To M.
Apologies in advance for her blunders,
She’s new to the game, just never suggest
She stands among lilacs and dreams,
Or lets her mind dance like sweet grass-
She’s writing-
With every breath she inhales shards of blue,
The sharp edges where angels used to sit,
And writes in tides, wondering if the sky’s always been
This bruised shade of blue-
She writes to leave her hunger bare upon the page,
She writes to translate a lilting blue into words
Of wind and height, who cares,
But what she really wants is blue, the shade of twilight
Falling over the hills, not just the sky, but the breath
Behind blue veins, blue grief soaking through the roots-
I see. Blue. Everything must be blue, right?
Not just any shade, but the blue of tragic heroines,
A colour that screams ‘I read Sylvia Plath
When I was sixteen, it changed my life and dreams’-
Well, that's really too much,
Enough now with desire so friendly to the gales,
Enough with grace and yearning skirting round the corners,
Woman, just lie down in the sweet grass,
And you give her uncaged words to tear apart,
Why this absurd craze with eternity?
Hey man, I tell you, angels carved of blue and mist,
Who go adrift through her blue mind,
Holding your breath for words to fall down her window-
Let grass choke on her mind, I say,
And maybe then her wings will spread,
Or she will capsize to the steady tide of a becoming,
Where she is both writer and sky,
And you finally know what it means to name the hunger,
Or cast it aside.
*******
To MA
Say, did you summon her from old tales?
Here lies the garden of intensity,
There is a woman inside the breath,
She waits beside the rushing water, learning to forgive
The tide's grasp, while the sky holds her waiting,
An indigo hunger that tastes of words and untold grace-
But no map for her soul,
Only the grass tangled around her ankles,
A snare of living words that can’t forgive the blue,
And water, that remembers the weight
Of hands or afternoons-
So, where do you place your bet, on the green,
On her soul's desire?
I place mine on a morning never to come,
I bet she’ll never learn to forgive the way the river bends,
The way blades always rise again-
I know, you are dead right, the jagged corners of the days
Are starving for absolution, but she‘s yearning
Only for the grass to wipe from her words she was too afraid
To say when she still had skin and breath-
Anyway.
Forgive or not, summer doesn't care,
She’s got a lot on her mind, with that bloody guest
Who overstayed his welcome,
The sun that cuts you no break-
Well, don’t fret, soon or late rain and pewter clouds
Will give us ease and shelter-
While two lovers in the background,
Modern martyrs to an ancient script,
So rich in nonsense tonight, are breathing
The dark promise of a tryst-
No need for words for them burglars of the dusk,
Just breathless hunger, the blazing skin
Of a September afternoon.
*******
To P.
Shenanigans, they call it, a little midnight hustle,
A larceny of rhythm and shadows, shenanigans played out
In the dark, as words slide in, tiptoeing on shards
And paranoia, to steal silence from the vault,
They come through the slats of the blind like the blue,
A sparkle here, a shimmer there, in a frantic jumble
Of light and sleight when poems are born
From nights that steal seconds from a drowsy dark
Weaving tales so sly, and yes, bedazzling shadows
With a pilfered moonlight-
Beware the charm of daring nights, lovers,
For poetry breathes in stolen time,
Beware a sky trading in cobalt tears, indigo lies,
Don’t try to steal the moon if you can't even carry dust,
No, you can’t, you simply can’t snatch the wandering poetry
Of a life breathing in slow time
If hooded fears hoodwink time and slip away,
Playing havoc with the moonlight glow-
Yes, a masterclass in high-wire shenanigans,
A heist of the soul, maybe a glitch in the grace,
While down there you writhe, burn,
Taste the salt of an unrequited hunger,
Unwisely confident your blue-tinted desire
Will grant you exclusive entry to heavenly ropes,
To midnight’s bruised blue skin.
*******
To Y.
Oh, the sweet agony of the wait, as she spent
So many winters learning the true shade
Of waiting, and there it was, a blue so wild
It felt like a misdeed, yet never apologised
For being so wild, and she saw it stretching on
When anger was only foul weather, a sudden gale
Against the mind, leaving the sky behind,
Stifling in words left unsaid or shouted out,
Wanting to hurl them at the ceiling of the world
While silence jagged her throat like shards of glass-
Oh, it all sounds so intriguing,
But who listens when breaths turn sour?
God, or the wind? Are they up behind that blue?
