THE EARTHQUAKE
I've been condemned, by Pontius Pilate's alter ego,
to aim, raise the hammer!, with a pointer on the right anda rifle on the left, to a lanky style,
to a bizarre stylus, osti!, i'll never become Dmitrij Sergeevič Merežkovskij,
to, stubbornly, raise the bar like Bubka, there's no risk of landing in the undergrowth,
all Russians, my new models, all from the steppe, all Sergey
i wouldn't want to wake up one morning and realize i'm gay
by dint of raising the bar and dealing with the “member”,
selling my ass every day to arrogant writers is enough for me.
What the fuck do you mean i have to write earthquake-stricken?
I have to move to a shack in the still-unreconstructed Abruzzo,
bribes, in Italy, are never touched, they're organized through home banking
even the healthy kickbacks, defying plane geometry, has become a trading phenomenon.
I tried to write a series of verses, shook the PC, and threw it out the window,
i turned it back on, finding it unharmed, and in Word i always discover the same old story,
a frozen writing like Orogel's maxi pouches,
with a flexible form similar to the expiration date on a bag of wurstell,
in distribution centers, once the bag expires, they change the label
mine is a caloric writing that condemns every gourmet to fattening.
Are my verses bizarre enough? Some compare me to Cecco,
some to Cécco Bèppe, the unredeemed anti-artist, some to Esenin, some to a lansquenet,
sometimes i struggle to equate myself with myself, a tuneless melliphonous nightingale,
could it be that my being an eagle makes me an earthquake victim?
THE ALIEN
Headlights flash at the exit of the Milan ring road
a screeching noise of impact on the ground burns the ground
it's not the usual flooding of the Seveso river that creates the sound of a hurricane
an alien has landed.
Ambulances and Carabinieri, drawn by the confusion, arrive on site,
the docking of an Unidentified Flying Object is not a usual upside;
the television infantry quickly arrive from the Cologno Monzese tower
the exclusive interview on Mediaset Premium would cut off any ratings.
"Doctor Alien," the freelance journalist elbows, "do you have belligerent intentions?",
in the hope of getting the alien to sign a waiver for free;
"My donkey" the alien replies, "do you think i would have landed in Brianza
if i had intended to achieve even a half-victory?".
"I am an alien, and i would like to send a message to your nation,
which, along with Greece, Portugal, and Spain, is a southerner in the European Union,
the BCA (alien central bank) is willing to promote stock options
— as you say—so that every bank in Italy, after recapitalizing,
lowers interest rates on current accounts, irritating the colon
of millions of italian savers to the point of creating them a recessionary diarrhea".
The thirty-year-old journalist, in a miniskirt and revealing low-cut neckline,
tries to interrupt the alien with a routine question:
the man, pointing with his middle finger, sends a thunderbolt at her, disappeared, gone,
as she was accustomed, from time to time, to disappear under some desk.
"Point two of the BCA" the alien continues "you will have to increase every form of flexibility,
that is, use a flex or a Bosch grinder on the smiles of those peddling unemployment
under the false rhetoric of opportunity: since the Craxi’s era, they have exhausted all credibility.
If you wanted to fuck it up Italy, you might as well have kept Ilona Staller in the Chamber
and stopped voting, like donkeys, for Merkel's microcephalic left-center-right followers
tackling the tip of the recession iceberg on the Transatlantic, Monte Titanic".
"Point three of the BCA" the alien concludes "if Berlusca arrives from Arcore, i won't even begin
i wouldn't want, among Mubarak's various granddaughters, to stumble into an hospice’s odyssey
(in Cesano Boscone), or if Fonzie arrives from Firenzi with the face of an undertaker
i wouldn't want to spend millions of alien-dollars on detergent trying to remove stains from a jaguar
you'll have to sell Alps to Switzerland, Tyrrhenian Sea to Corsica, and Adriatic to Albania
and empty the ocean of public debt with the spoon of gerontocracy".
Suddenly, with sirens blaring, a Croce Verde Pavese ambulance arrives,
two vigorous paramedic, careful to avoid middle and media, dress the Genoese alien in a straitjacket
he, immediately alienated, interrupts his conversation and calmly walks away.
How the fuck did they confuse alien messages with a Beppe Grillo rally?
THE FATE OF SIPHACES
Titus Livius, against Polybius, takes pleasure
in explaining the fate of Syphax.
The chronicle: we recount the bare facts
as Govoni would do with his satisfied flowers.
The background: Scipio activates Massinissa and Laelius
against a Syphax forced to give his best.
For Syphax, in Magnos Campos, the bitter pill is hard to swallow:
being defeated at the Bagrada along with Hasdrubal Gisco:
Postero die Scipio cum omni Romano et Numidico equitatu Masinissamque Laelium
expeditisque ad persequendos Syphacem atque Hasdrubalem mittit militum.
With Syphax captured, the surrender of Cirta is certain
Laelius's knights win overwhelmingly in the away match
the defeat is Syphax's fault: nisba!
Sofonisba ends up in the middle of it
forced to swallow a cup of poison
as Socrates did in the Crito without being inferior.
Scipio C. Laelio cum Syphace aliisque captivis Romam misso, cum quibus et Masinissae
legati profecti sunt, ad Tyneta rursus castra refert ipse.
Siface embarked towards Rome, caput mundi
incarcerated by a chain of gerunds,
Mazetullus and Tycheus were in Zama and Siface was in Tivoli
Hannibal had diabetic birds, that is, bitter cocks, and in Carthage they were really cabbages.
