter)
comes from hera's breasts (splatter pour)

have a cup of coffee try to find something new
coffee stimulates your blood flow and invigorates your mind
and when you're done take the cup
measure the hope
that one day
there will be something for you
to understand.

soliloquy

2007-07-14T10:19:00.001+02:00

you say you don't see how that is possible do i see how that is possible
you say
we need to stay focused
very focused and
the big picture
consider the big picture and stay focused and picture the big picture focused and big

the boat and the boatman
the threshold the exit
the great waves

you never forget to rigorously move your hands
like those guys on the military ships with the signal flags
negotiating fiercely on a matter of utmost urgency
the entire fleet depends on you
and you move them and move them
i find it interesting
but wonder if you may be making a second conversation in sign language

you are breathless you say you are afraid
plus tard il sera trop tard
notre vie c'est maintenant
(always backing it up with some french guy)

you're all upside down
chainsmoking
making no sense
you can't stop tipping the cigarette
i watch your lap doing the sousta
it makes me dizzy

panic-stricken
you rise from the bench
we take ourselves too seriously

i am very far away
and the entire thing seems like a dream

neither folly nor fraud will get you there.

very long time very no see (and a blow of m.s.)

2007-07-08T00:55:00.001+02:00

i recall
there was something uncanny about the way you moved
imperial and
arcane
with your so imperative footsteps
as if it was not you shifting your feet
but the ground gliding beneath them

it baffled me
such subjection the objects showed towards you
yet you
tender
the benign master
the glass almost purred inside the palm of your hand

compared to you, i thought, i move through a sea of medusas
under a regionalized unitary government system
worse

and back we are
same place
same time
i am drinking kir royal to downplay my status
you red wine
it is late october
you love late october and so do i
which gives to the daft scene a heartbreaking quality

i am having flashes
not images
but movement
a rhythm
a momentary understanding of harmony
adorned with sweat
fingernails carve skin
hair pulled
lips bitten
what? sorry

you like my dress
i like that

i'm thinking
flamboyant
i'm thinking
vases flying into walls
i'm thinking of
you thinking down boys
and down boys
and everything back in its place
emotional luggage checked in
drinks refilled once
emptied once more
paraphernalia of death ingested
etc
we are tired
we are leaving
for heaven's sake
this autumn
this autumn.

big, huge

2007-07-06T14:47:00.000+02:00

i believe we should sort of
perhaps
lower all this celestial
chitchat

lower as in lower
in a strictly topographical
sense
in a preferably carnivalesque
manner
(where we are either the blueprint
or the blueprint of the blueprint)
with panurgean
inventiveness
against this epical pantagruelism

and i mean
right here right now
before i become
[to be pronounced slowly, with grandeur]
e l l i c e n c i a d o v i d r i e r a
(and we all know how
counterproductive
that would be
and what good is that and oh a little bit on edge are we dear).

double mathematics

2007-06-27T14:40:00.000+02:00

accuracy
around here
is a very tricky question.

"are you sure?"
"of course not"

[+ vraisemblance]
[+ glass of gewurztraminer?]

i think of you
i have gotten round to a sequence of thinks and thinknots
they are basically identical.

summer tales

2007-06-27T14:37:00.001+02:00

were things as they are not
this unconditional summer
could seem a little out of context
but
when you and i hang around
drinking beers
and whatnot
(what beautiful arms you have)
in this unconditional summer
this unconditional summer
builds itself up into a refrain
misw mnamonan sympotan
misw mnamonan akroatin
i should come by more often, right?

tepidarium

2007-06-27T13:48:00.000+02:00

the days and the nights
the people the places
the order
the new one the old
the ways
the thoughts
the unthought of
the unheard of
the seen
scene
the sin
and all the other little games
they all went wrong
and so did we
and now
let us find a new sedative my love.

inverno

2007-06-21T14:25:00.003+02:00

the setting was singularly cold
with a background voice persisting
spice up your everyday routine
so how do you like that for a contemporary interpretation of dante and
so
tell me he said
have you changed your mind?
of course i said and it went
on and
off and
parenthetically
it hardly made any sense
at all
when all of a sudden
it started feeling a bit like a whirlpool
shifting everybody's weight, everything's
and
as soon as it all turned to mashed potatoes
all evened-out
all perfectly proportional
how egotistical of you said he
and he stood up
and he picked his legs
and he
made them
take him
home.

frigidarium

2007-06-21T11:17:00.001+02:00

it has come to that which is normal
to that which was expected of it to come to
and so
with all that
it has come to a broken thing
not a broken flower
or jewel
or anything of the kind
but a pale substance
a sickly one
shapeless
nurtured with words
which have grown limbs and mouths of their own
humongous
blotted with anathema.
it has come to this circus
where whips hands have gotten out of hand
it has come to guts turned to stone
and a very strong urge to throw
something
anything
up.
what?
no.

list of places

2007-06-15T19:20:00.000+02:00

and a hot- blooded tune
and i
had not the slightest idea how to go on about
(embrace/swallowspit such thickysticky darkness in broadaylight) it
with your heart shattered and
glued
daily
and at night
i would become hands only and i would gather the
glittery parts and
feed
them to you
i liked the idea and digestion was not an issue
but
last night (i speak in regard to the vulnerable nature of breath and the glimpse of an eye)
the devil grabbed me by the hair and i
knelt down and
licked the
entire
floor.

the pattern thing

2007-06-14T20:47:00.000+02:00

it is a kind servitude towards anyone who
offers you a glance
the slightest hint
of that unwitting promise
that, perhaps, they have understood
what you have not
oh not because of the hands you have held
but of that impercipient space between those and yours
which has become the bait you (forgetful by nature) bite
again and again
and in a flash
close
lock
unlock and
(forgetful by nature)
open again.

kontorevithoulis

2007-06-14T20:36:00.001+02:00

my friend

the tangible
prosaic opening
every night at 8:24
around the dining table
around me
(not you going on about this and that and
this and that) and
i am grateful to that overall sense of
serenity
which proceeds undisturbed throughout the night
(except for
the occasional footprints on my skin

in a mysterious

mischievous lilac)
and there is the
maze
of a house i try to live in
with
bread crumbs
strategically placed
here there
there
and
there
however
i cried and cried and cried and
no birds ever appeared and
neither did you.

invocation

2007-06-14T19:44:00.000+02:00

you should be
tempestuous

you should be rope
should be intimidating
and should (being in knots in my heart
in serpentine tunes)
be having a taste of the ground and
what keeps me away from it
in its simplicity

be the vox popoli of my heartbeats
no, i do not speak in your terms
i speak of other
(the impeccable other)

i may be what i seem to be but by mistake only
by something gone terribly wrong
i stay here
when there are infinite places to go to
and things will not get done by themselves.

i would have you tied down
and screaming
i would have you screaming for help and i
would be your help
yet
i am slow in a way you never thought possible
i arrive late and
being too embarassed
of a
very
flashy
entry
i stay outside and wait
and that's that
inside this very peculiar grief
oh
i do not

come
closer.

isoglossa

2007-06-14T16:36:00.000+02:00

firstly,
transcendence
or
in a most revolutionary fashion being
always in the home section of the
we have left all and followed thee
and be it so
for our quotidian
is the
intelligible kind

what we have been asked to do is replace nostalgia
the word, i mean

iper ta eskammena pido

let us join the freshness of your evenings
the giasemin rampicante
and
good luck trying to collect
the infamous this and that
and

i will probably be here.