Empty Buildings – Night in New York. Arthur Coleman

Illuminated by plane-warning floodlights,
clouds wisp past the tops of tall buildings
whose insides are empty of life at this hour.

Walled-in halls and rooms sectioned into
squares leveled stories upon stories above
ground, fixed as firmly as centenarian
trees by their grappled root structures,

are dark and unseen, though lit ambiently
by light that has somehow crept like vine
up the walls and through the atmosphere,
compressed into substance by the flat rigidity
between walls, so windowed they are sheer

glass cliffs, shooting off the translucid
streets, blackened by recent rains; and
the red and green day-glo of exit signs
perennially pointing down cavernous
evacuation routes that are the conduits

whose night-long drafts whisper the
empty buildings’ seething potentiality.

but nothing? Luca Paci

No hand will contain your disdain

no game will try the blame,

sharp & quick

liquid gaze or blade or fear.

No enemy no route no siege

of your heart

no part but farse.

Don’t you know that fear can take

a shape of a sleeping pill

or an enticing window sill

above the abyss?

And she moves accross

anesthesia with the certainty of time-

always there, always right -

no need to fight tonight

no need for sorrow either

just drapes of boredom

thick curtains veiling the sun

dinners dismissed

tvs on standbys

ready to snatch at the first sign

of life.

ARTHUR’S SEAT. Rossella Riccobono

Soon I will be back, Edinburgh,
city of festivals and arts,
back in your arms, amongst your hilly breasts,
in the green soft fragrant hair of your pubes,
high on the verge of your shining phallus
from where I will once more enjoy
a bird’s eye view of your beauty.
A vertical climb to orgasmic heights,
ready to be seduced again, all dressed in black
and silk, as you once dreamed me.
Ready to take off my veils to you
without shame, like when for the first time
I saw you—barely nineteen and ready to live—
and your eyes struck me like lightening.
From your tops the castle looks so small,
Naïf-style painting, ever present on my mind
since a thousand years ago, when under a lacey
shower of veils I was carried away from you
to be given to someone else as a bride.
No-one was allowed to look at me, but your firm
burning eyes didn’t let go of mine—nor mine of yours.
So now I am back, alone, where I was happy once
with someone else, now I’ve found you again.
But when I’ll reach the top of Arthur’s Seat
and scream aloud his name, he’ll be too far
to hear.

Wellington, December 2003

1. Richard Livermore

The future that

you have in mind

is one you will

have left behind

when it arrives.

Why Poetry. Rossella Riccobono

Because it’s fun.
Because it’s beautiful.
Because it communicates in a pure way.
Because it is free from compromise and corruption.
Because it re-establishes word as creative and not destructive.
Because it is direct.
Because it is not afraid of telling the truth.
Because it is honest expression of states of mind.
Because it talks about us all and to all of us:
love, pain, death, rejection,
loss, hatred, fear, passion,
politics, despair, hope,
disappointment, joy, courage.

On Francis Bacon. Luca Paci

Old Cotton street four tables

Lucian & Francis paying

their restaurant  bills

with paintings but she

did not like it she

thought it was evil.

Digging a hole somewhere

and knowing where to begin

Hollow curtained space

hang in even folds

stench of death reek of

blood &disfazione

The Pope oh the pope

tubular constructs far

-fetched horizons.

Do you read me?

Do you <…>

we do not possess the key

Chronicle of a repressed revolution. Luca Paci

The whale lost in the Thames

has exchanged the river for the sea

a bunch of voices to see

the scared cetacean which

vocalizes at frequencies way

beyond  human hearing range.

The hope-whale moored

and wailed to the dead.

Le valle sans retour. Michael Hilton

mo’s moat is most enclosing

of the castle and its keep

i see a brazen archer

aim from yon windowseat

and what is more i know her

yon archer is of yore

winner of all tournaments

her willow bow of lore

she is the queen’s own ranger

and princess’s sister twin

i’m joe her would be lover

if i could but get in

We imagine the police. William Wall

In the dark times, will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing

About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht, ‘Motto to the ‘Svendborg Poems’

The legend of the dwarf king. Luca Paci

Listen!

The land was shrinking
And the sky was dry
The great dwarf-king
Was passing by

Listen!

There was a man in my country who owned everything
And everything he had was stolen from the people

Listen!

This man in this country became a king and his kingdom included
All the crops of the fields and radios and lawyers
And Tvs and books and papers and ships

Listen!

This man in reality was not a king
But a bald dwarf with a fake toupet
And a rubber mask

Listen!

The dwarf talked of freedom
In his nation of slaves
And democracy and honesty
In his nation of thieves
And environment and pollution
In his nation of smoke

Listen!

The dwarf king was changing the rules of the game and bringing
Zombies to life to get more voters
He talked to the judges who thought it was illegal
But he won the diatribe and they went to jail

Listen!

The land was shrinking
And the sky was dry
The great dwarf-king
Was passing by