The Circus is visiting the suburbs:
a red and white stripe tent stands still,
the wide open mouth of a child.
There’s a bit of poetry around;
when the soul gets out of the inside, it happens sometimes,
once in a while.
Under the same off-white light
someone is running away, not far from here
others are having such a fun.
#14
At dinner, we discussed the Italian nineteen century,
lives and values in precarious equilibrium
between conservatism and progressivism.
I hang around with smart people.
This morning, in a bar in the suburbs, I recognized
the impetuous emotional alterations of an avant-garde
fin de siècle.
#13
A windy morning, a piece of paper
is fluttering about
I’ll catch it.
Lying on the love altar,
I offer myself to the enchantment of pain
poor, fated, unheard.
So Fellinian.. baroque enough to let
any adverb changing the whole: I’ll go for happily,
somewhere before lying or offer, or later, to frustrate the triad.
Some kind of failure drove him crazy, I guess.
A movie, a flop, the eleventh line:
I’m an awful lover, but still love better than you.
God, take the voice away of him. The plot is weak.
The Maestro had a clear base of judgment: boredom.
Well, keep that feeling for yourself! He would have shouted.
As far as I’m concerned,
I’ll hold you off!
Zero viewers.
# 12
A gentle roll-off. The moribund sea erodes the foundations. This town is exhausting.
Buildings float like slabs, chased by the winds;
the room is filled with dust and anxiety.
A voice is altering the stillness: bitter, sharp.
(Friendship among artists is frail, when based on aesthetic theories).
– Sixty art pieces. And nothing. Neither a shelter nor a shrine, a prison, a nightmare, a hole in the ground to tell where the journey will end!
Light’s too yellow to argue like this, at the window
the sun is touching the sea, getting its temperature.
where the journey will end
The picture in the frame, a beach in Stromboli, heads on the sand. A tepid smile.
No, indeed. Not even here, but
I didn’t know we were lost.
# 11
The pencil tip slides softly, a few rapid marks produce
light and vivid figures. Still unfinished but ready to leave, they hustle, bow, wriggle, climb the thin air, leap over the canvas limit and flee.
Voiceless, shadowless and furious
I guess.
Whatever I say comes from these signs,
physiognomies which get larger and closer; they catch my hands, plumb my depths and tell me not to rack my brains about that absurd theme of the double, the being and non-being, the void and the fullness, who cares?
And yet,
I suspect these thin and flexible stripes – unpredictable like water – have found a shelter somewhere.
As if, they and a few other species had found anywhere near a decent habitat and learnt how to carry on in this unstable and exasperate era.
To impose order in this irrational world, I blanketed my artwork, but in the room
visitors kept turning around it, intrigued. Later, three collectors battled against each other to win whatever was concealed from view.
“There’s a lot of money around and hope for the future” the auction house owner was
totally convinced.
#10
This shadowy and labyrinthine town has swallowed the entire human consortium, I said.
It sounds like a chorus spinning around a unique emotional state. Voices and cries overfilling the streets, rolling down at dawn and returning upstream at twilight
with a load of bitterness, pain
and courage.
A few days after the new dock opening ceremony, a large ship entered and two girls got off.
I noticed them because I’ve been trafficking with numbers, mostly
strings of two units at a time that I combine, pile up or split in grids to contrast their power,
(with the automorphic numbers, I almost touched the abstraction)
Then, because I feel lonely in this life made of non-empty sets.
They looked good: wide eyes, open mouths, tiny bodies and a nicety at any cost that made it all so genuine and fresh. Of that day, that signed the apex of my communication skill to the human gender, I keep a photo. My nose is asymmetric. Look.
I never realized that.
I can’t stop thinking of it.
I’m a grown-up – even now -, bent on my numbers and framed by the artificial light, like a chorister in an orthodox church, a goldsmith in his father workshop or an alchemist, carefully stirring the Leonardo’s bistre.
My lovers have hung their clothes here and there. They swing spontaneously, nodding at me, dissenting at me, making fun of me, of my doggedly returning to these
refuge assets.
# 9
Solomon was still enjoying
the painting in the smoking room
a minute before drowning
he sunk down with the trees
the apples (pears were not ripe yet)
and flamboyant exotic flowers
viscous details Nature exposes
to the sun, the rain, the negligence
condition sine qua non to make us feel true
my hair, skin, iris
colors had once been joined
in a cold amalgam
decline and creation, nearing the end
some places come into blossom:
another seductive paradox
#7
of the journey this is a brief part
a long queue, a rite of passage,
(not a significant turning point, indeed)
# 6
the firmament
– are you smiling already?
shows a primordial pattern
just see,
– I tend to believe what you say
the stars in the strong hour
observation is an exercise
for steady hearts, eyes
need more solid bodies
over this tiny valley
(I’m reading in your diary)
the moon is slipping unnoticed,
only roots-equipped beings know
what is going on
and where
flames and ice
the transit of a celestial body
fuel
from this perspective
it isn’t worth the trouble
– a domestic injury, at most
So, let’s take this chain of events
(contemplation is a pastime for respectable mademoiselle)
some parsimony is preferable, I guess
metamorphosis is what I’m most afraid of:
memories lend themselves to misinterpretations
easy targets – they become
easy targets
– for moths
# 5
“International Exposition”
along the way
the glass temple welcomes
pictures, stories
light and shadow
join together
on a concrete wall
four square meters
a single room
to get rid of the blues
the air smells good, outside
(getting rid of the blues
is for wishful thinkers)
a fistful of steam
comes out of your pocket,
do you hide the remnants of fantasy, yet?
a stained petal
breaks the frail harmony
of your flower dress
the weight of the words
now falls on your lips,
– try again…
the weight of the words
now rests in your throat
– saying goodbye in a whisper…
the petal disappeared along with its stain,
there is nothing special
in those who stay
still on the platform
(sacred image in the circle of the sun)
watching the tail of the train
the empty rails.
#4
The right mood 