The house of sure things

I built it around myself.
High walls,
heaped imperfections,
bruised knees

and clay.
They tell me you can
count on nobody
these days.

There can't be
such thing as
trust in the invisible,
they say.

I care very little about many things.
I have to.

I inhabit a dream
with my own name.

The day before I discover I wasted a wish

Coming from somewhere
between desperation and rage
a man with a gun
jumped in front of me this week,
he wanted my cellphone.
I couldn't hear him at first,
I was only halfway through a song
that says everything I would
tell you in my vows.
Had I gotten hurt,
you would have been
the last dream of my heart,
the last wish of my soul.

Bouvard et Pécuchet

It is probably my fault.
I ask difficult questions that lead us
into everlasting discussions every time.

Is competition to survive necessary for organisms to evolve?
How friendly is causal entropy maximization?
Is world peace an achievable goal? I ask.

It was twenty years ago
I read Flaubert and wondered
when I would have my own Pécuchet.

It took time, but we've met.

(This is a poem for my best friend, Erick, who never gives up on me.)

Safe place

Let me be curious about you.

I'm going to ask many questions,
make sure to leave two fifths of them
left unanswered -

less than that would turn us into strangers,
more than that would lead us to
take each other for granted.

There's comfort in the idea of a person
as a safe place and as much as
I'd like you to be mine,

I want to explore every corner of  you
with the same excitement in the eyes
I had when I learned your name.

Unfashionable

I woke up feeling petty and
helpless this morning
put on a faded smile and my old
laconism no one appreciates.

I couldn't care less about
being fashionable.

The woman who mistook a man for wings

I had a guardian angel once -
the thorough thing, halo and wings,
- who would show up at my window
at the faintest mention of his name,
I thought. He did. He can't be seen
in many of my photographs, but he
is the reason I fear to forget
we grow up fast, feet and legs,
when you look further, men are just men.

(This is the story of the first man who left. Written for Play it Again #12 over at the Imaginary Garden. I went with Fireblossom's call for angel poems, the title is a reference to this great book written by neurologist Oliver Sacks: The man who mistook his wife for a hat. There's all kinds of crazy I guess.) 

Thoughts on nights spent on living

a house of mirrors, my Lord,
and empty orbits:
this world, these people

who are born from similar explosions
who respond to the same clock

who can't tell reflections from bodies.

Let them not find it, my Lord, 

hidden in the secret compartment

under the library, too broken a heart.

I love selflessly,

I pray for my enemies,

I walk my path slowly.

why can't I be spared?

This is where I leave you

This is where I pick you up:
braces, glasses, zits - day one:
you barely look at each other
but would still tell a tale of being
closely studied -

someone must have noticed
your lazy eye,
or protruding ears,
you being too thin,
you being too fat.

How on Earth can anyone fit this seat?
How does one manage not to make a fool of oneself?
What if the teacher asks me a question I cannot answer? 
Who in this class will want to be friends with me?
What if I I don't understand while everyone else does?

This is where I pick you up:
spelling, verb to be, classroom language - day one:
you speak in, you are afraid to make mistakes
that can get you laughed at
because people laugh.

They laugh when you mispronounce 'pocket'
when you invent words like 'father saint' or 'Daddy Noel'
when you can't get a sentence straight
when you don't know what to say about vegetarianism
because you do like meat.

This is where I pick you up:
reading, listening, speaking - day one:
Do we really need grammar?
Can I exceed the 45-word limit?
I haven't done my homework.

Will they learn it? I ask myself.
Will they like it? I ask myself.
They will hate mostly everything,
because they are teenagers,
that's what teenagers do.

Music, drama, movies.
Dancing, drawing, collaging.
Grammar. (Yes, you need it. Because you do.)
Good morning, this is an English-only environment.
You are required to use English here.

News. Discuss it. Global warming. Teenage behavior. War.
News.  I won't take 'I don't know as an answer, young man'.
News. Because I want to hear your opinion about it.

I have lost track of the days
(you're acquainted with my bad memory).
You're so grown up,
This is when you leave me.
This is where I leave you.

(a poem for the 12 teenagers who sat in my classroom for the past 6 years, and leave today. I'll add a photo later on.)

