Selected Canto's from Crito di Volta - A Brilliant Epic Poem by Marc di Saverio

CANTO I of Crito di Volta

______________

from: Crito Di Volta <patient.power@gmail.com>
to: Flavia Vamorri <bakuninite.2000@gmail.com>
______________

(on a weekend pass)

I

Flavia, my eyes are red as the sunrise this first time I swallow

   my speed and hope ...

Teetering on the street like a bull full of swords, the sunbeams

   stabbed me while wishes to see you staggered me across to the

   Diplomatico, where, calvaried in the laughter of the patio, hunch-

   backed in misfitness, I saw your sword- splitting eye-light boil

   my wounds into a moment of balm.

May you always be the dandelion growing into blows of perpetual

   steps, and never the iris growing into

passive opulence.

May you never be taken until completely given ...

A crow alights the spire-point in the snow while this patient tries to

   try to believe the father’s promise of “ray-straight” reasons up

   God’s sleeve.

The father—

a lonesomeness snakes through his quavering veins and lotus-skinned,

   soleness-cored soul.

I turn ...

Out from the dying echoes of his howls I crisply sing The Smiths

   through the streets, gallivanting free—

Flavia, the amphetamine’s working!

... After the T.M.S and the E.C.T, after the Clozapine and the exorcizing,

   after years of pitch darkness with an autumn wasp, after the Sanatoriums

   and the psych-ward queens who snuffed themselves despite having sworn

   on my soul they would never, and who did not leave a note behind—I feel

   like a Romantic, again ...

Flavia, be in me as the strength of an orphan supermanning in his sorrows

   and calamity.

May your heart so naturally dart for the tear-skinned wasp-cored souls, but

   not be stung.

Rattle the world harder than the guerrilla machine-gunning at the start of her

   first battle.

Be in me as the brusque verity of a cadaver, and not as anything hazy: an Afghan

   field of poppies for the unrequited lover.

Have me in the intensity of Christ on the cross, a second before he gave, and not

   in the calm comfort of a lover in my arms.

Let us to the prisoners of war who’ll hang themselves, and not to the easy chit-chat

   of drunk inheritor-dandies ...

I won’t let you be taken until completely given ...

Would you rather be the speed of a sunbeam or its brightness?

Have me in the holy lunacy of maniacs on soapboxes in city-cores and college

   borders, blasting manifestoes, and singing the melody-lines of people’s veins ...

Flavia, when we met at Diplomatico I never wore my contacts so I could look you

   in the eyes ...

Now I go forward with foot-soles of wind ...

Flavia, don’t let me be taken until completely given.

II.

Before our Santa Clara or Coup D’Amore,
before Overpoetry or Götterdämmerung,
before we become comrades and write
manifestoes and propaganda of light,
before the Kingdom is sparked by the swords’ clash
or bullet ricochet, before we have been sung,
before we smash and re-map and dash
and shoot out in the star white snow on the More-
sure shore of the bull’s-eye of peace, hit with a bullet ...
let’s become lovers; let’s drive through Rome
then take a scenic road through my father’s home-
town in Abruzzo; let’s get
mangoes, Prosecco, Muratti’s, and speed;
let’s write love sonnets first, then the new age’s creed!

III.

The phoenixes of our spirits cling
claws above the deluge as we dalliance;
with weak wings I rest a moment against you
in flight, talons loosing. Through mirrored veers
and ardour-softened beaks’ sweetest
meetings, we soar toward theophanies.
The phoenixes of our spirits live on dew.
With four beating wings of fire we
rapturously sing like Orpheus to
Eurydice during their courtship,
and, all the other animals
silence—magnetized, stronger, dazzled.
The phoenixes of our spirits will sign
the wind with charisma high-lit in shine!

IV.

Let’s go to the Sanatorium’s One Hundred And Twenty-Fifth
   Anniversary Summer Solstice Dance, where the patients’
    auras mingle into proto-palpabilities.
Let’s breathe the afflatus of the ‘manics.’
Let’s dance the steps of the ‘schizophrenics,’ channelling a

   music we will never hear.
Let’s share our cigarettes, pot, and beer; while they share the

   light that’s gone out in the world.
The Sanatorium, where the best minds of our time share no
   majestic court, and steer Mankind despite its shame of them.

