Piano Solo

[to my dear friend Rubia Gardini who passed away. Piano player of our dream band, back when all our dreams seemed possible and we all dared to be who we wanted, even if we had no idea who we were]

it was morning
and everything was
going to happen
accordingly:
brush teeth,
wash face,
make coffee,
drink coffee,
enjoy coffee,
pee,
wash coffee machine,
change,
make the bed in 30 seconds.
go workout out.

it was morning
and everything
happened differently.
my mom never calls at 8 am.
The voice in the other side
numb and apathetic "Your friend passed away".

I brushed my teeth,
the taste of the news nauseating,
I washed my face,
one, two, three times,
I made coffee,
extra strong, thinking it might help me,
be a little stronger too,
I drank it up,
salty of tears in little swirls
of my own denial, had it really happened?
I detested that taste,
so I peed,
sure my pain can be flushed away;
I left the coffee machine as it was,
half full. half empty.
I changed, into something,
I'm not sure what,
and threw the cover over the bed,
as I walked out, to go running,
as fast as I could.

Strangeness & Charm

Ran in the dark
dragging the heart of the park
on my stiff ankles.
I leave traces of it all along,
an alive artery, the art of living
a dead weight I'm carrying around.

I hadn't been brave enough
to sweat poetry in a while:
It reminded me of my
rebellious days
When I thought I could
Ride on a bike, run and
Swim while playing the poet...
And boy, I could!
I could have a spark of innocence back then...

An idea of it wrapped in
muscles burning,
A verse rushing through blood
Pierces and begs to be built,
One more verse in exhaustion

The pleasure of friction
against the ground
makes the hair in my forearm shake

and my legs quiver and I pant
and gasp and throb and

Don't give up,
for God's sake,
keep looking straight ahead, squint the
eyes of your mind and I promise,
I promise,
You will see the finishing line.
Because everything ends.

The breathing of the trees
and flowers rushed
into my nostrils and
landed on my tongue:
It tasted like an omen
to an early summer.

The darkness of shadows casting
and my own shaped a sense
of why I was still alive and
running like me and the
park were one.

In the dark I ran,
like the devil chased me around,
I ran in white, in the
heart of the park,
to be brave enough
to sweat poetry.

.documentary.on.being.pop.

A miracle
when I opened
the bags of chips:
they cracked
barbecue remorse
in my metallic mouth.

I ate them with repulse
as the skinny bitch
across from me sang
some idiotic pop song.

I thought if I could make
her eat her own stupid hair
she'd come to realize
it's hard being fucking pop
and it's easy to have
a cool hair.

So I skipped my stop,
went to the MoMa instead,
pretended Andy Warhol's
Exhibition was still on.

I commented with Andy
about this guy's photography,
some Boris Mikhailov, probably
very pop because he's
from Ukraine and man,
nobody's more pop than
those people who come
from nothing and feel
like
nothing.

Right? So I ditched Andy,
because he was a fake pop,
he spent too much time
with his hair and he knew
nothing about pop,
this is why he was crowned
the father of Pop Art.
It's always like this.

But Boris, Boris understood
pop to the core... What it
really meant to be pop.

So I went home and listened
to Manson
and designed a seamless
pattern
all'Andy
just to be pop.

the Play

[original pic here]

My poetry
became a stripper.
every word's a spin,
every line's a show.

I gave it a $10.
then a $20.
then nothing at all...
the gentleman
next to me then gave it a $100.

My poetry
became a prostitute.
every metaphor's a moan
every rhyme's an extra charge.

I visited it once.
Then twice.
Then never again...
The bi-curious lady took a picture of it and left it by the night stand as she was getting dressed.

My poetry

became a photographer.
every theme's an angle,
every poem's a reflecting moment.

I let look at me it once.
I opened myself to it twice.
Then always:
conceptual shots
were always my thing.

My poetry
became an artist.
every change's meant to be,
every full stop's a comma.

I wrote like that often.
I felt it all even more often.
Then I collected
pieces thinking they made myself
whole.

The Unlist

I made a list of my worst
romantic combinations.

She was number one
My best friend was number two
You came third

I hope neither of you get offended
by the order that I chose
you can fight over who's
the real winner later
or who's the most jealous one,
who's best in bed but worst in dialogue,
who cooks worse and who drinks the most,
who exercises less,
who fantasizes the most,
who ultimately would drop all of this the first
for any other hot designer like myself
over a heartbeat that pounded
slightly faster

After this list, I felt no need
to write one about my very best.
Not because it is filled 1st, 2nd and 3rd
place by the same heart but
because a list you make when
things just don't mean anything.

Still Untitled

{pic here}
[find poem video in the end]

I've been meaning
to write a poem that
starts like this:
the best orgasms
I've ever had,
I gave them myself.

And another one that
somewhere in between this line
and that one
it would talk about how
wood can bend and how much of
Tolerance you've deforested

I've been really meaning
to edify such beautiful

sky-scrapper-poem

fearless and just... Real.

That would make
You
wonder things like
why do you abbreviate
such meaningful terms as
public display of affection
into something equivalent to
ASAP?

Seriously... how can you treat
love
like
Chinese food?

What I've been really
meaning to do is
come up on stage
and have you look
at me,
like you wanted
to find out why my poetry
is coming out of my mouth
like this.

so rare.

like I wanted you
to eat it, to digest
these uncooked emotions.

Speaking of rare emotions,
I've been really meaning
to finish that piece
that went this far:
"From a steamy window
I watch singular
couples
Open & Close their mouths
to Eat.

I hear what they say,
the clinking of silverware,
I feel what they feel,
Medium Rare Emotions.

Cloud Generator

I feel this massive...
this massive massiveness.