A song to follow Hope - RTQN

Meant for the fire

Gli adulti (the adults) were always having 

conversazioni di adulti (adult conversation) while 

we sat around them and played 

with the flames of the old oil lamps,

i bambini della mia famiglia (the children in my family): 

lost in long conversations

with the salamanders.

Se ti bruci, ti spacco la faccia (if you burn yourself, I'll break your face)! 

- a loving promise.

Lascia soli i capretti (leave the kids alone)!  

- a protective cry. 

Le donne della mia famiglia (the women in family)

were all too busy 

for the fire spirits.

But we danced together and
learned some beauty from them:

that we can bear any inferno (hell), 

that skin cannot be our only belief, 

that a great deal of self-awareness is contained in pain,

that we are born from a quite unique spark

e siamo fatti per il fuoco (and we are meant for the fire).
    

(Written for Susan's Midweek Motiff: In two or more languages, I'm having a bad moment with my mother tongue, that's why I chose to go my third language, Italian. This poem is also shared with The Imaginary Garden)

Obituary

When I die,
make sure
my obituary
reads:

she laughed,
breathed,
loved
and wrote.

(shared with The Imaginary Garden)

Happy place

Get home
cook for one
and eat alone
in the kitchen

longing for
the nights I'll rest
inside the stories
I'll tell my children.

Halves

What is the reason that I hear your voice so far
in the past and it still causes my heart to ache?

I was the one who chose
how this story would be told,

where on Earth
each of us should settle down

and start over, as half, awry souls.
I don't regret it.

Courage

woman,
there is another kind of courage.
that of walking down the aisle
listening to hundreds of years of tradition
before and behind you
to make a commitment to an idea of future
you've envisioned since you were little
when tomorrow is rather vague.

there is another kind of talent.
that of raising children to be an extension
of your very self in this wonderful,
bewildering world,
who will be able to never get lost,
to always find the way back home
knowing they might not.

I wish your path had chosen me.

(To my friend Corina, who thinks I'm so brave and so talented doing my job, when that's actually all I can make.)

Sole survivor

They sent a boat
to collect the parting debris of me
among the floating pieces
of broken sureness. 

I learned it from Icarus,
the importance of knowing
how close from the sun
is too close

how one can survive the fall
by breathing slowly
and avoiding questions
on the nature of living,

on the nature of dying.

Mornings

The hurried people
stuck in morning traffic jams
fail to realize
the communal solitude
they share along with the path.



(shared with The Imaginary Garden. I swear you guys are the only people who make me write tanka. Counting syllables has to be the most painful activity ever for me! For my previous failed attempt, click here)

A cat on the roof

I once met a man
with multiple lives,
say nine.

A stray cat who
happened to learn fate
traveling on big cities' roofs,

peeking into
open windows
on chaotic souls.

Scrounging neighboring garbage cans
for occasional meals of love,
granted leftovers on fortunate days

- curdled milk,
fruit and vegetable peels,
choking fish bones.

Five major turns in destiny survived

for his meowing Symphony yet to free sleeping spirits

- mine,
one of those.

(posted to The Imaginary Garden)

The art of being invisible

It would take a seeker
to go as far as two blocks
away from the ghouls
searching up tree tops
and in the shadows,
under rocks and
among the flowers
in the neighbors' gardens
to find me when I was a kid.

When I was a kid
I learned the art of
being invisible
from a shinobi
in a dream after
kung fu movie night
with my father.

I used to practice it hard
in hide-and-seek with friends,
walking to school by myself,
being around strangers.

Since then and to this day
I walk among the crowds of people
and they can't see me.

No one can.
Like riding a bike,
hiding
is something you
never forget.

I've become a pro
at being invisible.

(Posted to the Toads)

The way death should meet all things big and small

mounted on flying,
invented creatures
crossing distances to

hold hands with
the very first memory
they have of being alive

laughing at the
wind that plays
with their hair

confident that they'll
remember such dream
whenever time comes

to open their eyes.
Death should come then
and watch their sleep.

Going

Two boys climbing a tree this morning,
on my way to the market.

A father watching the two of  them closely.
A mother watching the three of them lovingly.

On my way to the market,
the road I have not taken teases me.

Oblivion

Oblivion is a place
where no one tells stories.

All things forgotten
cease to exist.

This house is just a house.
This man on the mirror is just a man.

By holding my hand
you teach me a memory.

Let us write poems that
shall outlive us.