 

 

 CANTO II of Crito di Volta

 _____________

 

from: Crito Di Volta <patient.power@gmail.com>

to: Niccolo Di Volta venetian.boat.song@gmail.com

 

Dear Niccolo:

 

I know how hard to visit here can be; thank you for coming, thanks for the presents ...Last week I took my first Amphetamine; it worked just minutes after consumption! I’m getting released later this week...Today I sold three oils for thirty g’s; now I’m going to live spontaneously. Do send me your rendition of “Raindrop.” May your weekend be a whirlwind of gold. Training myself to speak in five-foot lines

(hence this pentametric letter, bros.) These reflect what we said in the courtyard:

 

 

JESUS AND JUDAS

 

for Niccolo Di Volta

 

And now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near

and Judas practiced kissing on his hand

and Jesus prayed and cheered a passing band

of fiery-eyed foreseers without fear,

setting on its way again, like the sun,

blazing forth now, letting Jesus steer

it with trails of greenery that even

stunned the last-born baby of the mere

caravan. He turned the rocks

to streams that rushed, then flowered

the deserts ahead of these roamers free to endure

their familiar empire’s gloomy future.

And as Jesus unlocked his eyes with Iscariot,

He was arrested, blasting: ramble on!

 

 

STANDING ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE STREAM

 

for Niccolo Di Volta

 

Standing on opposite sides of the stream dividing the

   ravine— you singing verses and I singing choruses,

   then vice-versa; the spring stream thin; the kindred

   ravine dimming; mom biting her first nail on the

   phone with Aunt Josie; dad inside the study, reciting

   Leopardi; both at home.

Standing on opposite sides of the stream dividing the

   ravine— you practicing your curve-balls, I catching

   all your curve-balls; we synchronized brothers with

   same-sized shadows, equal in our gifts; the strongest

   want each having for the other being that the other

   would out-bloom, out-explode him, like one cherry-

   blossom might out-bloom, out-explode another—

Standing on opposite sides of the stream dividing the

   ravine—you praying to Saint Cecile, I praying to

   Saint Cecile; the cardinals, camouflaged by the late

   red rays, seeming to shoot out of nowhere, out of the

   vortex to the reason for coincidence, the Stranger’s

   way of remaining anonymous?

And, soon, telling the time by the fainting sun, I’d jump

   the stream.

And, now, I remember that holy moment when we saw how

   beauteous it’d really be, to enter our paradisal home before

   our father—in his white undershirt, young still, glowing

   unlike the sun at the ends of those evenings—had set out

   toward us.

 

Phone me after the weekend, mang! Crito

 

_________________

 

CANTO IV of CRITO DI VOLTA

 

____________

 

from: Flavia Vamorri <bakuninite.2000@gmail.com>

to: Crito Di Volta <patient.power@gmail.com>

 

_____________

 

Breathtaking verses, Crito Di Volta! (An eternity of thank

you’s; these poems are primo.) And I’m s-o-o-o elated to hear

the Amphetamine is working! But pairing would mean the

end of the Movement! We’re the Che and Fidel of the

Patients’ Rev.! We cannot abandon our people for ourselves!

See you tomorrow for the ... (fingers crossed); your loyalty

never fails me. When I have finished my studies in dance,

and I’m the best dancer I can be, I am not only going to

write you a ballet—I am going to play the lead. I’ve already

begun the first steps! Again, Crito, breathtaking verses!

 

Your comrade,

 

Flavia

 

CANTO VI of Crito Di Volta

 

At Flavia’s attic party, I popped two caps of E that must have been cut with LSD … Lips of worms kiss me while the wind slaps the green out of the spruces and the stoplights. My eyes, now blue-winged butterflies, tirelessly beat themselves into caresses for the invisible, who sing Leopardi’s A Se Stesso in Greek, as syllables pop into signals when I speak. While epiphanies street-fight over me I bet the sun my eye-lights for its rays that these will be my most visionary days, that my vortex of utopia will craze all humans attempting to see beyond what they can see through their malaise. I wear my visions on my sleeve and heartbeat Suicide to death, and seduce the tyrants with my hung tongue (and reduce the Vatican?). A tilt of my head eclipses the sun, whose ring I propose to everyone. The Overpoet will survive the “poets’” noose of slack, finally, after all the years of jeers, which hunchbacked his spirit like Keats’ critics. Why do the “poets” always mock the seers and laugh at vatic voices? A vatic voice, like a spokes-poking stick, will hurl the Dada-rider skyward then down to the jetty of his mind; and the Overpoet, an outsider, will lead his jeerers first, then humankind.

