Thursday, 16 May 2024

Five Poems by Gabriella Garofalo

 



To S.


No use, my soul, in hounding a time green like apples

Or the undergrowth, you came in too late,

You and your impossible demands

For winter, with its icy-blue rooms,

If  your rooms too are so cold, never mind

This sudden burning in your limbs

It’s nothing to do with the moon,

Just shards from a volcano’s lava,

Debris from a cigarette-

My soul, my season,

To strain time they choose you, and your reverse fire

Ablaze in the underground-

No biggie if you can’t trust light,

Don’t worry if spring is running short of it, that stingy lady

Ready to silence men, women, souls dreaming

To migrate to distant seeds while the cold blue

Of wrath stands still and in a lost garden

They all are laughing, shunning words,

And all you can get is a b/n photo, so blurry,

Where blue and red mantises are playing around,

The sky wanders around by himself,

And a tall lady at the door, surrounded by kiddos,

Or symbols, is blocking the entry to a shadowy Heaven

Wondering why immortality, why the lymph, why the seeds,

Or shouting ‘Stop it once for all, moon,

You restless nomad of no help if words break

Souls and wombs’ -

Who knows, maybe a different sky,

Yet no time to call him demise.


 

To M. W.


Yes, think of her Saturdays,

When her mind feels like empty rooms

The removal men clearing the flat,

She wondering where’s God’s mobile number-

And you need it if you fail to catch your breath:

The only strategy for the days you’re living,

No backstair tricks from the soul,

While young words are seeking a break, a light-

They strive to bin all those colours,

And cheerful nightmares, to slide to some heaven

Like a thief in the night, maybe in those rooms

The light is gazing at wounded souls

Shake the hands, she’s warning you,

Stronger than gods a womb she’ll strike.

No words to her, but scattered creatures

Behind walls of sky, clouds, gaunt in her dreams,

Faint in her thoughts, and no, moon,

You can’t leave, as you don’t deserve deserve not

The electric blue that dismembers the neck,

The eyes, soon as a prophet’s root dismantles the soul-

You too, mothers, demise, stay put sit tight

If your dark limbs of maenads shattered desire:

Look, now, a green grass a long way away,

Brushwood, brambles, she’ll hurl at them

The green of a gaze, her charm against the evil eye,

And luckily they’ll mistake it as kindness-

But she’s not swearing, so no need to talk her down.


 

To S.


A screeching sound, her soul wondering

Whether it was wise of Him to load us down

With rebellious sparky limbs,

While rising stars are getting fed up

With those many requests of information on the last stop-

No big deal, however, as you don't possess the myth,

And it’s always  the same stuff when you give birth,

Or feel those first angels holding a fire sword,

Who frisk around you, as you welcome

Flares, blackouts, candlelight, maybe His rejection,

And so weird, innit, these winter days making a light

Where she dreams of trees looking friendly,

But it’s only a dream, against shaky snaps,

Angst-ridden woods, and look, I'm here, she whispers,

Yet no-one remarks, no-one sees them

Mourn the dead, entomb the living,

As they smile, they always smile,

Those crones who chose to snuff out

Teens scattered on a whim,

Sure, I know, much easier for small creatures

Dissolving in your eyes, but don’t you say smiles can help

If her meadows can’t cheese it,

Nor can they feel the sky-

‘Course , God, as you never throw yourself

Into the unknown, the blue silence

From the grass of souls already prey to your hands,

Your mind.



To S.


Sitting alone at home, her whims, her thoughts, her soul

All tangled up in a maze, music turned up full blast,

And fear through the roof, as life is around,

The murderer on the loose-

But only a blue light in the wind, can’t you feel her hunger

For clouds, infecting bites, rabies, or plants?

No food, only the missing down on the grass, in the sun,

And you, April, why are you mocking her

With your dust blue, whenever she’s pushing her soul

In the dark, ready to climb up, hit the sky,

Give shelter to her fear of dogs,

That scent of thoughts buried at night,

Along with a death as fresh as the wind,

As dark if at last he revives-

And yes, death’s moving like heather up the hills,

She’s got style, a dignified death when the first blades

Of grass show up, turn around,

Shortly before you step on festive limbs,

But doesn’t matter as long as the wind stays a friend,

And  she’s on the move, certainly not statues, arches,

Stones who wouldn’t dream of stalking heaven

When from hunger or light a warped branch is cut-

But doesn’t matter as long as the force

From a green burning age is shaking the sky,

As ever, she’ll nod smile give thanks,

While secretly craving to break into the dark,

Among mislaid words who birthed truth or deceit,

To silence the envy of a selfish moon

Who wouldn’t partake her light with foreign limbs-

But doesn’t matter, of course, if in the end

She runs out of light, or your soul.


                                  

To M. W.


What else can she say,

Can’t nip to the shop for some trinkets

If her light is being gripped by sunsets or signs,

That blue swathing you in silence,

And a bit of poetry at long last,

Yellow stains on your fingers

As memory legs in dismay when gutted clouds

Or craven lights fade away di fronte

From white walls, or men feeding creatures,

And their unpredictable bites-

Nevermind, she’s on the move,

When staring at her mothers hunched on a sofa,

Wailing at some fake illness,

Yet her soul told her never to care

For the many worn out hearts round here,

They’re going to crumble, aren’t they,

While her hunger’s pouncing on boulders,

Or falls, on her house showing her true colours,

Blue splashed on red, two sisters,

One parched, one ablaze yet alive,

So keen on hashing out misplaced lives,

Or grabbing bare-handed that blue-

Do come in winter, you old wolf, howl on your rocks,

But the last word shan’t be yours,

As her black-clad soul can’t listen, can’t look

At fathers sowing seeds, at fires haphazardly setting

Snow ablaze, she only too aware

Souls only fall down, and the snow

In this thwarted town stuck between winter, desire,

Where the game’s so easy for shadows,

As noises, blacktop or weeds split the sky,

Where groans from a primary white push forward

To a birth’s mad breaths, a heretical light

When mislaid limbs, insane thoughts

Feed granaries, and wombs with b/n pics,

Frozen lava, deserted spots-

But why not, if her green age no longer makes sense,

And lost creatures, weird climbers tried so hard

Not to get round the walls snow put up to end births,

Those panting breaths she’s waiting for-

Her life in a reverse shrieking, of course-

What else?


                                       




Gabriella Garofalo - Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of these books “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Casa di erba”; “Blue Branches”; “ A Blue Soul”, “After The Blue Rush”.

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