Got it, soul, OK, but now please wait,
Let restless words dissolve like salt on the lips,
Just wait, I say, under a sky that isn't blue anymore,
Or ever was, and let the wind sweep through
To drive the anger away from the house,
And throw it into the hideout where God is breathing,
Waiting for you to be silent enough to hear Him,
Maybe to wonder if He’ll ever hold His breath
Unsure if blue will grow into redemption,
Or burn the mind until it eats your name
While words lie hidden in blue corners,
And ask shadows to account for breaths-
Now that’s brilliant, you really got it right,
Sure, let’s wait while blue gets its act together,
And what do we get? Nothing, only a blank page tangled
With secrets we are too scared to ask God to unshroud-
By the by, is anybody listening out there?
See, her anger has nowhere to land.
*******
To B.
Who told you desire, words, even divine whispers
Can fill the distance between souls and tales
God threw like seeds?
Now the blades of summer set free a green breath,
The scent of a season going bad,
The jolt of uncut grass grounding days that never stand still-
Look, grass, she knows you hold tight all her secrets,
She knows your scent grabs at her ankles
Like a green rejection, yet she still breathes in the green air
Wondering if heaven smells like freshly cut fields-
Know what, God, your green madness cast us adrift
In tangled scents, yet we stalk desire sowing seeds
In our Sahara, and wondering why the rain can’t see
Our names, that dazzling burnout that steals our breath-
Thus we remain lost among blades of truth cutting too deep-
But listen, why do you make souls out of desire
And leave them starving in the green,
Among names they made up just to have
Some breaths in the blue?
OK, shall we try and look again at a sky so heavy
When you turn away from souls that are the symbol
Of your regret breathing in the blue?
God, can you see their green persistence
On blooming where you bed only weeds?
They’re dying to meet you, who cares
If in swaying blades, in revelations dressed up
As a Sunday afternoon, they’re dying for you to look down
And feel not rage, not dismay at their clumsy grace,
Just a silent wonder that they are here trying to give
Breaths and prayers to ceilings of leaves,
While a woman with words intertwined makes shelters
Out of wind or desire, of course with a soupçon
Of supernatural fear and expensive mistakes-
Pray, Sir, what else if not her poems?
*******
To S.
Mothers and friends told her to write of lilacs and rain,
Something sweet, of course, to weave poetry
From sighs or moonlight-
But too bad she’s a kind of blue that lives only
At the core of the screams,
A woman who cradles volcanoes in her soul,
And never asks for license to burn,
As she’s blue, ablaze at the core-
Sorry, what? Oh, they call it rage when her hands shape
Words into a blue lightning, so what?
Let them be wrong, since poetry dwells
In the silence before a blast, then it comes streaming
In words of raw blue, since tonight she’ll write poems
Breathing in the salt of wounded prayers, so step back,
Just look how she burns when meeting God eye to eye
In the scorching noon, shaking under the blue of words-
Beware, never mention the grace to her,
If she writes Genesis again with blowtorch and blue-
Oh, is this what theycall inspiration?
Who cares, as long as she writes ‘cause if she stops
The blue will burn the pages, and they won’t be able
To hold her while she asks God if He ever fears
The cobalt brushing heavens ever since He breathed
Life into being, before blue grew bit heavy between His
And lost eyes.
*******
To W.
But this is a different kind of hunger,
It burns cold, a low blue fire, the cold hiss
Of light striking true, striking hard,
Yes, darling, blue fire, darling,
What women like her burn with when the paper is too white,
Too clean for the mess in our mind,
And women sculpt poems,
Among stars, strong coffee, bruised egos they rise
With boundless unsought words,
Writing lines beating with the strength of trees,
Just for the blue, not red, too garish, too loud,
Since what is a poem but an act of faith?
Too bad sometimes rejection strides in,
She says words are neve, too raw,
Looks at them burning blue in the dark,
And says the edge is too hard to touch, just ice that chars-
I dunno-
Maybe rejection is just an extinguisher that smothers
The blue fire you try to kindle on the page,
So you feel shunned by the very sky you are trying to paint,
Or maybe she scorns the electric blue of your mind,
And just feels safe with women sitting in the corner,
A cup of tea in their hands while the house burns down-
I dunno-
Only, sometimes women alive in rejection's wake lay down
The pen, grab a knife, slit their lives in hunger and glee,
Blue bleeding through margins where she said no,
But where do words go when she hands them back?
Well, they just dart down like falling stars
Heading to the untamed blaze, a blue inferno that burns
Through silence, yes, yes, a cold electric blue, a blue fire,
And oh, darling mine, just look how brightly I burn now.
Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo (She/Her/Hers)
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”; “Casa di erba”; “Blue
Branches”; “ A Blue Soul”, “After The Blue Rush”.
