Thank you to Kevin Watt for including my poem Moonlight Love in his new anthology Words of Power.
Here is my poem:
Bones, blood, flesh trapped in a brilliant moonlight. The sand of the shore carried faraway by translucent tongues of water. Around me the mint grows taller than the trees; lassitude turning from gold to red. Eyes become the locus where the desert and the sea meet. Imprinted on my body the number twelve; the twelve horses of the sun-chariot. He, the seller of time, looks at me. His voice penetrates the membranes of my cells. One hour of impossible love for two dimes. I, who can foresee the future, buy. The hour wraps around my hips like a passion vine around a tree. For a second you, the lover of the visible world, hesitate. Streets inundated by the sweet smell of citrus. Arms hugging a void. You cannot eat that citrus and you cannot touch me. Moonlight love, remind me, why did I buy you?
Motto I get drunk on love, charity, and passion. These are my professions.
I walk into the three days we spent together.
On the first day, a nude silence wraps around my lips. Shortly after I can hear the noise of wine poured into glasses. The hour to get drunk on love has come. I touch your skin and another you is born. Birds invade the sky. A banquet of candles floods the streets. A white thread ties my blood vessels at the exact moment when a religious procession walks by.
On the second day, drunk on charity, my sights descend upon the earth. The dirty hands of the woman… Please continue reading WP here
Thank you to Flavio Almerighi for the beautiful Italian translation of my poem The Ides of October. Grazie di core, Flavio.
I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October. I used to feel the presence of the child all around me. A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin. I did it. Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection. Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.
A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest. Emotions animate your cheeks. Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars. When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child. When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth. Your lips tremble and your voice flattens. I know you love me. With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.
[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]
Italian Version
Ho pagato per tutta la felicità che ci è stata concessa dalle Idi di ottobre. Sentivo la presenza del bambino tutto intorno a me. Una donna ha detto che avrei dovuto scegliere un pezzo di melma lanciato da un serpente e indossarlo sulla pelle. L’ho fatto. Arrossata come una giovane pesca, ogni tramonto diventava una risurrezione. Le rose si avvolsero intorno alla mia vita e più tardi a giugno nacque il bambino.
Un nuovo ottobre pone le nostre foto sul petto spagnolo. Le emozioni animano le tue guance. Ogni notte sopra gli alberi la luna nutre le stelle. Quando vedo i bozzoli delle larve, penso che la seta sia morbida come i capelli del bambino. Quando dico che ti amo, penso che la morte sia il presagio della nascita. Le tue labbra tremano e la tua voce si appiattisce. Io so che mi ami. Con le dita nude le Idi di ottobre ci fidanzano di nuovo.
[Idi come il 15 ° giorno di marzo, maggio, luglio e ottobre secondo il calendario romano]
How beautiful you made my loneliness with your love letters and your ceaseless colors that burn my eyes every time I look at them.
I am forever in your power because I was brought into this world by your imagination. I am your creation.
I feed on the same sea that nursed us when we were children.
I am the glue that holds together the baked sands stuck on your skin during torrid endless summers.
Sometimes I look like a four-leaf clover sitting on the lapel of your black coat on the 15th of every month.
Other times when it is dark you call me Selena and you make my twelve fingers knead your ecstasies and plant them in whispering tombs.
Your desires are the stage on which I dance, my hair unbraided, my first youth gone, my death date undetermined yet.
I thought nothing was about me. Everything was about you and your mind with its powerful sounds of rapid waves and its one thousand boats anchored in the same port.
Yet at 9am in the morning you said something that made me believe you became possessed by your own creation.
Green deep waters.
Is that true?
excerpt from my manuscript Remembrance of Love (working title)
I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October.
I used to feel the presence of the child all around me.
A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin.
I did it.
Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection.
Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.
A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest.
Emotions animate your cheeks.
Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars.
When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child.
When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth.
Your lips tremble and your voice flattens.
I know you love me.
With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.
[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]
I can see the woman who assumes things. Every night she picks the flowers that I throw on the road: withered lilies of the valley. She wants to be me. She wants my blood. She does not know I rearranged the bell-shaped whites so no one else can breathe their sweet scents. No one else can be me. No one else can make you, you.
The woman puts the withered flowers in her bag.
A new moon rises over her left shoulder. Bad luck.
I shiver.
I rush to protect her.
I stumble.
Before he died my father said:
If you try to do justice to the wicked, you will forget to do justice to the virtuous. And if you forget to do justice to the virtuous you only work for yourself. That is the biggest sin of all.
I have to think again.
My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here . Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]
Motto I get drunk on love, charity, and passion. These are my professions.
*
I walk into the three days we spent together.
On the first day, a nude silence wraps around my lips. Shortly after I can hear the noise of wine poured into glasses.
The hour to get drunk on love has come.
I touch your skin and another you is born.
Birds invade the sky.
A banquet of candles floods the streets.
A white thread ties my blood vessels at the exact moment when a religious procession walks by.
On the second day, drunk on charity, my sights descend upon the earth.
The dirty hands of the woman who owns wells touch my skin.
I hear your voice. I will not counsel her or belittle her desires. All she will do is sell her fake dreams in the corner of an empty street for her entire life.
I forbid you.
By punishing her you would have ruined the very thing you set out to safeguard: our love.
On the third day, stars melt in our palms like soft grapes in winepresses.
The intimations of you and I, with their smell and softness of grass and late autumn roses, invade the room.
A convulsive joy impregnates your eyes.
Words have no pigments and no form. Their register sinks in gravity, shiny coil by shiny coil, musical key by musical key, sleepy touch by sleepy touch.
The perfection of the afternoon’s poplars blesses the air.
Possessed by passions, under the wing of a bird, we died three days ago.
My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here . Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]
we ate Czech goulash and dumplings drank Pilsner and smoked cigarettes in a garden by St. Nicholas Church I dragged you with me on a bench your skin and your kisses were fresh contouring each other: bark and heartwood awe-struck we stood and bowed when love came I saw what one sees in the light you felt what one feels in the dark it smelled linden trees and drizzled confetti we tied our wrists with ropes made of blood buried our hearts in mountains and rivers made love on the soul of the seventeen bridges bathed in the river Bohemia coughed died the next morning in front of the Castle and in the City of the Thousand Spires not even the pigeons noticed a thing
