Existence
or Embarrassing Poetry From My Youth
Existence turns and twists and plays with your mind
as you play with your hair;
sighing,
straining to understand what someone is trying to convey,
while the problems of life buzz like cicadas,
in the tumult of an August afternoon,
on a brick and asphalt day.
The mind reaches out to create,
and images are freed from black letters
and your eyes sink and set and slowly realize
cool, wet grass kissing your feet,
as your soul, unchained to free
floats along a breeze upon an open endless field
shining green.
You dance and run as the yellow sun basks in the blue feather sky.
You laugh and cry a secret escape amongst the glittering tears
of some sunny day.
And as
the sprinkle of glittering rain washes away dirt and pain;
as the caress of breeze feathers the joy being;
as this wind-flowered field unfolds within,
it curls under and around and loves and accepts;
embracing you wonderful you embracing it.
Drink up this world as it melts into your veins,
carry the sunny place living in these black letters:
these words you try to understand,
as you play with your hair,
aware again of the buzzing cicadas
turning your inner existence out.
Author: Rocco
Rocco is based in Toronto. He has been published in over 30 magazines and literary journals in Canada and abroad, including Descant, Queens Quarterly, Event and Canadian Literature. He has appeared on radio specials in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and New York City and has been commissioned to write poetry by the CBC. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the arts ezine, Latchkey.net, and is working on his third collection of poetry, "Everything is Still Burning: 20 Travel Poems." Another collection, published by Fooliar Press, is expected in the fall of 2005
Rocco has travelled much throughout Europe and Asia and Canada and all the places and experiences reflect in his writing. He has worked as a garbage man, a research reporter, a rickshaw driver, a hard labourer, and presently an English instructor for new Canadian immigrants.
He has launched his website not only to promote his own poetry and art, but also to open an online venue for other artists like himself, struggling for an audience and a stake in a little immortality.
Other People’s Poetry
Caminando
Take your moon face away
into the mountains of so many cities
and stare down
The invisible dance
over the cemetery of spirits
and spirits talk
La noche ojos grande
Green alleys to the future
Ways to the magic cave
You splits in the spring wind
You have the key to all the doors
Be strong
Eat fish
Drink rum.
Victor Hernandez Cruz
Other People’s Poetry
Untitled
by Luciano Iacobelli
I was a child with little to say
my thoughts and words added nothing
to a world already complete
but in grade school
I ate a piece of chocolate given to me by a kid
who laughed when I swallowed it
ha ha he said
I gave you poison
and you’re gonna die
I believed him
despite assurances from others
that the boy had played a trick
I trembled and waited for my blood to freeze
and even though it never did
I feared the death inside me
was delayed
a lazy snake
sleeping in the shade of my organs
and so a little piece of candy reversed me
drew my eyes in towards my own workings
made me wordy and thoughtful
with a longwinded hunt
for a scaly darkness
that might
at any moment
strike
This poem was published as part of Luciano Iacobelli’s collection, Painting Circles (Quattro Books, 2012).
Pressure
Valves, clamps, tubes, washers.
At night especially,
I can feel them knocking
under my fingers. They are tender
and immediate as their burden,
their weaknesses are slight enough
to be disastrous: an incidental
whisper, the brush of brick
or bone; how many secrets
would come flooding forth?
Rocco de Giacomo
As appeared in Existere, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2011.