Ivan Pozzoni: The Anti-Primise to Love and Other Poems

Illustration: AI

THE TAXABLE THUMB

Taxonomy characterises homo sapiens by the shape of the hand,

it does not distinguish the hominid of the Bible, the hominid of the Gospel, the hominid of the Koran;

modern anatomy has made a discovery worthy of belief:

the average Italian has a taxable thumb.

The exorbitant increase in rates does not mean the disappearance of taxes,

no animal sexologist has ever managed to break the deadlock,

if rates are lowered or increased, taxes will increase,

they will be nymphomaniac rates, far from a desire to lower them.

Italy is a republic founded on taxes, from north to south,

for many who would like to put things right, it would take a government Robin Hood,

the average Italian is in ADE every day to measure the tax burden,

when the figure reaches 50%, we'll call in the pathologist to certify the cerebral embolism.

Itaglia, the land of inventors, imposes a tax on the shade of shop awnings,

the maximum of the tax wedge (taking the ass) is the municipal tax on nuclear power plants,,

that, in your bill, you find an EF-EN tax on the efficiency (?) of electricity,

how the fuck do they manage to convince you of the inconsistency is funny.

There's the TV tax, there's the tax on tax, unconstitutional discontent,

and we discover that our rubbish, subject to VAT, has added value,

the death tax, aimed at the death certificate,

guys, tell me, if there had been in the times of Yeshua, Lazarus, how they would have put it.

The death tax, Holy Madonna to the Crown, to die gives the green light,

fuck, the dead must resurrect and pay 35 € queuing at the Post Office,

the tax on inventions does not apply to the invention of new taxes,

and they accuse you of defamation if you claim to be governed by a bunch of cuckolds.

The tax on spirits, in the alcoholic sense, the tax on aircraft noise,

aircraft noise? We're thinking of the tax on the mess of an Inti-Illimani concert,

there's a tax on staircases, council tax on dogs, tax on telephone boxes.

Fuck off, maybe we were better off with the Bourbon tax extravaganzas.

COLOGNO'S AMNESIAC

I visualised the boxes hidden in your USB drive,

a sort of will, you didn't have Alzheimer's yet,

having asked me to go and get them for you

before I wasn’t able to hear and fly.

What was there of your twenties bent over a doctoral table,

anxiously looking for a permanent contract,

the hopes, smiles and sacrifices of a soul in Adidas blue,

aware of fighting lost battles like the tenth MAS Flotilla.

What there was of your thirty yearslost in the corridors of a warehouse,

looking for alter-egos busy in sadistic hide-and-seek,

the enveloped bonuses, the career, with the desire not to end up broke

absorbed in not being led into the world like an autistic.

What there was of your years of collisions, between know-it-alls and lilliputians,

in the Flavio amphitheatre of web-hoppers with mouths like urinals,

where, to stay on the network, it's not enough to be a famous retiarius

ending up on the walls of Domus Tiberiana like Ianuarius.

To find out who you are not, you have to noscere te ipsum on a digital medium

homothetically adjusting your shape with the misfortune of a fractal,

it's not enough, as in Grimm, to consult the mirror of your desires:

Berlusca couldn't walk on water, you weren't a carpenter at all.

THEY EAT VOICES

if they have white paper, the new writers who sing without a Muse,

would rival Géricault in his Raft of the Medusa.

Italian art has become an assault on the pot,

more fulfilled in the ‘brothel’ than the members of a porn film,

so in the Poetryweb the actor is confused with a stallion

full of anachronistic texts fit for the cover of Le Ore.

Lyrical democracy must not be a two-bit lyric,

it is essential to study and it is not forbidden to go deeper,

all of them now strictly improvising, equipped with a notepad,

as if they should sign up for Tú sí que vales rather than culture.

To write on the www we should set up an entry test,

It's forbidden to touch the keyboard on pain of sudden death,

not suitable for late modern art, Lucini teaches, his revolver at his head,

the incurable disease of the turn of the century is called Adsl.

MONA FRIDA SMILE

I thought I was embarking on a life of battle

bombarding the world with the QWERTY of my keyboard,

righting the wrongs of late-modern society,

the shadow of a valve removed from the mould of the cave.