from CANTO VII of Crito di Volta

 

 (on my twenty-seventh birthday)

 

“Like a lone vermillion pillar marking oases in a desert, he stands!” mocks a professor. I blast upon the sky-blue tabletop with hand on hip. “What are you doing up there?” a student jeers. “What are you doing down there!” I sear. “I’ll split your brain in half with my tongue if I must, but trust I wish for peace the most! We sleep under the microscope of those who bloom in the shadows! We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths— exist beneath the microscope of those who live in the shadows?! Unite, uprise, or sleep unto our deaths! You who’ve never mourned in private chambers, nor learned the ways of penitence, nor cared enough to think to learn, nor thought enough to learn to care— I’ve come to you for outdoor celebrations, I’ve come to you for your libations to cascade the rising insights of my end-time epiphanies. And you who’ve never raised the standards of your spirits— let me brace your forearms so they’ll withstand the weight of nothingness, and then the weight of the universe. And you who’ve yet to unwrap your minds of firm-woven false-flags—I will do your thinking for you till your minds are naked in the truth-light, again. And you inside the safety of your -isms, you who can only thrive in-side the ivoriest of ivory towers, who may only be beloved among one sort of people— I will teach you danger and risk, again. I will teach you how to address the masses you hate, and who probably hate you, then teach you how to love the masses; or, wait, the former after the latter—I almost had you. You who are rich, even, but have gardeners and no friends. You who’ve grown too keen on stasis. You who’ve sought out campy pamphlets on how to become a heroin addict— I’ll cast out your demons at your commands, I’ll bend your browning spoons without my hands. You who love memes with nativity scenes of Lego-blocks or Plasticine— I will show you; I will teach you the family, again. And you who histrionically attempt your acts of warmth in this Age of Ice, just so you might claim your own humanity? I will teach you to be natural, again; then human, again; then godly, again; okay? O, now, listen, know: this is a prayer, this is a prayer, and I am praying now! this is a prayer, this is a prayer; you’re in a temple now! You who’ve not yet distinguished the feeling of dew from sweat upon your high, light brows, take thought: I sing and pray these preludes, these east-lit words, these letters of secrets I set to my off-beating heart, for you, too: We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths; must cast the first stones at Horus’ eye; must seek his world’s hiding human chiefs, whose gray waves break like their promises to us— break over bells of a church, where choruses die. How will we cross the fading white horizon when we are all entranced by their wave-lengths? Should we now dress in black for both of us? We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths! We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths; might see streets lit with bankster-torches; mustn’t side-walk our heritage on garbage day; must learn, once more, the way to the Temple, for there is One who knows the way to our door and below the vulture-gyre above the shore their gray waves break like their promises to us, the horizon is bearing the sky like a truss. We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths! We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths, must thrust our souls of swords into the shadows, no matter who our hidden masters be, under whose microscopes we sleep in stabbing light, under whom we cheerlead the destruction of our kind— our heads bowed down with the weight of the media like a new dawn’s dew-heavy daisies. Sideway waves of dandelion clocks will whirl up to the heavens. We must wake soon or sleep unto our deaths …” “Why do you sing every word you project?!” a poet incites. “I do not sing my verse so I’ll be sung louder than the poets who can only recite, but sing to draw the youth who forever might not care for unsung verse; who, rather, tell their friends of the poet who sings so well —a poem must be sung to be heard by the universe. And I balk at nothing—not nothingness nor treachery, nor assassins nor Sheol—and give you my life, as well as my verse, to pay the people the poets’ ancient toll.” I see Niccolo pleading with the guards like a father might plead for the life of his child— O my baby brother. “You try to force me into wolf’s clothing, but I stand here with my bare soul before you. O LET ME BEAM THE LOVE FOR YOU I AM!” Inside the knee-jerk glowers of the guards, I see a nearly palpable softness. The crowd expands like an horizon line sprawled before a teenaged boy standing at the Mountain brow gazing beyond the falcon gyres. “Mortar: v. 1. to bombard and destroy n. 2. a cement used in building Take my MORTAIO, my MALTA E PIETRA! Through the moonless, starless, endless night of Now; with the forth-swinging, blazing, wrecking ball of Mortarism; with the steel cables of our spirits; with the operator of our history lessons; with the crane