the snow

when i was younger the snow was just a dream. i think it snowed once in 1986. supposedly that was an El Niño year or, more simply put, a year of exceptional cold. I was almost amazed at the possibility of ice falling from the sky. But even more so I was amazed at the possibility of ice going all the way from the sky to the ground, touching it, bringing it to it's own listless temperature and finally sticking and laying on the ground. It made me think of the world as a giant hourglass that would slowly begin to fill all white and silent.
So that was it, that was the attractive, the sky, in some places, and at certain times, tried to reach to the surface of the earth making the world just one substance: in unison, whole, still and white.

a recurring dream

if no rain's any truer than rain
if distance is is in anyway
a proxy for emptiness
then me giving up myself
plays as a canopy under which
i can hide from
dreaming.

by endlessly falling again
and again
and again
into you.

if meaning mimics doubt
you hop south then west then east
if time catches up with you
will it shift the way you see ahead?
the question is when, the question is
whether i'll resist lying again without being completely empty.

for b.j.

a reply to silence

what will all this mean
when all the intentions
have been filed
and all the regrets ran their course
circumnavigating circumstances?

to see what lies behind the cape
at sunset
we take the biggest of risks.
and the image reveals for what it is;
far more dangerous is what we might have had
just a handful of thoughts
good only to tire our eyes

for b.j.

a sign

i was waiting for a sign
for something to shake this tree
of yellowish leaves
born in shreds and mended by wind

i am someone else tonight
and tomorrow night
but don't you come lecturing
me on how to be
what i'm supposed to be
when all you accumulate is doubts
you can't claim to have a plan

silence stays heavy
under shelf clouds
it's true. it occupies space
but negates any resolution
any rendering
shoving outcomes realistic or not
under another dusty rug of it-takes-time's

for b.j.

the list of awkward

· we start from a pretty weird situation already
· theater, no theater, come there, meet there, go together, meet here, meet there.
· see you lying down on ground and think "ireallywannalaydownnexttoherandsayhi,butibetternot"

i usually do what i feel, and i don't know why i don't with you.––[editor's note]

· we find a bar. we can't get in.
· then we go to a nice place, but i can't even order a spoon.
· we go to the theater i get your name wrong. i start hating myself for the rest of the night or eternity, whichever ends first.
· we ride on the subway. i'm scared shitless that there'd be a control, we'd get fined and you'd associate me with getting harassed in german and minus €40.
· i'm supposed to help you with your bike and i don't.
· we get to my house. i leave you waiting outside. again.
· we ride to neukölln or to bayern, whichever came first, i want to keep chatting while riding because i think it's a usually a beautiful thing–you know, air and city landscape at speed, while you hear a familiar voice, it's like being in a movie and it would've been great to be there with you. i can't because there's traffic and this asshole honks at you and you have to tell me: i don't like riding in the middle of the street, as if i didn't know.
· we get to the bar, i get the feeling you're waiting for someone who doesn't show up. i'm afraid to ask.
· i go and get beers, but an annoying person keeps hitting on this german guy at the bar. i leave you waiting. again.
· i ask you why you keep folding the volksbühne flyer wrong because i want to know if it's what you do when you think about books you make, like new ways of binding books and origami books and whatnot. it all comes out wrong, as a reproach.
· i find €50. i assume they were yours because i only notice them when you get up from your usual crossedleggedness. when you come back i wrapped them and immediately i realize it looks like i'm giving you €50. i feel so stupid i just want to dissolve into my beer and fizz away within microseconds. i try to explain, but there's nothing to do.
· you say you're tired, i am basically mute. i realize you're saying goodbye. i start thinking about writing this.

only moment when i felt alright: sitting on that 1900's bench-couch, our legs drawing a triangle, looking at how round and curved the hall was and how sparkling were the crystals in the chandelier and in your eyes. your voice was soft and i was relaxed, smoking a cuban cigar. i we both dressed elegantly; i had a mustache and an iron car parked outside. we were high-society members, well respected among the artistic elites, conspiring against a blackshirt regime, we patronized opposition theater. but the time had come, we would've been arrested come morning. sitting on the couch, away from inquiring eyes, i asked you to elope with me to switzerland, and start a new life there. you obviously said yes.

for k-n

i just wanted to say goodbye
from far away i wave
to you
and your back
"but you've not said hi"
and i know, but i feel i don't need to

so goodbye and so long
to all the difficult things
whoever said they were exciting
it's just smoke in our eyes
and wishes of coming true

the red lantern

or so i see
from above.

the light shines warm yellow from inside.
i waited till darkness made its way
noses red, wool and quick steps
embraced with wide black arms

i waited till all around were
lists of city silences preparing for country secrets

from above the light bled through the glass windows
for everyone to see, but there was no one there
no one there except the trees
and the rooftops leaning down

and you i waited for
to come smile quiet
legs crossed on the chair, under the table

i waited till there was nothing more to wait for
and i thought that, in the end, since i didn't know what i was waiting for,
i was just waiting for you.

for k-n

fog on the river

sometimes, as the passing of days
the slow change of perspective
takes place as angles roll slowly west
you and i, a definite direction
and a recurrence of quick snaps
like ticks on windows

but as the pane thickens with water
the outside blurs, sometimes distorted
sometimes magnified
as i keep steadily on the outside
signaling on each passing season
the you from the fall
and the you from the spring

for Z.D.

straight line

he walks in that direction
he definitely shouldn't stray

he walks straight, keeps from gusts and faster cars
impassible to time and times.

a blade

where, after the winter long
layers of earth lay, where can't sisters and brothers
rush the grain?
but still land lies fallow, under the glow of
an unborn winter. we had rugs to sit on
and eyes to fill.
still a single blade of grass shoots to the light
leaving me with a non-parallel antonym
to forgive-and-forget.

for b.j.

