Five Poems by Alessio Zanelli

 

Sky Resort

 

In the morn
there's nothing to read or listen to,
nothing to worry about,
all is always well.

In the afternoon
there's nothing to fix or attend to,
nothing to grapple with,
everything's fine.

In the eve
there's nothing to debate or account,
nothing's been done all day,
no recap's required.

In the night
sleep is plain impossible to interrupt,
nobody is to toss and turn,
nobody has dreams.

... ... ...

Bear with me,
I just dished out a whole lot of crap,
pretend I never really did,
forget all I said.

None of the above,
there's no such thing as day or night,
there's no wake or sleep,
there's only now.

As well as stars,
boundless sprawls of immovable stars,
an actual infinity of stars,
nothing but stars.

 

 

What Parallels The Chute


On the edge lingers light,
like a skydiver at launch,
and then, once in free fall,
when delaying the deployment.
Light is never in a hurry,
its arrival and departure are slow,
unlike the darkness’s,
which has no time to tarry,
always goes as quick as it comes.
The edge is to light
what the launch is to the skydiver,
light is to darkness
what the deployment is to the void.
Darkness is the absence of light,
the edge is the locus
where each morphs into the other.
Without the edge
there’s no light or darkness,
just like without the launch
there’s no deployment or void.
Light parallels the skydiver
and the deployment,
the edge parallels the launch,
darkness parallels the void.
It remains to be understood
what parallels the chute.
There are those who call it chance.




Drop The Pestle


I am done
grinding water
in the mortar,
pretending
I am useful
for some end
as it brings
grist to the mill
of total bilks
in charge.
I will be
picking daisies
from now on,
eyeing clouds
sailing by
and counting
tadpoles
in the pond.
I will be
idling nows
and thens away,
but for my sake,
and take it easy
like a lazy sloth.
No more no less.

 

 

The Silver Elephant

A silver elephant floats in the purple sky
after an amber cloudlet bordered in gold
trying to anchor above a deep-blue crest
as the sable dusk advances from the east.
Its glowing trunk stretches as if to pull it
unto its home hidden up among the stars
before the giant crimson disc drops down
below the sharp profile of blackened hills.
My drooping eyelids bar my restless sight
from accompanying its graceful final glide
as the last ray of light dissolves in the night.
The tiny child I was sinks in a pillow of snow
and soon an azure dream transports him back
to that old time when pachyderms rode on high.

 

 

A Hill Runner's Casual Wacky Thoughts

You can't reach the horizon,
the horizon can reach you.

To establish
real deep contact
eyes in eyes
or mind through mind
is hardly enough
unless combined
with skin on skin.

Utter perfection,
immaculate beauty,
flawless harmony,
they all rest on simplicity.

Botticelli's Venus married off
to Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

Everything is recurrent,
without exception,
nothing is finite in itself.

On average
a molecule of water
remains in the atmosphere
for nine days,
in a glacier
for twenty thousand years,
but it always returns to the sea.

All the mountains
crumble down in the end,
more will arise from their debris.

Anything goes
in this implausible world,
though better small fry than big fish.

Unwrapping it
is all we are born for.

Waiting in line
is the scariest part of a roller coaster.

Only time will pass unnoticed.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 17 countries. His sixth collection, titled The Invisible, will be published in late 2023 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.