of our hate for the emergency present—let’s demolish the star-stickered, light-blocking ceilings of present Western “Verse,” “Art” and “Democracy”. Let’s sing an Overpoetry! Let’s bring the first Musocracy! Let’s turn “Art” into a tastefully-dressed, breath-taking, perfectly-proportioned, breath-giving, voluptuous, lactating, ultra magnanimous nurse, with ways-changing, evolution-redirecting milk; an eternal nurse of our sick, degenerating nature. Let’s overthrow those phony poets professing to pliable neophytes: “behold, here is how to leap over poetry’s limbo bar and into The Antigonish.” The “verse” of today is lesser than urine since at least urine flows and is not always yellow! Beware of MFA programming! Beware of MFA pro-gram-ming! Crito Di Volta 35 Beware of MFA programming! Beware of MFA pro-gram-ming! Never stifle passion for the sake of a fashion started by the passionless so they could pass as poets too! Drivers of their lines of “verse” are failing their beginners’ tests, but “poet”-editor-professors let them graduate with honours, yes! The “poets” write prose and tailor their “poetics” to their own inabilities —thereby re-defining poetry as prose—then accuse our few true poets of not knowing how to write verse at all! (If only poets spent as much time and energy on poetryreciting as they did on poetry-writing; poets seem to think that reciting poetry comes naturally, without practice! Per che? Per che?) Look, the world is cardiac arresting in a hospice without doctors! Poets, we must be cardiopulmonary resuscitation, not a hospital room painting! The “poets” write in water rather than ink inside electrical cages of Political Correctness! Poetry, you cannot take a forward step on legs of French philosophies alone! Canada, I came to you with my soul and with diamonds, and you tried to collapse them back into a vacuum, back into coal— Canada, remove your bloody diadem! (((O))) 36 Marc Di Saverio If there is no freedom of expression, if there is no freedom of speech, there can be no freedom of State … O anti-poets, must I Mortaristi storm and fell the Language Police Station of Poetry!? O anti-poets, strive to be the poets you might have been without the MFA Programming! O anti-poets, de-program yourselves, then learn the rules of verse before you break them! O how dismal a sign it is for society, when its poets are passionately pro-censorship! Does anyone have any water? A girl wearing a camouflaged shirt passes up some cool spring water to me. I sip some water, then descend the table. I stand in the university square, in my good suit, with orphic vigour. The students divide like the banks of a stream while I wind toward the centre of the crowd. In the windless, silent square, I exclaim: A Baphometian Tandem banks on us, string-pulls puppet shows of all its Western Governments; is a potter spinning and moulding the globe with jewelled hands in gloves—our spirits hunchbacked in the impossible pressures of our pitiless masters, against whom we must unite, rather than rive over who is on the left and who is on the right. Crito Di Volta 37 We have been divided and conquered in well nigh every which way—so, unite! Left, right, black, white, man, woman, atheist, believer, abled, disabled, old, young, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Gentile, straight, gay, rich, poor, sane, “insane”—Unite! Let us un-conquer ourselves in the twilight! Our unity’s our masters’ greatest fear— Our masters, who fear we will, in union, overthrow their ongoing plot to slowly but surely pacify, disarm and enslave us, to rule us globally, absolutely! Our unity’s our masters’ greatest fear— Our masters, who fear our simultaneous, worldwide intifadas—behind whom will be the anyway-armed unanimous, newly awoken, furnace-fiery, furious masses—with blasts of combat in the streets of the capitals, with broken souls revolting for the still-wholesome souls of their children! Now, our love is hard of meeting as a flame beneath the water, as a prince’s only daughter— hard of meeting, yet it was once as easily met as long-time parted lovers’ lips. If you—like truth—lie in the shadows of Baal, might take the beast-mark, knowingly or not— follow my voice till you’re out of his veil, breathe to my breath till you’re led from your wail. If we want, we can reverse our soul-rot. If you—like truth—lie in the shadows of Baal 38 Marc Di Saverio yet still can envision light, I will not fail you; walk beside, not behind me, uncaught. Follow my voice till you’re out of his veil, follow my voice like the wind does His sail, follow my voice—it’s my own, I’m not bought. If you—like truth—lie in the shadows of Baal but still are souled, still try to feel the nail that Christ eternally feels for you who ought, follow my voice till you’re out of that veil or never whiff the smoke of your own trailblaze, you seeing unbelievers I have sought! If you—like truth—lie in the shadows of Baal, follow my voice till you’re out of his veil!” I pause to hear the little wind. “It is better to die with nothing but your soul, than to live with everything but it.” I pause to hear the little wind, again.