North|wishtanding the loneliness

sometimes you have a way out
and sometimes you don't
sometimes it's easier to look back in anger
than kick it in the gutter

as if cradling what's broken
might mend it again.
so you want to erase
and give yourself an excuse

but it'll only throw you in a loop
and leave you out in the cold
where all is left is empty bottles
and leaves that crack brown.

pronouns

there is a word to indicate "you"&"me"
that word is "us"
but it's too heavy and sultry
as the August air it resonates in
glare is undiscerning
it coats things and tired hearts,
i don't say what i say
i don't say why
the way glare does

i've been doing this too long, i've accepted
the system's flawed and that nothing
ever turns the way i want it
to be surprised at you not wanting us

glare surprises everyone, and surprises me
thinking i'll ever be immune, i'll ever stop hoping
to be stolen from this air

for b.j.

a tale of summer gone

the summer here vanished in a matter of hours
everyone kept staring right and left
trying to spot it as it rushed east, west or,
most probably,
south. And there as such, darkening without notice
clouds urged their way through
kicking each and everyone into the 5th season
which is like a trailer of what will come
brooding with the new.

it was indeed a parenthesis,
and in a more fatalistic, pagan way
we could say; for every Berliner's complaint
–about past July heat–
a raindrop fell on the city, on its streets
and in its canals. filling straight lines with concentric circles.

for b.j.

presences

she is there
in my livingroom
strange place for a bike
though she's metal and rubber
people attribute more to that
than to a handshake or a kiss

she resonates in my mind
a silent connection with what can only
be imagined and wished for.
she impersonates, comes to silent steel life,
represents, and–if you won't believe me–
she ultimately, fills some square meters
around me at night at day and every day.

but she cannot decide
she has a mute power
to set her limits certain:
where she should go and how much she should wait
before becoming an object again. inanimate, motionless and material.

for b.j.

i tried

and i am rested on
a canal bed
looking up through the murky depths reversed
to a sky rebounding you
as if the course of the waterway
was deviated to make space
for all the words
that had been written and said along its banks
and what of the miles that rest
from here to that other hemisphere?

distances built with tracks, to go far, to accept
that, maybe, this voyage would be our last
happily ended after
i had wrestled from the before. i couldn't overcome
the grassroots of the equator.
an imaginary line couldn't free you, how could i.

for b.j.

The country of the dead

These are difficult days. It is neither the time or the place to explain to you why our country is in arguably the most difficult socio-economic situation since the end of WWII. [...]

From outside, we see the world and wish it was ours. Our generation is learning to hide from its inherited stereotypes. From amusing antics they have transfigured into monsters precluding any pride, or unity. Their long shadows from centuries of immigration thrash every step we make towards a collective conscience as a country. Italians in 2010 are a pack of toothless wolves, left behind and out in the grassland with no shade or cover. Avoiding to point fingers in any direction, it's useless to find the culpable or the runaway. We carry the heaviest burden, and if the world might have no future, Italy has no present. We live in an interminable parenthesis where the dead hold the strings to an invisible yoke. The dead have taken away any chance of redemption in our lifetime, and most of us know they'll never be able to live their lives on the shores of the peninsula as we live them abroad.

For a brief time in the summer of 2006, football brought back hope. And everyone can argue on its meaninglessness, but for a brief period it was a signal that we, the people who still believe in that land, could regain control and lift our heads. For the enlightened few who have to carry the burden and shame of a tyranny settling in, and that of a stifling recession crippling all chances of starting enterprise without nepotism, 2006 was pure distilled confidence.

But this year, the country of the dead has made sure to shut yet another crack of light. Conservatism poisons every aspect of Italian society, so why we expect it not to invade football? As funny as it may sound, our team is the mirror of our country. 9 out of 14 players are there because they were there four years ago, the rest are there because they follow orders exactly as they are told. Check out the names in the political party(ies) and you will find the same proportions. In a paradoxical inversion of the metaphor, the best footballers have been left home, while the mediocre represent all of us.

We live abroad. We are confronted with ridicule everyday. We have no chance of rebelling against this, because it would mean excluding ourselves from what is ours.

But I won't be playing the "un-patriotic" role that the country of the dead has drawn out for us. So forward Italy.

