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Claudio Pozzani: Poetry PWF 2020
SHADOW MARCH
Ropes are falling from the sky
and frozen chains dance round you
It's a world of knots to be unraveled in the dark
between a bolt of phosphorus and one of cries
It's a tangle of ropes that defy the scissors' hands
A comb that gets caught in an unthinking mane
Shadow... shadow
Another blink of the eye and then it's...
I look around myself and all I see is walls.
Even my mirror has become a wall.
On your breasts a skin of wall has grown
My heart, my senses reincarnated in walls
And prayers and curses keep on raining down
Evaporating as soon as they touch the sand.
And adverbs, adjectives and words without a sound
Slither away in a poisonous silence
Shadow... shadow
Another blink of the eye and then it's...
Of the sun I see only its reflection
In iridescent puddles of rainwater
Of the moon I perceive its presence in the dark
In the faraway barking of chained dogs.
My peace is not the lack of war
My peace is the absence of the concept of war.
Shadow... shadow
Another blink of the eye and then it's...
THE WOMAN OF THE SWEET TEARS
You are the woman of the sweet tears
Every single gesture is a light flame
You are the shadow, you are the cat that flees and then returns
You are the impact of the train against the overhanging branches
An alembic full of mercury and sulphur
boils at night between your perfect breasts
How many alchemists have lost their lungs
pursuing the fumes of your sweaty body!
You are the woman that dictates the rhythm of the seasons,
that halves the lapse between one of my heartbeats and the next
You are Venus rising from a lava flow
You are Psyche holding the lamp aglow
You trample the earth without even realizing
that at every step you take, a garden springs forth
For your hair the wind thanks God
for having given it a reason to live
I AM
I am the Apostle
left out from the Last Supper
One of Garibaldi's men
too late to the rock of Quarto
I am the Messiah
of a religion with no believers
I am the excluded, the outsider, the damned who won't surrender.
I am the main character
who dies on the first page
The stray and mangy cat
no old lady wants to pet
I am the rabid beast
that bites the hand that feeds it
I am the excluded, the outsider, the damned in eternity
I am the unexpected wave
stealing towels and radios
The misunderstanding
making couples fight
I am the devil
dodging Luther's inkpot
The reel of film that snaps
Before the final scene.
I am the excluded, the outsider, a hammer in the brain
I am the pinball that's swallowed
one point shy of the record
The goal scored against myself
before the clock runs out
The kid making faces
at his mother's slaps
I am the fear of the grass
about to be cut
I am the excluded the outsider, this page torn out...
I DANCE
I dance the dance of brilliant ideas
hoping that you will tell me something new
I dance the dance of the losers and the lost
knowing that my steps will be in vain
I dance the dance of the happy naive
thinking that my sweat will help somebody
I dance the dance of the profiteers
and I will dance until you'll pay me
And I dance I dance I dance
to overcome my arrogance
I dance I dance I dance
the why has no importance
I dance the dance of the damned
because the spleen reaches my thorax
I dance the dance of the presumptuous
Because you too are one of them if you think you're in my league
I dance the dance of the undesired
I've trained myself a lot in front of closed doors
I dance the dance of the intolerants
Can you move over a little, please?
And I dance I dance I dance until
I'll remain standing
I dance I dance I dance
because it's you who are asking
SEEK IN YOURSELF THE VOICE THAT YOU CAN'T HEAR
(INVOCATIONFOR VOICE, THORACIC CAGE AND SOLITUDE)
Seek in yourself the voice that you can't hear
Swallow the universe if you just don't get it
Low houses with leaking, weeping
rooves of rain, of hailstones by now gone
Scent of the earth, and leaves, and puddles
and sinister landscapes of snow-white marble.
Seek in yourself the voice that you can't hear.
Swallow the universe if you just don't get it
Worms that lie beneath the muddy bed
rats that swim in streams of steel
Smoke of fog, speeding cars
that quickly graze on asphalt tagliatelle
Seek in yourself the voice that you can't hear.
Swallow the universe if you just don't get it
Chalky shadows take their tired steps
Shaking low their cone-shaped heads
Slanty ghosts printed on the wall
recall flights and Frisian horses
Seek in yourself the voice that you can't hear.
Swallow the universe if you just don't get it
CARNAL GEARS
Quickly, quickly
the green door opens
allowing multi-colored squiggles to filter through
Shiny gears roll around
your made-up face
while points of indefinite colors
circle over our heads.
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
Through the purple fog
I look at your empty body
An ethereal music is getting closer
like light from under a door
My hand runs down your thighs
the room is spinning full of flies
my fingers are
coming slowly
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
Ball bearings and burned valves
slide silently next to the tangle
and from the ceiling hangs a neon nightmare
I hear the door open wide again
while I listen to your wild breathing
Slanted figures armed with leather
are waiting for their moment...