 

CANTO XX

 

My brother breathes then breaks into melodies

of all the major keys, blasting his pistols in

full charge against the standard opposing,

leading through the no-man’s land like one

with nothing to lose, despite being one

with everything to lose, behind whom

our spirit-soaring forces drive, behind whom

I drum and rave, toward his spirit’s sails,

the winds of faith I wholly have in him.

O my baby bros! Who uppercuts

two cops in one blow! Yet,

amid this electrical victory,

I hear Ezra’s grievous voice: “And then

went down to the ship,” a few feet away,

yet Ezra Pound’s not standing there.

“Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea;”

I chase his voice toward the cliff-top’s forest-

edge—”And we set up mast and sail on

that swart ship, bore sheep aboard her,

and our bodies also heavy with weeping”—

then, as I enter the forest “and winds

from sternward bore us out onward,” Ezra roars,

blaring the cardinals out of their trees

while a red-robed man stands suddenly before me—

holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Dante

Alighieri! Dante Alighieri,

haloed here before me in this wood

no longer dimly with the dying light!

O visage with the strangest smile!

O blackened brow and tan from hell!

O eyes wherein white sight still swims with style—

who’ll out-see your eyes no eyes can tell!

I’ve never forgotten your diamonding soul,

away from fiends who want their victim’s fate,

upon the peak where you guard Heaven’s gate,

where you found peace from this black hole.

O Alighieri, guardian of grave-

yards, the array of the works you have signed with your verve

will never be wiped from the rising wall of time.

You will live as much as God Himself

since Heaven has learned, as well as hell,

to stammer your Cantos, O poet, my angel.

“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Crito

Di Volta! Crito Di Volta,

found amid this wood upon a cliff,

overlooking the city he was born in.

O Crito—you sorrowed forth

like Leopardi—I love you; and, after

following my footfalls a while, you will

freely shepherd hosts of souls to Paradise,

while on your own way there—you’ll understand,

like your first language, more about

just who and what you are.” My whole face,

yellow from Dante’s high-beaming halo, smiles.

“I’m always watching you from Heaven’s gate,

which I still guard throughout sublimely days;

and, throughout so many nights, I descend

to where you are on downcast earth,

where I have stood before you, stood behind

you, stood beside you, since your birth.

I was with you those times when you prayed for a sign.

I was with you those times when you yearned for your death.

I was with you the time when you owned the stigmata,

saw what you saw and felt what you felt, see

what you see and feel what you feel, my god-

son, who as I have known you, at last, knows

me. O you, assigned to me by the Father,

before your parents ever shared a kiss.

Yet I am also here to ask you this:

why did you tie the world-bell’s rope

of Mortarismo with the hyper-striking

viper of the Patients’ Revolution, which

will rive the “sane” and the “insane” even more,

sowing hate in the “insane” and shame in

the “sane,” naturally; and, soon enough,

unnaturally, by the Baphometians who

will shanghai, then ill-rule the Movement

altogether, whether you are bought or not.

There is one to come who’s greater than you,

who’ll sever the snake from the rope of the bell,

which will be rung—but not by you, my godson.

You will never ring the bell, nor hear it while you trail-

blaze your immolative life on earth;

yet, with mirth, will hear it from Paradise.

