life in vienna and other stories
Inizia col silenzio
finisce con la voce
e mi pare pure audace
data la rima spezzata
nell´anima, nel ventre.
E nel sogno ti sento
e nel sogno ritaglio
frammenti di tempo
che c´è e non c´è mai stato
e se tu fossi a me avvinghiato
-origami di sinapsi-
-cloruro il sapore-
penso
allora sentirei meno il
peso
di me stessa.
Give me more of humanity
I want to see clearly now.
I drink Martini
so cliché
while spreading my lips
at your sight
I’m by your side?
Not even good with words
maybe good-looking enough
or that’s what I want to know
although
my brain’s a Medusa hair-do
not the prettiest
yet a catcher:
you compliment – I bite
you think I’m cool – I die
you talk so smart – I would rather play thumbs.
Still here we are
still, we are
can’t move far
can be only stars
self-awareness is an idol
with the eyes of a petrifying clum.
I thought it could be magic.
I clean the dirt out of it
The years,
the steps,
the last kiss.
I brush it
I strike it
I want it immaculate
without losing the dirty memories
The steps forwards, the ones backwards,
who cares for the direction
when stomping on a forbidden zone?
I wash it, I paint it again
– if necessary –
I paint a new frame
I weave it again
as all this were gone;
I paint it blue and green
like the once-had-a dream
I change it to change
the truth in vain
as if the water could wash from it the pain away.
“A case study of the effects
of psychotropic substances
on grown-up middle-aged men”
by William Wordsworth.
That one will eat you
from inside out
reversing you like an
old holed sock
excavating your cheeks
defeating your age.
That one will instead
slowly make you its
own,
glowing in a singing swan
grasping your head like an
old deadly hag.
It swallows you up the same way as
it took in you its domain.
That one will teach you
it’s better not to
overdo, not to overdose,
if your mind cannot charge anymore
the path of your own, personal thought
– your proactivity –
in horror vacui slammed out.
The only one I know
though
has a liver and a heart
two lungs-wings
a fucking hot tongue.
What should I do when
already now I want the then?
Tell me the cure, give me the potion,
the secret ingredient that can
give me my candor back.
I feel safe in your fish eye
in the time you can’t define
I get joy out of denying
how dirty,
dirty rainbow am I.
Million faces blue
and my love, away,
the same colour too.
Addiction.
What I cause
What I accuse.
I challenge myself in dreams
– never in danger, always on the alert –
I cannot die and even get touched
but
I run, I run, I fight, I’m chased
constantly, they’re closer, so near
I can feel my fear
without losing grace
I just focus and rise!
But I bounce here and there
my focus unfocused by fear
again, they are so near…
Now I’m awake
enough for tonight, challenge denied.
Hits me like the pain
after a rocambolesque fall
unexpected as the sweet delight
of bleeding the feeling out of the skin.
In a reversed way:
pain can be joy,
joy doesn’t change – itself –
route
And
by the way
who has decided there’s a
need of cause
for the consequence of laugh?
Why should there be a reason for
a heart to scream
its lightness of being?
This poem connects to “The lightness of being me“, by me.
Me eating an apple, Still life in motion. Me watching you, Sturm und drang of the 21st century. Feeling like burning inside while acting a perfect cold manner. I don’t wear anything but a too large T-shirt, you don’t wear anything but me, and it fits you perfectly. The music is surrounding, drives your hands on my hips, my feet can’t touch the ground anymore. It makes me feel masochistic, you having me, you knowing it. My hair surround your fist that gently throws my back back, my spine arched in a smile, pushed me far yet closer to you. I can just feel the breeze of yours, breathe blowing on my shoulder, emotional drops flowing. I am a stretched sheet close to tear, two massive forces I could just put together, to which surrendering, intact.
The arrogant and the villain*
– sometimes, often all in one –
I am just a means
for his pray
You don’t have Coke?
you little nothing
what should I do then
with this lack of choice?
Improve your taste,
I would say.
*In this case I use “villain” to recall the Italian word “villano”, which corresponds to “boor”. Despite the different meaning I’ve decided to keep it this way, since the correct translation applies to the context, too.
Bar poetry is a collection born from my personal experience while I was working at night in a very old-fashioned underground music bar in Vienna. Each poem describes a different situation with the customers, often with a dialogue (spoken and unspoken) between them and me.
I keep my fear
on one bold gear
The easier: the smoother, the harder:
the first, I sweat and slowly go
the last, I hardly proceed but in the end succeed
the definition given by the moment
Words on canvas 