New poems: John Grey

MANGO

Golden dangling fruit,

I pulled you from the tree,

not a harvest, but a seduction.

Your rind came away in my eager fingers,

and the amber juice

filled the creases of my palm,

like the sun’s own lotion.

 

One bite

and my mouth succumbed

to the mess of love,

down my chin,

on my lips,

in every pore of my defenseless tongue.

 

A wild too brief,

a sweetness compounded.

 

And just growing there.

Imagine that.

Like a lovely woman.

One not expected

but just standing there.

SMALL WORLD, EVEN SMALLER COUNTRY

 

So many people here.

I’m squeezed from all sides.

My lungs are in an uproar.

Breath can’t come soon enough.

 

The old are in residence.

The young are moving in

            in droves.

The rich claim their space.

There’s not enough left over for the poor

but they jam in anyhow.

The middle class lock hands,

stand on each other’s feet.

 

The straight are so crushed

into one another

they’re almost gay.

Democrats crunch Republicans.

Republicans squash Democrats.

They emerge, where they can,

as undecided.

 

And then there’s the ethnic groups.

And the religions.

Irish Catholics, Iraqi Muslims,

Jewish Jews –

I’m oozed from one to the other.

 

I’m in a steam press,

an iron maiden.

Irresistible force

meets immovable object.

 

Look around me.

If only I could.

Go where I want to.

Someone else wants it more

           

            It’s a Democracy at least.

            The voice from above insists.

            So I am a free man –

            but with a prisoner’s reality.

IN SERVICE TO YOUR EXISTENCE

 

my days flicker not for anyone          

in my bitter cold apartment

I see myself often

with metal reflected eyelids

they tap on my brow

always wanting something

maybe love

when it is all done pretending

 

oh well…

at least I found me a room

not far from yours

 

I wanted the flame but took the groove

this cracked path

where ghosts dwell

swiping left as if that meant leaving

 

I speak sometimes to everyone

but never I am still theirs

not because they remember

but because they don’t

 

I’ve learned to inhale with the lights

they pop and I am clean

but only in the flash

I forget my scent        

I am small but again I arrive

as a favor to a poem never returned

 

and one day you’ll drop that coin into the well

and I’ll wave not because I stayed

but because I have always been here

IN HONOR OF YOUR DEPARTURE, I’M…

 

getting abstract like my slurry tongue,

another path to fake feeling,

conveniently absorbed in alcohol

dripping down my shirt –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

while she did what needed to be done,

packed her bags, got on a plane,

leaving me to the weirdest dream

where i’m the only one alive on the planet,

just me and a fridge full of beer,

and a hollow body

that i can pour alcohol into

until i become just like my father –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

how many times do I have to say it,

i’m stuck here, forced to be myself –

(ah, if only you could see me now) -

gently foaming at the mouth,

erasing all miracles from my life,

turning a would-be scream

into another empty bottle

on the kitchen floor –

you and your rachmaninoff,

your duplicity –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

so much for the honest mouth,

for listening so quietly –

ridiculous!

i’m here scribbling empty lines,

whistling rugby songs,

sucking wind,

studying the spider web on the ceiling,

hearing no word from anyone,

and wanting to be

anybody but the person I am –

so what else?

what’s wrong with me?

why must shame have such an undying thirst?

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i

MY WILD SIDE WALK

A moment ago I felt so sick -

from the cloistered wealthy on the east side

to poor people on the streets of south Providence -

the drop off is amazing —no, depressing -

and so cold —

because there is nothing to be dreamed of,

there is no chance to be seized, all is lost,

time drifts backward -

I am walking. That's what I do.

I'm trying to convince my sadness to relax.

No one here's read Dostoyevsky.

I translate "The Idiot" for them -

I am Prince Myshkin in sweatshirt and jeans,

making resolutions I'm too sick to keep,

risks my frailty won't allow —

and you wonder why I can hardly move?

I stare in the windows of shuttered shops,

A pigeon plops down in the gutter beside me.

A car backfiring will be the sound of guns

come evening.

And I'm sick again -

my body puzzles me,

late afternoon shadows evoke a corresponding sadness,

and smells — and the thump of a basketball

on a nearby court — and the face at the

third floor window of a tenement —

it sets the old world in a frame -

by the time any of it reaches me,

the lives of others

have mutated into misunderstanding.

I feel as sick as the blade of an ax

slamming against a throat — or and old tune

I struggle to know the words of—

or the whir of a cop car siren,

coming for some sick kid,

coming for us all.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review. 

New poems: Ivan Pozzoni

 

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.