Though all of your verses were destined to be

sung, not all you say and do is thoroughly right,

for you have not wholly surrendered yourself

to the Trinity. Your entirety you’ll

soon surrender, lest divinest ties are

riven asunder. Crito, follow me.”

We tread some jutting stones toward a pool

where I can barely hear my leader speak

because of the western waterfall’s crashing.

From the water’s edge I see a near-blinding

light at the bottom of the pool, which

arises; and, O, the haloed head of a girl

shatters the water-surface, breaking and beaming

into the air, wearing dove-white medieval armour.

Her short dark hair is cut straight across her golden

brow. She slowly steps toward the stony

shore where I stand with Saint Dante, open-

mouthed—Joan of Arc approaching like

a Season, her endless eyes’ violet beams

illuming faces of the cliff-side. She takes my

hands like highest compliments, her equatorial

ardour full-exuding from her armour—

(Saint Joan of Arc! Saint Joan of Arc!)

She pulls me toward the pool she purifies white

with her lightly multi-laser sword—the pool

of the waterfall, edged at the Mountain Brow, all

misty in the midnight, where she lays her

hands upon my head and plunges me deep

into the water with the vehemence of

a teen suppressing, into her subconscious,

some unattainable dream for which she can

no longer authentically live. I do

not choke on pure baptismal water,

I, breathless, jaw-dropped from the ultra awe

arise from the Heaven-white waves, whipping

my head, born anew, in the arms of the Saint

who fully embraces me, who leads me shoreward

then states: “you are born anew, and, now ...”

while she raises her upturned hands I

levitate a foot above the pool—

I dripping like one who has only known water;

I dripping like one who’s known air the first time;

I feeling just the pinch of water-fall mist,

I knowing that, henceforth, I must do

the will of God, alone, unmingled with

my own; and surrender to Him, alone,

speaking only when He opens my mouth

with His voice, alone, when He explodes me

into Scripture, any-where, or newly-

refracts His orders through me, from Heaven.

I dripping like one who has only known water,

I dripping like one who’s known air the first time,

and, now, I’m whirling clock-wise, my addictions,

my lusts, my vices, my illness

–all these leeches of my vital essence–

rent from me. I feel no more wrath.

My face is strain-free as a baby’s.

I feel Dante feeling what I’m feeling:

the lightness of spirit that soars a seraphim.

I slowly, downwardly float toward

the water, after which I reunite

with Dante Alighieri on

the rocks, once more, wherefrom we see

the Maid of Orleans fade into the air

of an unindifferent Universe. “So,

now, do you see the contradictions of

the two seditions you birthed and raised?

Yes, Padrino. My slate-clean spirit’s

only wish is to light-speedily spread God’s

word, and only God’s word, O Titan!

While catching full sight of a fast-falling star

blazing inside my periphery, Dante

disappears ... Outside the flaming Century

Manor, where the patients are winning

the battle for its massive patio,

Flavia, with a wide birch-bough,

rams the Manor’s northern door. I

tackle Flavia into high bushes, hiding

us both from the enemies. “What

the fuck are you doing, comrade?!

Flav, we must wave the white flag

now—surrender our forces, lest our souls

be dashed by the Almighty’s wrath! I know

this all must sound so dense, but we must wave

the white flag; do you understand, comrade?

Faced down, Flavia thrashes frenziedly,

but cannot break away from me. Through her

iPhone I order a full surrender

despite our oncoming victory.

Soon, no more roars, nor shots, nor battle-

cries, just the march of oncoming officers

shining bright lights into the high bushes.

Nobel Prize nominee Marc di Saverio's Sanatorium Songs was hailed as "The greatest poetry debut in 25 years," in Canadian Notes and Queries Magazine. Di Saverio won a City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer, and his work has beenbroadcast by BBC Radio 3. Publications include translations: Ship of Gold:The Essential Poems of Emile Nelligan (Vehicule Press,) and an epic poem, Crito Di Volta, to international critical acclaim. Di Saverio's poem, "Weekend Pass," was adapted for film. CANDY, directed by Cassandra Cronenberg, stars the author himself, and was selected for the Toronto International Film Festival. Marc di Saverio lives in Ontario, where he's writing his first novel,The Daymaker.

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