WAITING FOR ONE'S TURN AT THE EXAM

I have tried to take some notes this time

waiting for my turn to ask my questions,

I found myself in the usual jumble of thoughts and reflections

typical of those moments in which nothing happens,

“When time stops and time is never ending” came too on my mind,

but as ever, lines like these sound too solemn in these moments,

the same as many other quotes, quotes, a lot of other quotes

that look for a rhythm, a reason; I think that most of the time

we all are in this In-between in which infinite fingers

drum on infinite tables and window-sills waiting for

a shape, a result, a proposition, a proposal, an issue, a sky.

Life can be only an inconclusive and incomplete river,

just this fluctuating thing. It’s when a joke, a smile, a caress, even a bang

can be so welcome because they interrupt the stream of nothing.

The stream no-stream we, subtly but definitely, most fear.

 

In it the Zen pupil can fall asleep and the Zen master is ready with his cane

on the pupil’s shoulder to wake him up to the nothingness, as if, as if, as if

just this empty, flowing anything were exactly all there is, including the illusion

that one day we can escape from it.

 

Well, that's enough...now it’s my turn, at last I am going to ask my question,

I look at the student, at this eager gaze, this sea of expectations.

My question comes, it wants to be inviting, words devouring stillness.

I don’t mind supposing silence will swallow us all.

Let’s cast out this further spark of syllables, this uttering forwardness.

 

This bait.

Nonetheless, this hope.

 

( In the meantime I want to express all my best wishes to David King)

AIR CONDITIONING

Time has come.

In which we let ourselves

sojourn in this bubble of cool.

Outside the heavy lid of air

bogs down silence and sound,

sweat being the warp and woof of any ground.

 

So, we let hell stay

and take shelter in this mimicry of heaven.

Allow me this reflection

while the gaze of the hot haze

on the still lagoon

reminds so definitely, so soon,

 

of this inconstant stay.

THE WOOD

After so much forgetting

we are glad to sense we need our maze,

the lay of our veins, still closer than ever,

still warm, dark, unexplored

at its innermost core,

 

in our swishing on we

talk and hush –the same

in the quiet pressure of the oak’s stare,

inner sky arms holding

the squirrel’s stiletto stillness

 

and on the ground a scurrying, in the old leaves

while the garlic flowers breathe

their own grid of loosened chains

fully stinging and fulfilled, upward

through threading sunbeams.

 

We are glad to be walking drunk

with sun and shadow, with their

interweaving on each shred path

at the crossroads, on beehives of tracks

testing the heart,

 

our gaze both straight in front and inward

with its marvelling range of irises,

we are glad to have to make a choice,

glad of the roads not taken

for now, sure that the maze

 

will wait biding its time, mud sparking

on directions we’ll dig in the undergrowth

of our wish, just needing

this start back, its dark green

and, where knots of sap lure and sting,

 

the deep fluttering, the call

of barely seen wings.

 

This poem, written several years ago, has come to my mind reading the latest post in Crafty Green Poet's blog.

TWO RAINY HAIKUS

Rain again,

tapping tips of sky.

A longer eternity.

 

For ages I have tried

to see the light in the rain,

to befriend nemesis.

CAT'S TEACHING

In the silence of dawn
opening the window
I caught sight of a cat
in a basket I had left,
and forgotten,
on my neglected
balcony floor.
It looked so at home,
snug inside it.
Maybe a glimpse
of a necessary attitude:
settling in what's left
like a curling marvel
and silently, secretly,
trying to be snug
in one's own heart,
while keeping going.

LINKEDIN'S PERVERSE LINKING IN

 

Dear blog-friends, the story I am going to tell you is true, I am just going to fictionalize it a bit and change the names of its two protagonists for a matter of discretion, even if I am not sure if, at least one of the two, would deserve that.

Any comment on what I am going to report and reflect upon, any interpretation would be sincerely relished.

 

Around one month ago this message reached me in my email box: “Myra Windmiller wants to connect with you on Linkedin”. Now, I had stopped contacting and seeing Myra Windmiller for a long time since she was someone who had disgraced me, to use a kind expression, in a traumatic manner. She, on her part, had  never tried to contact me either for at least two years.

I still had her email address and I sent her immediately a brief message, maybe just because I was too puzzled, telling her I do not trust social networks and” please contact me directly via a normal email if you have anything to tell me”, something I strongly doubted and in fact she did not answer, which was, by the way, typical of her.. that brought back to my mind her reactions in the past that consisted in never answering in any possible way, with any possible means.

Now, the problem is I am maybe too curious and I wanted to understand the reasons of that message.

After two days I answered to the message itself asking to the dear Linkedin people whether they had sent me themselves the invitation, by their own choice, without ever being contacted by Myra. For days I didn’t get any answer, checking then my emails I realized that answering Linkedin’s email  and writing my question to them I had in fact sent the message to Myra because the answer button contained no Linkedin’s address but directly Myra’s address!

Vastly disappointed I entered Linkedin’s website, passing through the usual jumble of passwords and tricks and internet paraphernalia I wasn’t in the least enjoying, to find a way to get some information. In Linkedin I found many people, some of them I knew well, others I absolutely did not, I clicked buttons simply to go on and find a space dedicated to enquires about the messages of invitation. Eventually, after ages, two-three days, I found it and wrote the same message of enquiry I had unknowingly sent to Myra. An answer arrived, one week later by someone called Irene, it was a very kind answer in which Irene told me that in no way they “invented” an invitation by someone who hadn’t, through them, clearly expressed the desire to contact someone else.

I at once wrote back to Myra pasting her invitation in my message and reporting Irene’s message.

At the end of my message I typed a big WHY. Did I receive any answer from Myra? Well… you can well imagine!

In the meantime some friends sent me messages telling me that I had invited me to join me on Linkedin! Even an old lady who lived in Malta and who I had seen last time two years before.

In the meantime I kept receiving messages from Linkedin again referring about other people Myra was in contact with. A deluge of messages from Linkedin was getting into my email box. I deleted everything, I deleted my connection, among my favourite sites, with Linkedin.

Now the deluge has stopped at last, or does it lie dormant?

A question, after this, is inevitable, echoing a famous Bob Dylan’s song: are we internet users pawns in which game, in whose game?

AGAINST ANY SOLID GROUND

Words, just words

and their music that passes,

rivers I keep walking along

or crossing, lying down in them,

trying to be overwhelmed and blessed

by the entanglement of water and weeds,

taking care of losing ground, taking care

of giving in to the streaming details

of water and air.

A dance, like any dance,

against any solid ground.

With your eyes in my memory.

Because eyes sweep up earth

into water and air, memory

that is their stare,

eddies of blue brown green,

ground giving in

to their currents.

I keep your eyes tight

to my heart and mind.

At the point where

there are no other lifelines.

And you can all, or nobody,

stare at me who am nothing,

or just a breath of words stretching

on water and air.

FOUR LATE SPRING HAIKUS

Rain in May.
The weather sways
far from our wishes.

Throat-breaking, thunderous coughs
from the opposite window.
The day begins.

Pale sun peeping
through the shutters:
no way, decision can't be shy.

June, already June,
green's gold
always too soon.