We are headed for sure disaster, and we will surely sink, but not with our eyes closed. We know what's happening yet we still choose to stand behind our flag.

canal song

in between isles of a's,
the coordination of coordinators
the collaboration of collaborators
while looking for importance
under unbuilt ikea furniture,
stove-top disasters, alaskan pixelated monsters
learning to play the clumsy chords of
my sleep,
my wake becomes one
with another 1000 canal drifters
at night in a parenthetical summer

pausing for air, at every end
at every friday and with every new eyes that meet mine

day | night / day

why did he keep to himself
rolling out of the house
after a nights of sleep?
why did he not react to warehouses,
and post-meridians

were those nights harder than the days
his processing of the whole thing
satan in red slippers
"i'd lost all hope, but still had words"
now THEY betray him
stuck like frozen windowpanes
in the deep Artic summer air
settling, at night, when ghosts lay less
dormant than the dreams.

we catch fire

a midnight wood catches fire
putting out a cigarette / too late to lie
on rolling kilometers: you have seen more than just the soles of our shoes
regrets, rips, diluting rain, and one nights for stands or simple revenge
like the one that inevitably goes west and comes back at an angle

we
catch fire
almost spontaneously, in a circle
it's too late to lie.

a morning comes

a morning
through the shutters and the bus wakes
his stomach as empty as light through the room
outlining a knife cut and no knife
no newness,
but no regards either
to what once was but was never meant to be.

shutters at dark

an emergency emerged
surfacing pluralled by single malt
whisked out like a cat on its cushions
nothing ever turned out exactly as we planned it
when we decided not to plan it
as it got too late, we were reconciled
with ideas of impedance and hindrance.
what a soil: fertile and arid at the same time.
the limitless scared us
creeping from behind
beating down in frothier fourths
and the years on our hands.

my night with the letter a

the first bit that touches my mouth is jam on bread
no wait no bread
cold and fridgey against a corner-eyed white smoothie chocolate sky
on my left accountants go astray to come back and talk of listings
life is a balloon losing water from its holes and patches are actions
i'm putting the last short clocked hand into making my figure work on stage, the cracks through the boards reveal lights,
unused threes and one-time breaths.
a night with bar wit and chord fences. it's hard to get over those eyes
–and up there from the angles bounce curves and niche lips like every other day in summer
or the first cry of timelines that you've had, that everyone had.
the question is what have you been wasting.
how you've been doing is much more interesting, i say
looking for splits to pull and wedge, like a mole into pirate wood
saltwater inside to display its knowledge of death
it's the only subject we didn't get to for episode two or special zones and ways out inside a tarmac filled, frilly washout from last nights drink.
trains ride diameters with remainders, cameras upside down under the river. deep where silence sleeps unattended, spliced and boneless ready to ingest bearing the fruits of cradled revenge. the songs have been sung, the flowers have passed their heyday like a belt of mirror beads. remembering rum from a bottle cap in the portuguese tent, where i felt alone for the first time.
there are hints of overwhelming blue helmets to the rescue
but i'd need an i.v. of shhhhhhh in my veins to recover if you only but dared to put a foot on the battle ground.
1, 2, and seventeen counting listless on an excuse mission
to get close or closer to the steps never knowing
if the first one is up or down
pre-intro-chapter: all easy, all flowing, all done
but not done all innate all again
you have a word for unintentional grace but no description is needed, it's braille for the blind and knocks ahead or behind.
when you are you're not but still effortlessly anyways
this was the only uncontemplated option
a final hidden crease on the canvas finale
shown rounded cut and folded. flooding again with the flare of tomorrow's coffee and today's regrets
math plus listening what else i've gained in your eyes if not three and twenty and one and thirty?
again i sidetrack a sideshow and i can't help reciting my own verselets with a savor for bible stories and sexy half smiles. exclamation marks stare at your mixing straight hops
or potato skin with photograph paper.
some (more) questions lay on my chest like military medals. a play and loose pages at the park on a not-so-very sunny day with earthworms, northern lights street fights
and blurry kindergarten summer vacation stories
all about the story, all behind the curtain, all physical, sophistical, more stoic than broken wood, more highlighted than police cars. rgb's and garden trees–we count on our fingers up until twenty then we move on to someone else. with more hands than two you make it possible, and i follow like a water trickle reversing mountain and valley.
an easy finding for basslines and failures alike; translating into fridge letters and black on black. spinning speaking for momentum angular and still in its own way.

longing freezes either north or southwest. no interest.

long walk home alone recollecting floats and chinese dragons yellow and tinged red gold, curled up like waves towards shore. i'm still unpacking boxes taken with me open on freight bay closed off by mainstay bar lights and corrugated cardboard. what speaks after the sound has diffused to you, to me and back to you?
does this end with the jam in my mouth, does the alphabet start and end tonight with the letter a.

a brief pause

we can only keep busy. distract ourselves, get sidetracked–intentionally or not. laughter is a way of extending the illusion, but it doesn't work on sundays or at night.

imagine on sunday nights.

and maybe it's the secret of society living, a subconscious feeling to belong, to be validated by foreign eyes. but we can only keep busy; and forget that

yeah

you die, but you also live alone.