I slept for 9 point 30 hours.
I feel so insomniac.

I looked at myself in
the mirror when I slept walk
and swore to myself I would
not be like that anymore.
I swore to myself like
that actress
from that commercial.

I got 1/5 things
done today.
I'm assuming I should I include
1 as being alive.

A man in the subway
played the harmonica.
it reminded me of old days of
Alanis Morisette
but nobody gave a fuck.
and quite frankly,
neither did I.

I skipped Trance on my iPod.

I fantasized and I fantasized,
about her telling me over and
over again "you are so childish,
you are so immature..."

I swore when she said
"they are gonna pick you.
You and your design"

I felt this
massive...
massiveness of being
exactly who I had always
dreamed of.

So I dreamed about
about how my
poster saved the world and
about naked men that looked
and felt like women,
and it made me wonder...

when did you diverge?

when did you choose?

when did you stop choosing?

when did the massive become so massive
to the point that I don't feel it anymore?
to the point that I choose
to make it

so light

to make it

everything

to make it

myself.

.paint.

[breathtaking work by here ]

Words
drowning in paint:
there goes
"I".
there goes
"thought".
there goes
"much"
and "chance"
and "over" and
"less".

they are better off
in acrylics
than in my lips,
at least for now.

You see,
I'm unfortunate
enough to be a poet
not a painter.
rather than combining
pigments
to create meaning,
vague meaning,
the modern-art type of
meaning,
I am forced to invite
each and every of you
into the nakedness
of my monocromatic
straight-to-the-point skin,
just like that.

Wouldn't it be great
if my poems
were just splatters
which you'd all be
staring at right now?
Big splatters and
a tiny purple dot on a
porcelain white canvas.
You would be coming up
with absurd ideas
of what I meant.

"she must have been
pissed when she did that",
"I think she meant to
talk about love"
"I don't think she's the kind
that speaks of love"

Instead, I have to stay
here, before all of you,
and be brave enough
to put these words
together that mean

chest.

they mean

dream.

they mean I am so

tired.

they mean a stranger made me

smile

the other day.

They mean

it is ok,

it is ok??!

to let you all

in.

and it's ok if tired

means not giving up

of being

so helplessly strong

all the time.

they mean I won't be

judged

if I mispronounce something,

they mean I don't really

care

if I mispronounce because

I know you will find it

lovely
anyways,

they mean I am so

giving

I better

stop

giving,
before there's nothing left.

Shuffle

[original images here]

Me and girls.
Me and girls
are like music.
But not just any
kind of music.
If you're ignorant
or almost ignorant
about electronic music
I can explain you
a thing or two and
that is that me and girls
are like electronic music.

But not just any
kind of electronic music,
one that implements this
technique to its every single beat.
And for me it's always
more about the technique
than the beat.
This technique that DJ's
make use of,
like us poets do,

we make people fall in love
with whatever is
that we're saying.

Loop.
That's how they call it.
Sometimes I find that DJ's can be
more poetic than us,
how they say Loop
instead of "banging
hammering repetition
of a predictable
pattern so many times
you would believe it's
different".

I tell myself
"it's gonna be different"
and "it's gonna be different",
"it's gonna be different"

"it's
gonna
BE
different"

I say it once, twice,
three hundred times
equal amount of weekly
texting between
You
(there)
Me
(here)

it's gonna be different,
Raffaella, she made
you dinner, she took you
places, she promised she would
take you more places,
you felt like she really,
really meant these lines
she wrote, you wrote
both of you writing.

You felt like this
never before,
you thought you
did before but
now you really do,
before you didn't,
feel this different,
feel this naked,
completely vulnerable
vs venerable
and sure so sure
it was going to be
different

now

it is like my iPod music
I've got so used to.
they are like my iPod music.
2010 songs.
and 1 yet song with no loops
to be discovered.

differ(ent)

[original pic here]

Inebriated
but not like
wine floods
any type of

Rationality
in me
instead
I
Think
I
Think
so much
I feel so sober
it's absolutely
unjustifiable
these things
I feel and
honestly
don't care how
much of it
you feel too

just because
it is so

Real

Real
for me

my thoughts
I can't speak out
I don't
have to talk
we're commenting
on blinds that are
familiar to me
and my thoughts
travel so far and
in between the
cracks of light
that break,
in every corner of
your blinds.

Blinds. I shut
my eyes to see.

Whitney talks and
I pause to breathe,
to let go of your poem
for a while,
to let it walk by itself,
it almost says "Raffaella,
Raffaella...", but I can't.

Turn back and react
as a normal Raffaella would.

I gotta let it walk and
do whatever it wants,
fall, play, jump,
cry, smile, look at me,
be proud of me,
hold me.

Yeah. I will.
Let it go.
Wait for it.

the pragamatism of touch

[Pic by Eugene Buzuk]


I thought of you
now and I
touched myself.
Placed my hand
down there
and breathed in and out,
my other hand
pushing against
my skin even more
I pressed it in
and out.
the sounds so hollow,
my stomach,
emptied of food,
bathed in Mallox.

If only you really knew
how poetic I really am...

I thought of you and I
touched myself.
Back strategically
bent, great architect,
lips gently
bitten, sensual whore,
eyes that roll like
dice, the bet I made:
if I couldn't get a model one
like you.
So I did, touched both of
my hands: high-five to me.

If only you really knew
how poetic I really am...

I touch myself even when I
don't think of you.
your tongue
right past my
iPod playlist.
Speak right
through me,
speak right
through me.
You said you
can't believe
a word I say

If only you really knew
how poetic I really am...

I touch myself
in the subway while
the undying lines
shuffle
songs
that remind me
of how I am
touching myself
in the subway because
you barely touch me.

If only you really knew
how poetic you really are...