Poetry five

Margherita’s remains

Margherita’s remains
just words
etched images
tracing across my mind’s landscape
Like highways over your Piamonte
they outline
a map of passages
an indication only
of a journey’s complexity
Turning to the light
and to the dark
away from all you had
all you could have had
unable to hide your pain
you carried Death on your shoulder
for all to see
We saw our own fears
in your sorrowful solitude
and self-consciousness
in your willful abandonments
So it’s the good fortune
of the dead
(especially the young dead?)
to know
who remembers
who used who
who loved
who even cared
Answers we confronted
at each taste
to unutterable questions
I can’t now for sure
recall the last time
I saw your blue eyes
though I expect
like a dream
arriving remembering
them
slipping in then out
like your life
I’ll see you
when I’ll see you
Or not?
O how we failed you

Napoli December 1997

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Fragile Joy

In the searching
between souls
for intensity of feeling,
and from feeling,
meaning-
the wheel of my heart turns
its revolutions
honest sincere,
struggling against separateness and loneliness,
carrying me tearfully
an ever so fragile joy-
like your embrace,
passing
yet remaining imprinted
in folds of experience,
always close
to an essential truth of my being.


Rocchetta Ligure, Italy September 22, 2002

Poetry four

War Song

You think a lot about war, don’t you,
asked she, as I stuck another forkful
into my mouth.
Oh, once or twice a day, I understated,
when I read the journal.
This day’s news
the heart of junkie poet stops,
His haggard face, edgy and high-
those battles too fought I.
And another tsar, old, pushed and pulled,
by generals and CIA tipping cheerfully glasses,
As boy soldiers, two hundred, fighting, dying.
We’re lucky, she, me chewing,
another 30,000 innocents wasted.

Thinking,
thinking this land
we feed animals abandoned
to dry dusty struggle in heat.
My orders: stand head-up breathing
waiting focusing aiming.
My energies war-like I attack the dirty floors.
If they came for my land
thinking,
though I’ve none nor want.
Those bombs bullets blood
whose war- our wars.
A dead poet’s war.
But the women-
this woman, sister mother lover:
Send the boy new
a child-man
soft, unwarring
needless and transcendent,
his victory unfought
in being.

Cagliari, Italy

August 11, 1996

____________________________________________________

Old dog how do you know love so well....

Old Dog

Old dog how do you know love so well.
Old dog your ear in amiss
the ticks still your blood
eyes thick and smoky
Not eaten in days
patiently you have this meal
And call your cat friends in then.
Old dog calling, keeping the watch
your master’s left you-
greeting all equally though, your eyes giggling
My I jealous even.
Old dog how do you know so well
this thing a word I call friend.
Old dog why are you sad
is it that you, knowing too your end
needing to consider.
Old dog my Doctor
from where did you take this wisdom.
Old dog slyly will you sound
down impatient Death’s road
your quiet smile
and easy gait fearless
though you bring your pain.
Old dog tell them in Heaven’s recovery room
you saw some of us.
And more listening now are we.

Cagliari, Italy

August 18, 1996

Poetry three

Layers

Layers
layers upon layers…
Where sleep the molecules of memory…?
How awakens their captain bringing to the light of horizons
sightings of messages
moving thoughts…?
Is it desire blowing through deserts
of loss
of pain
of confusion-
or the nostalgia of joy and pleasure-
that spark flames of feeling,
who if fed forests of wanting
would blaze uncontrollably…?

And if retreating in time
I go to meet that past-
the present receding
(not being among the heart’s favourites)
-to arrange, shuffle
examine and relive
layers of excavation-
what new land
amongst the many islands of unknowing
could I inhabit…?
Returning from such a journey
would not opaque separation still reign?

Rocchetta Ligure, Italy August 6, 2003

Poetry two

Sky Bones!

in perfume of yellow-
first summer defiant flowers-
of earth mineral
and watered air molecules
I sense the pungent smells
of your sweat
and salty flesh-
green vegetable
and blood garlic,
bone of fruit sky.
Through these gifted days
of sacred blooming mystery
my body breath and skin-
distanced objects to comprehend-
focused back toward this self,
is meaning constructed.
Building this I,
fabricating this you,
as you raise your I
to some created me.
how crowded this meeting
of feelings longings uncertainties.
We craft friendship and communion
across the pains and joys
of days and nights- alone, separately,
trying to avoid the crumblings
of doubt and suffocation
as palaces of human dignity and honesty arise-
fall, rise anew.
With what relentlessness of effort
do these wild flowers
suffer the waiting of rain
and death-
extending deeper,
roots of being-
exhaling scents
inhaled by insects and lovers
initiating thought fluids and pollinates
of (universal) desiring substance.
And these bones....
sky bones!
Don’t I see your feet are large.
So I will have loved
and lost
and cherished the loss
of your bone smile
in the clear flowing residue
of folded brain memories,
etched from some protean template
on the changing timescape called self.

Sadali, Italy June 14-19, 2002

_______________________________________________________

Little Old Town

Today in this little old town
I saw your back with desire.
Today I made a wish at the well
to kiss your neck.
Today we laughed together
while I fumbled words to you.
Today we talked to an old man
in this little old town.
I only understood “dolore……contentezza…….
Paradiso…..O la vita!”
I looked at his wrinkles of time worn days.
I looked for his death.
I looked at your living.
I saw my own limit- my end.
Today in this little old town
we saw buildings fading,
heard of days separating, growing in distance.
We heard of stories and memories passing.
And then, in this town the crisis of a moment:
Passion renewed, yet, also passing, lost.
And as others still leave,
as I leave alone again,
always in this little old town
is echoing: “Ti volgio bene…Ti volgio bene….”.

Asti, Italy June 1996

Poetry One

Elena’s Last Train

Our last train-
Pisa to Firenze-
her last train.
The last time seeing.
And this train today I go alone,
as I dreamed alone,
returning,
returning to save her- warn her.
And the earth shook,
opened up,
a protest against detouring her destination.
So I awoke,
like I awoke at today’s reckoning,
our crossed paths again parting,
a sense of finality always,
these ‘fare thee well’s’.
‘Until 2036’, we joked.
Me at seventy-five,
closer to death,
moving toward my ultimate aloneness,
asking myself again:
‘If I could have loved you more, then….?’
‘If I could have said to her, Stai attento’, then….?’
And in those tears,
in my approaching,
in your leaving,
in Elena’s taking-
accepting,
loving,
in death’s goodbye?

Firenze to Avignon, July 1996

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poppies free!

poppies free!
unfarmed not your sisters
in Afghanistan CIA’ed bulging vulva-ish poppy
cumming coming poppy ooze
reaped for trapped junkie’s desire
squeezing off blood poppy syringe

poppies pink poppy orange
sprinkling fire light over green trainscape
blurring poppy vision
of hot breathing eyelust

poppies poppies
crashing battle harmony
with brother yellow
over a thousand thousand shades
of rythymed greens

poppies poppies poppies
licking my eyes
seducing turning me
arousing reminding
your death dance mocking me
in fading blissful poppy carelessness

poppies papavale poppies a piacenza
tra i binari poppies
who’s thinking of you poppy
humans courting poppy perversions
fluids wetting seeds inseminating
sticky ecstasies of poppy season

poppies poppies
I see her sex in petals of poppies
of glistening morning dew
oh poppies do you know
the blue of my lover’s eyes
raise your poppy lips
to her open sky azzurro

oh poppy sweetness
her kisses
poppy caresses
in day’s fading light
embracing in poppy darkness
enfolding poppy sleep
poppy dreams….

Rocchetta Ligure a Bologna 30.05.02