by Antonio D’Alfonso

 

…a scuplir cose divine.  Michelangelo

 

Slowness of poems inspires no light

in his body wet with contentment.

 

Between the cold and the cold

choosing is difficult.

 

He wants to be complex,

yet he needs everyone.

 

He texts no one,

because he won’t believe in psychology.

 

He has no reality to analyze.

His eyesight is fading.

 

Agnostic, he flourishes

in a sky of ruins.

 

He cups his glass

in the shape of a prayer.

 

He asks for the aid of giddy hearts.

Evening, Mr. Tempus is on his own.

 

Shivers, stands close to a candle.

Night, he crawls up the hills of his infernos.

 

Mr. Tempus sneezes, tramples over

constellations, and strides over the eternal.

 

Dodging keepsakes,

he mouths garbage, his brain spells science.

 

He dives into the well he wants to inhabit,

floats ambiguously on a bed

 

where a blouse hungers for his fingers.

His wife invites him down to her beliefs.

 

He hangs onto the floor of ash.

Smoke in the dreamer’s sight.

 

He craves for ice, no longer scared,

coils on her breasts.

 

Not knowing what is death or life,

he opens wide his arms, welcomes her.

 

Music teases the calligrams on his paunch.

Balm calms her room addolorata.

 

Her discourse suggests concentration.

Mr. Tempus vaunts goofiness.

 

Rapture is not grief but a lilac tree

planted in their buona sera.

 

He succumbs to foreign leather,

does not refuse to be strapped into.

 

He comes undone over the metropolis,

stretches, heart beating under her fingertips.

 

On the verge of soaring away, he says

he hears the river applaud.

 

A boom for the traveller wearing rails

instead of glasses, simplicity is spicy.

 

Their condo is a carton box.

The couple, a bouquet of indecency.

 

They ride a wild toboggan pulled

over the fir trees, the permafrost, the rock.

 

The wolves below howl a chance

that won’t stop upon his awakening.

 

***

 

I have eaten bombs

And need not blame anyone.

Let needles stitch my wounds,

I will not go to planet Earth.

 

Walking through space and time

Is no mystery.

I’ve made love to the Anunnaki.*

Lack of deity is my pride.

 

Gravity holds together my brain.

Gold nourishes my heart.

I can switch off the sun

But I will not go to planet Earth.

 

* ancient Sumerian gods inhabiting Mesopotamia, called Nephlim in the bible