Massimo Fantuzzi

Poesia capricciosa

 

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Touched by the Hand of God

(Where a lament of nightfall, or other idle litany that fills the air with the stale but sweetly familiar smell of old relatives, will not prompt us to retrace a more logical and urgent narrative of survival. That is to say, how to tell my mother I am scared?)

 

Core in extension, a whole all along

of fronds that fell

waning to resurge skyward

and weather outward.

Core in exclusion

having long left its spell

absent disperse

(and lone)

grime

(and dormant)

on the wrong side

of the wrong divide.

 

Some wish to see. Stems in bunches we are here enclosed, one clutched winter fly beret around such supplicant chest, orbiting ever-fluctuating paraphrases of Pleiades and Plough, “Aches and twinges to come first my Lord, yet our conviction shan’t disperse”. 

Then, all noble intentions fizzled out; by morning, caretaker or resident spiders commencing their daily industry, something must have put us off.

 

Embers Belt

(Desert alone can grant our contours sufficient room and choreography, make one.) 

 

Swirling impalpable 

behind the ring of our backs, pollen 

lifted up in waves, lets itself dissolve

in hope or simply disdain.

 

Crushed the wandering slurring crone, 

floridly elated, to herself, Agnes will drink and feed 

on the open shores stirred

to the homages of the evening dusk, “Guardian angel, 

in pennons and down chutes,

surf these raging sands

and choke this campfire with these soft entrails.”

 

Such belated and laboured veneration will not quieten the crickets 

nor will it cash in on our mousy petitions. More than a smidgeon fictitious, 

smothered on all counts it’ll devour

me and you on the page, stealing the whole stage. 

 

Theft United

 

Niggling behind the utmost reality 

fitting likenesses

Madre Conati is eyeing Our Lady,

fan and fuel for her thinnest escape, 

these days but a watered down company. 

Past affinities 

cladded in silken skirted simplicities

now syndicating Truth in shares. 

 

Pickled tears and incenses lower their shutters

with a surrendered pathos of old stoves.

Which one of your satins 

this song will strip first? 

All in all, in their rosary of tongue and teeth,

the witty duo of pulse and perception 

in largely unanswered supplications 

haven’t evened things out yet.

 

Neophytes of Finisterre

(Looking at future matters, absent prudence and reachy rescue.)

 

From a hall of four golden walled suns, 

floral anticipations and mutual murmured suggestions

are upon this opening petal. Deferred, from chantry 

or chamber of dragonflies

even the latest aerial songs don’t dare engaging 

in their higher play

nor plot

of revamping of your colour scheme. 

 

“Result is a buddle of contradictions pretty size 8 nicely wrapped/slightly unwrapped for Christmas on your bed.” D.

 

To expatiate, to resurface from night’s bitter lungs of solvents,

an open conjecture of ocean circular and enchanted 

by the planetoid floating à l’orange is of mother pearl texture

and reads with a pinch of omnipotence tightly draped 

around the blended perfumed throats.

 

“Promise me.” “I promise you.” 

All given sufferings disappeared 

inside a shimmering celebration electric of blue

unctuous divinations and late supper’s dividends. 

 

Peeping Through Half Open Rice Curtains and Pearl Canopies 

 

TIME AS A LITTLE BOY 

(Presenting himself with grazed, scrawny knees, unfasten ammonia gown, itchy scalp and impertinent sniffle.)

To the trained ear, queues in constant humming are negotiating through the city far. 

My advent mounts on the puffy cloud of little need or understanding.

My slant, sleepy head gathering half-encounters 

drowns beneath roofless sanctuaries to feed on moss and overgrown.

Still manifestly fantasized is the reading of stars,

a back-of-the-envelope liturgy of another frazzled corridor.

 

Thinly rowing on thinning waters: please now unfold into rolling prairies.

 

THE PRAIRIES 

(Upholstered in lush, slippery silk, sisterly dangling curlers and puffing on menthol flavoured tobacco.)

The sewn green lies stuck between descents 

architectures and eviction from the judicial

coiled ill, with wondrous makeups and gone-by tan

in the fitting display of an afternoon of otiose mattress grandeur.

The two dance a still of feathers curtailed inebriant drapes,

inviting bridges, “The second left, meet me

and see for yourself on the tepid stony lane of severed breath”. 

 

Being farming, being the skin: please now settle in the corner of her smile.

 

THE SMILE 

(Acknowledgement of an old Chinese woman in late XX Century true mauve and hefty bargains vastly outstripping all competition this side of the Naviglio.)

Through this membrane walls, flesh and disclosure, 

bloomed escapades

pepper my lamb’s dream in the quiver’s refrain we’ve heartedly pooled and ate.

Each window shies behind its blinds and a broody strain waves

the clammy narrow path 

of any inspiration: Rose Street, 

Foxglove Square, lastly

Milan lapses in cherry-love.

 

Massimo Fantuzzi is a British-Italian dual national born in Milan living in Leicestershire. Author of a collection of poems and prose poems, Marcia Gioie (Alkalea, 1999). After his degree in Education, since 2001, works in supporting SEND individuals of all ages in schools and residential settings. Member of the editorial board at Triggerfish Critical Review, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alba, Morphrog, Poetry wtf?!, Grey Sparrow Journal, LiteLitOne, In Parentheses, Bosphorus Review of Books, Bombay Gin, Poetica Review, The Red Ogre Review, Straylight, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Salzburg Review and Orbis. From his window on the National Forest, he dares to keep score of the lasting proceedings between treetops, low clouds and other liminal frontiers. Bienvenue au Danse, Massimo.

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