How to Entertain Castaways
to survive the storm
There are people who go through life with an unnerving naturalness. They move gracefully, entering and leaving places easily without pain, fear or anguish. They’re on a frequency that I’d give anything to hear a little of and cross sidewalks without feeling like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Everything seems so simple, a village where opening a door is just “opening a door”, where there is no fear of feeling the breeze from the street intimidate every fucking cell in your body.
I’ve always been envious of these inhabitants, of their carefree faces, of their simplicity in seeing time as their own property, turning it into a tool for shaping desires. From my island, I dream of being able to reach that place and finally die, then be reborn as a child and be. I fantasize about finding a magic lamp in the wreckage of my shipwrecks and being able to have this request granted, a first chance of not having to seem to walk on my toes.
When I get home at the end of the day, I take off my shoes and play with one of the cats that comes to greet me at the door. I realize that this is the closest I’ve come to finding a little of that carefree existence. An island makes a castaway and a castaway makes an island his own.
In the end it’s all about being or feeling accepted, but I haven’t learned that song yet, so I’m writing another message and putting it in that bottle so that it reaches someone on the other side, or halfway.
I write so as not to be forgotten, to entertain shipwrecks and castaways, opening and closing my mouth in a funny, embarrassing, desperate, disbelieving way and faithful to the art of existing, even if it’s a one-man show.
I wanted to navigate your mystery once again
I wanted another prose, an alcove, a grave
to bury the old in something new
there are no virtues left in this sterile arena
there are only the same knights armed with boredom, with fictitious interests that don’t even bother to pretend anymore
I felt the weakness of belonging as I crossed a street I don’t know the name of
I heard yet another man foolishly call me and ask me to come over
but where to?
I told my child this morning that we were going to move, I picked up the pen and tried to write a goodbye letter
but where does the sender who loves me live?
I wrote six rhymes and smiled thinking that every poet makes deceit beautiful, mockery eternal and emptiness a reason to sit at the table and write letters and poems that no one will read.
I’d like to say so much without you turning your face away, so much I’d like to invoke but there’s no dead body, there’s no one to resurrect after two days, after two years
I’m going to forget so much while I move my neck and go down to my breasts
to the purple mark on the left side of my chest where something beats
I swear I heard it when I crossed the street and now when I remember it
The world is in pieces as I stare at my cell phone screen, at a message that won’t let me answer
when did we forget to light the candle and remember the way to the first days of the first times?
The years have turned into centuries and now I stare in disbelief at the naked boy against the wall
he looks so handsome as he ignores me looking out of the window
he looks so handsome when he doesn’t listen to me
he looks so handsome when he doesn’t care
he looks handsome because he can’t break my heart
I thought I’d write behind a painting like someone who carves a secret into a tree, but there’s nothing to share in any afternoon, there are no more good stories, there are no lovers left in the city
Rome, Remo, he who has a mouth sails on his own shipwreck, who has a mouth says anything to fool an empty afternoon, to fill up empty balls
who has a mouth is king and the world is made up of kingdoms, your majesty
Whoever doesn’t care wins the bet
but how much is it worth to pretend to desire? how much is it worth, Your Highness, to believe that you care about life beyond the mirror?
“Who are you?” I heard through the smoke of a cigarette
but instead of a caterpillar, Alice saw herself swallowing yet another excuse not to hand over her head on a platter
The value of things doesn’t matter if you don’t intend to possess them
to see is also to be willing
popular sayings don’t heal wounds
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