Skip to main content

Gabriella Garofalo

Listening to comets, aren’t you?
Yet you are deaf, deaf to the voice of riotous angels,
Deaf to the green solitude that heaves at you
While my sad place gathers
A blue ambivalence, or missing lives
Who dreamt of choosing between raw and hard light:
These are sidereal places,
Where fire can’t decrypt your hunger,
Where you can’t give light a nice welcome,
That’s why you need only
A womb insensitive to breathing light,
Here, among your furniture,
And crumpled souls at night who hiss
You won’t come back to the fields,
Nor will you reach the water,
Only exiled limbs hassling with the slant of demise,
The blue light you silence as undeserving
Of your hunger: is it a matter of voices, limbs,
And pewter skies?
Great, so please shape your light in mixed shades,
That will do, and bring me not flowers, nor toys,
As I saw too many at the children’s bedside-
Please bring me seedy cafes where men
Stare at an empty half-light,
Where women all clad in blue go unnoticed
‘Cause blue was the left hand of God
When he made me and no,
I didn’t want all the hours you hurled at me,
Time and demise, as I was dying for a wind, a fire,
A wind to dishevel my hair, to grab from me my souls,
A fire to run wild, and disperse my words
So scary of an ambush, as I was dying for being
A shore waves endlessly strike-
Waves? Of course I mean loving limbs,
Well, cry me a river, waves, limbs, who cares?
By me everything fine:
The dirty blonde who’s got scabs on her legs,
But plays the drums great,
Kharon thriving on hunger and hunted skies,
Who smiles, thanks the fight against words,
Maybe the envy the moon feels for exiled limbs,
When lovers and fathers go radio silence
And you bet she’ll end up without light.


***


Mother? No way,
You knew the names from the womb
And its dark blaze wore you out, danger -
Meanwhile she hobbles along life
Just to look the part,
Among deceits, frayed comets, halls,
Meanwhile strange rumours are going around
‘A wonderful haven for desire’ -
Forget it, not in the right mood for gropes
When she’ll show up: naked and blue,
Just like soul, yes, just like soul,
And see if they care, kids and teens
Locked up in the attic,
The grass cuts and runs,
She knows best, only books walls and trees
Can stalk light, hold her still,
Yet you stay alive, soul, you rise again
Among cars shooting out from Cerberus’ maw -
Got it, ok, the town that cheats and craves
Goes on with a life where scribes bend truth, papers,
Light colours give way to blue, neurotic sounds
Creep over your thirst deep down -
Say no to that ghastly muse
Who always wears mauve -
Well, to be honest, soul, you also wear mauve -
Maybe to get what writers try to say:
That you lost sight of heaven.

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Blue branches”, “ A Blue Soul”.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ed Dorn's # 22 From Twenty-four Love Poems

                                               from Jacket The strengthy message here in #22 of 24 Love Songs can be summed up in two lines: ['There is/no sense to beauty. . .' and '. . .How/ the world is shit/ and I mean all of it] What I also like about this brief poem is the interplay between the title of the book and the subject of the poems (love/anti-love (which is not hate)): it's all a mass of contradictions, like love. And I have to say that the shorter poems of the Love Songs and the last book he wrote before dying (Chemo Sábe) seem to me much better and more memorable than the Slinger/Gunslinger poems. These (generally) later poems probably attempt less stylistically, but are more sure-handed, hacked from a soap bar, maybe. Easy to use, but disappear after use. In any case, Dorn is well worth the reading and re-reading, for me, though he'll never become one of my favorites. And doesn't every poet want that, dead or alive? ;-) #22 The agony

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and

Corey Mesler

  I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful.  I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose.  I was lonely. I was too loose.  I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you.  If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.  COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me