Morte spectaculo magis hominum quam triumphantis gloriae Syphax est subtractus,
Tiburi haud ita multo ante mortuus, quo ab Alba fuerat traductus.
Where do flowers look good? In a vase:
twenty-six verses weren't needed to destroy Parnassus.
UNEMPLOYED-BORN
I owed a handful of verses to a talented young man from Campania
whom, I will certainly disappoint by not using my recent corrosive rhyme
i would like to cement myself, in verses of armed conflict,
on the burning issue of the unemployed-born.
What is the unemployed-born?
I would like to be Jorge Francisco Isidore Luis Borges Acevedo,
i, who Acevedo and Acesento, and draw up a magnificent list:
the unemployed-born are:
(a) belonging to the Emperor (Equitalia), (b) stuffed,
(c) nowhere to be found beyond the Cortina d'Ampezzo, (d) cut from the flexible Bosch,
(e) of a generation that asks for nothing and will never obtain anything, (f) ...,
(g) stray dogs, (h) internships or massacres, which is the same,
(i) of the same diffusion as the Slovak authors promoted in a famous blog by [S],
(f) disappeared into thin air like the IX Legio Hispana, (g) where flowers are at home: outside,
(h) of the same consistency as a limited liability company, (j) without an i (i.e. Natural Animals Treatment),
(k) continually searching for a stable job (office),
(l) born is better than Pato, or is Pato better than born (ask B. Berluschina),
(m) who broke the vase, and, without the vase, where do the flowers fit?, (n) et cetera,
(o) inhabitants of time and not of the hospice.
I owed a handful of verses to Mariano,
Mariano, don't study: a degree is a mistake of youth,
Mariano, don't scream: "full and desperate with or without TV",
Mariano, don't slack off: all cows are not crazy and all crazy women are not cows,
Mariano, don't give up: it won't do you any good to change dozens of shirts.
Odin: Have no other gods before you. You shall make no idol or image for yourself: no Friends or Men and Women.
Dva: Do not pronounce the name of the Lord your God Ivan(o).
Tri: Sanctify all the days of unemployment.
Ĉetyre: Honor your father and mother, and their pensions.
Pjať: Do not kill yourself.
Ŝesť: Do not commit adultery, do not commit impure acts, in short, do not commit any acts.
Sem: Do not become a member of parliament or senator of the Kingdom.
Vosem: Do not bear false witness against your neighbor, and lie in any other matter.
Devjať: Do not covet your neighbor's divorce.
Desjať: Do not covet your neighbor's house, nor any of the things that are your neighbor's; in short, only rob—like our beloved nation—those you do not know.
I owed a handful of verses to Mariano,
who won't accuse me of being an epigone of an epigone of a Zanzottian epigone,
it's just that at 3:31 in the morning, after a bottle of Sangria,
i'm as drunk as the unknown, unremarkable Lucanian poetaster who breathes aerophagia,
and if you challenge me in the ring of experimentalism,
you risk turning me into a ruthless advocate of super-capitalism,
you force me to write, Mariano, why the fuck are you studying philosophy?
become an expert in creative budgeting or a drug dealer.
CHECKMATE ON THE BOARD
The modern intellectual’s not intelle(a)ctual at all,
he won’t buy the books where his name’s on the wall,
he loathes self-funding, despises the game,
handles bitter money, if it even came;
between word and deed stands a sponsor’s gate,
all thinkers who talk, none who operate,
no thinkers who act, nothing to say,
all thinkers playing queer games at play,
with the assholes of hosts who gladly donate.
The publisher’s house is never his own,
it’s rented ground, badly overthrown,
where the tenant finds it wise to steal every frame,
punch holes in the ceiling in copyright’s name,
he calls himself humanist, whole and complete,
kept like a dog under the table for meat,
as if two shitty texts dashed off in a minute
could balance the risk that an editor’s in it.
The end-of-season sale will be coming soon,
the important thing is not to go on a sale in the coulee,
in Italy crushed by T.A.R.E.S. tax stress,
a fake republic with no trace of res,
the public hangs tight to the gas-pipe line,
dumb authors dreaming they’re Dumas divine,
micro-publishing smashed by IMU’s doom,
tenants of bankrupt houses sharing the room,
you’ll enjoy suffering T.A.R.I.’s,
and it’ll be bitter fucking business.
Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced Law and Literaturein Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world; He collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. Between 2007 and 2024, different versions of the books were published: Undergroundand Riserva Indiana, with A&B Editrice, Versi Introversi, Mostri, Galata morente,Carmina non dant damen, Scarti di magazzino, Qui gli austriaci sono più severi dei Borboni, Cherchez la troika e La malattia invettiva con Limina Mentis, Lame da rasoi, with Joker, Il Guastatore, with Cleup, Patroclo non deve morire, with deComporre Edizioni, Kolektivne NSEAEand Lo Stato Pontificiowith Divinafollia. It contains a fortnight of autogérées socialistes edition houses. He wrote 152 volumes, wrote 1000 essays, founded an avant-garde movement (NéoN-avant-gardisme, approved by Zygmunt Bauman), and wrote an Anti-manifesto NéoN-Avant-gardiste. His verses are translated into 30 languages. In 2024, after six years of total retrait of academic studies, he return to the italian artistic world and melts the NSEAE Kolektivne (New socio/ethno/aesthetic anthropology) [https://kolektivnenseae.wordpress.com/], the legal "armed" wing of Italian literary late modernism.