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
The intense scent of your skin
is sliced by a white fan
and in your eyelashes
thousands of miniscule insects
are building their castles
Monochromatic screens
spit scenes of expired evening news
while I bring my hearing closer
to your wet chest
adjusting the volume to hear you scream
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
I am walking on a fluorescent sphere
I THREW UP MY SOUL
I threw up my soul yesterday
and now I feel lighter
I can swim freely
without the dead weight of remorse and malice
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and got the crap hole dirty
I don't know what exited my body
it looked like iron filings
mixed with bloody cotton
maybe it had sawed through the bars
to be able to escape
maybe it got hurt
maybe infected
I threw up my soul
yesterday
but it wasn't like I thought
I thought it was waiting
for the trumpets of Judgment Day
Charon's boat
or at least the toll of diaphanous bells
Nothing.
It couldn't take it any more, staying inside of me
It kicked
it screamed
it was suffocating
and I forced myself
to put up with it
because I thought it was indispensable
to have a soul
and it too thought
it needed a body
It slithered out of my mouth
its tail was long and prickly
and it wriggled looking around itself
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and who knows where it went
It looked like it was made of mercury
it couldn't be stopped
like when I had it inside
and they turned me inside out, like a glove
dazed before my smooth walls
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and today Henry More's Nullibists
want me already
as their leader
in the upcoming elections
As soon as you are empty
you get chosen
to represent the others
A trash can that can contain
as much garbage as possible
Paper garbage
Meat garbage
Garbage created to be garbage
Garbage made not to be garbage
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and maybe I miss it already
I don't know who I can lie to anymore
when I am alone
when I dream alone
The bed sometimes swallows me up
it welcomes me smiling
and then it folds itself in half
like a pizza eaten with your hands
and I feel digested in dreams
well digested when I don't remember them
badly digested when my eyes
upon waking suddenly open wide
and spit me out
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and maybe it's hiding
in the drain pipe
it's arranging clumps of hair
microbes and soap
black encrustations of who knows what
What is it saying about me?
If it speaks badly
every morning the sink will get clogged
and go on strike
And even you, People of the Drain
had faith in the chin
you caught a glimpse of from the hole
Don't let yourselves be corrupted, not you too
like me:
now it is your leader
as it was for me
It will make you smell good, white
and clean
A People of the Drain without identity
You, used to looking up your hose
and enjoying it
Like when I was a baby I looked up
and saw the March clouds
get tangled in my father's mustache
or my mother's hand
that hung like a vine
that I could cling to safely
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and maybe it was a baby's spit up
milk and zwieback
warmed by my little belly
To have a soul with zwieback
with napalm, with plankton, with klaxon
To have a soul and bring it up
and to bring to life that vomit
It's not my fault if again tonight
I am forced to make up stories
that no one will ever tell me
And it's not even a question
of being an eternal baby,
because the others didn't grow up,
they are only already dead
and in the Cemetery, yes, I go there to play
but the boredom soon transforms
into dark mosquitos
I eat dead beasts, sliced
I imagine a dying man
on my bed
I have studied and loved the works of
dead men
Dead things have always fed my
body and soul
And the former is damned alive and kicking
And the latter has had the nerve to run away
I threw up my soul
yesterday
and who gives a damn
At the first frost it will come back on its own
like a cat run out onto a roof
that comes back sneezing and ruffled
Maybe it got into a scuffle
with the cats from the various periods
that stood by me
and that throughout their life
loved most of all my hands
when they became bowls full of milk
or warm bony brushes
I threw up my soul
yesterday
but you were left inside me
You were in the same cell
but it left without saying anything to you
or it's you who wanted to stay:
you don't have much more time to do,
why escape, then?
No, you stayed inside me
inside as always. Everything left my body
Moods, curses, dreams, colds
baby teeth
Now even my soul. Everything left, I was saying,
except you
except me
I threw up my soul
yesterday
it looked like a bouquet of roses on the floor
like one of those
that made me blush at the restaurant
because I didn't know what to do
and it would have kept your hands busy
on the way home
Those hands, alas, only two,
that I would have liked as draining bloodsuckers
on me
ten, twenty soft warm suction cups on
my back
taking out the humidity, emptiness and bitterness.
I threw up my soul
yesterday

The Reality of Hope by Claudio Pozzani
27.03.2020
Claudio Pozzani was born in 1961 in Genova (Italy).
Poet, narrator and musician, he is appreciated in Italy and abroad for his poetic performances in the most important international literary and poetry festivals.
His poems have been translated and published into more than 10 languages and have appeared in important anthologies and magazines of international contemporary poetry.