Lugano, Autumn

Streets lined straight with silver coins

turn men to decorated rats

in our glittering capital of Hamlin.

Sprinklings from pricey powders
rest on the fur shoulders of grannies

without the potpourri pharmacy stink.

Young women grip the refined arms of Guido;

pets feigning balance as they strut and squawk

like exotic birds in mile-high stilettos.

I should snicker. I should be sick,

but I too lick the gaudy stockings

of Our Lady of Material Desires.

Sex and success hang off her skeletal frame.

Objects of beauty branded by commercial names:

this is you.

I have therefore I am.

Flicking tongues spit the flames of a more passionate language,

rolling "r"s over my choppy and guttural expressions

while a conflagration of envy and imitation

sweeps away my sense of another reality.

The pristine lakes and mountain villas,

spotless streets, plastic breasts and stone faces

mock me with their organized perfection,

maintained by lies of good in gold.

Isolated by more than mountains.

----

Thanks to Joe Amato.

Hoffnung:

You listened. But when I spoke, the thoughts I could express were not what I wanted you to hear. Carefully selected pauses in phrases with allusions to shared memories had been telling you all along. The pauses leaked into growing pools of silence that had their own meaning between us, for what could be louder than those spaces when the Gods speak? How often is the attempt at articulation only superfluous digression and the struggle for eloquence merely wasted clichés? How underestimated is the power of a glance? I valued subtlety and the elegance of brevity, and I knew you knew how to read between the lines. Then we began to sense the soundless interludes had become a pernicious gap in communication, a growing muted pleading for something more, a connection, which unheard became frustrated, violent and uncontrollable. What I thought was wordless comprehension was but hopeful endurance, wearing out. Front to front I thought my hands could link our thoughts, but sleeping back to back, expectations faltered that you could understand.
Now, alone waiting for dreams I wonder;
why would you speak to someone that way?

You drop a word here or there,
a statement or a question,
or maybe both or neither.
What fears worm back and through to eat
the development of what
you really meant to say
or meant to ask by saying
a thousand words that missed their mark.