fight the dark

 

How do you fight the dark?

Staple it onto a white paper,

drown it in ink,

make it lay bare, flat out with outstretched arms,

capture it,

licking it with your brush until it begs for mercy

under the dire lights of an interrogation lamp.

How do you conquer the dark?

Spread it out over silences,

over spiky chords and notes,

jail it,

behind the bars of a song,

a handover from your wiser elders.

How do you make the dark collapse?

Share around its picture, in the open,

outstretched and nude under the light of a screen,

so that everyone can see her,

recognize her, pursue her, be warned,

be smitten, be in love.

 

never

 

It was never there

But now is gone.

It never lived

but now is dead.

Recoil, crumbling mouth,

melting ears,

deafened eyes,

broken shards oh so soft to the touch.

It was never there

but beware,

It bit my heart out.

Hollowed out, I wander,

hellion and bird

missing 

what did not exist.

clowns

 

My crusade is to create smiles

out of nothing,

out of dark seas of despair,

out of connivance in awful sins

out of pain.

I am the clown, the jester, the thief

of tears, the collector of broken feelings,

the mender of drums, the tuner of internal instruments,

the door

to a special kind mourning: the death of sadness.

Empty your pockets of pain, your head of drama, your chest of dumbbells

trying to pull you down.

The circus is here, it is just arriving,

conquering your town.

Crusaders of laughter, promoters of joy,

defeating the darkness with make-up and jokes,

we serve you our own blood for cocktails

we feed you our own sad heart.

starfish

 

Blooming

starfish limbs.

Fireworks in the water.

Slowly, my arms and legs unfolding,

like throbbing petals in the living blue.

'tis no good alibi

 

'Tis no good alibi

when night's feral cats are scratching your cheeks

leaving twin defective vertical stair rails

as the blood drops pave the rhythm of your song.

 

'Tis no good alibi

when words beaks pick up the maggots

of your self-infected chest.

 

No, 'tis no good alibi

when there is a dark door obscuring

the path that leads up to your brain.

 

There, in the time

of your ruin

is your glove-disguised hand,

great revenant

of ancient sound and teenage grip.

that couple

they gathered their heaps of feelings

one on top of the other,

to build high piles of dishes

by the sink of life.

Some were sparkling, some dirty,

some cracked,

some were washed up, 

some forgotten,

some glued up, some just bad.

Removing just one

any meaning would topple:

their balance in pieces

to be cleared and dusted 

with hurtful slivers

of their jarred hearts.

I lost a handful of poems

 

I lost a handful of poems

to the winds of creditors blowing at my door.

Trying to escape the constrictions

I erased half of my heart,

a third of my soul

a thousand and one minutes of loving

the world,

of enjoying the sun and the rain.

I saw a ladybird stretching her wings,

and barely recognized her.

In the turmoil of figures blurring my eyes,

wanted to fix on the black dots sparkling on those smooth red domes.

Got only red figures staining my blackened mood,

my tarnished song.