By simulating attacks by the ECB to defy Re Cecconi

by having put up with the slander of web trolls like Girolimoni

and capitulating to the impracticality of rebuilding after the earthquake

of Italian metric art, find myself cleaning out the colophon, a new enema.

Joined at the moment when you wonder what it means to study and never arrive at a Bompiani,

the transmission of writing lies in the dead hand of the barons,

with the feeling of inadequacy of being a Barattieri at the Adua

suddenly comes the serious expression of a Chihuahua.

Mona Frida smile, Mona Frida smile

and life turns into Cirque du Soleil,

where the animal's role is reciprocal

in the anarchy of a Saturnal wag.

Mona Frida smile, Mona Frida smile,

you want to shout ‘Heil!’ to Berlusconi,

habemus Fridam, bark loudly at St Peter's

and salute the Members of Parliament by raising your hind leg.

SE-POLCRI

They tell me to stay calm, let it go, you don't have to crack,

as for the mediocrities of the brain drain, theirs, let them go to America

teach the very high American homo insipiens to write in trochaic tetrameters

selling their mosaic-toned whitmania forItalian poetry style,

many corpses to divide the waters of the Dead Sea,

to make the Red Sea black with despair.

Their heads are completely empty under their headdresses

they lament the Italian tragedy of the brain drain in US universities,

the brain drain from their heads, their heads, leaving only the bodies,

of these new Italian-American zombies used to despising the infamous,

who don't tolerate the ‘fucks’, the ‘shits’ and the cacophony,

employed to reproduce in America the system of the beloved barony.

They tell me to stay calm, let it go, you don't have to crack,

In Italy there are still some who dress up as Morticia Addams and declaim in a hurry

Gothic, Romano-Gothic, Baroque verses, and, at the age of thirty, I'm accused of

as a buffoon dressed as the caretaker of the Revised Nuns' cemetery,

I'm at a loss if the art of the country has become a barrack phenomenon

to be read lined up on chairs between dead celebrities, arteriosclerosis patients and whores.

There's no alternative but to emigrate to Mars,

if we continue to have the insane desire to soil papers,

I'll go ahead and invent a cacophony of aliens for myself

you stay where you are, behind me, kissing my bottom,

don't expect me to stop and tow you away

I don't have a steady hand and I'm no good at whitewashing.

IGNOTE TOMB

Corpse No. 2,

the shadow of the wave reflected in my right retina,

hands clenched to grasp Mediterranean sands

worn under red surfing bermudas.

Corpse n.7,

muffled screaming attempts at the pit of my stomach

Marrakech hash maps in my pockets,

scanty dirhams sown between my purse and trousers,

led me to the mouth of the abyss.

Corpse No. 12,

‘Eloi, Eloi, lemà sabactàni’,

I don't remember who was shouting it to whom

not being written in the Koran:

I too died invoking it in vain.

Corpse No. 18,

retreating on the roads between the dunes of Misrata,

in thirsty slalom between friendly and enemy missiles,

and dying of water.

Corpse No 20,

although nomads, like me, sway

on desert ships, detonated fluids,

never will they get used to drowning.

Every grave of the unknown migrant

whispers that it is hard to embrace

a death that comes from the sea.

THE ANTI-PROMISE TO LOVE

Anti-poet, victim of my anti-poetry,

all I could do is dedicate to you an antpromise of love,

my anti-promise of love would have the features of a synesthesia,

the Stalinist hardness of steel and the softness of colour,

the finesse of friendship and the consistency of love,

your white eyes turn me into a hydrophobic cynic,

and there's no doctor for rage, my love.

An anti-promise of love to be read before a registrar,

as to convince a tecno-trivial world,

i've loved you since June 1976, perhaps, in truth, since April,

i was an embryo and you were still immersed in the aurora borealis,

for six years you would have been an angel, a ghost, the inessential of a fractal,

without batting an eyelid waiting for you, six years, thirty-six years, with nothing to say,

the sheep of Panurge's contemporaries would condemn me to total silence.

You are my anti-promise of love, and the idea may seem imperceptible to you,

i observe you sleeping, serene, like a crumb abandoned in a toaster,

my love I am stripped of the role of ‘sapper’ - it is abyssal like a submarine,

condemned to scatter torpedoes under the (false) guise of a dogfish.