Frostbitten hearts by Albert Russo (simple ebook reader .txt) 📖

TEN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT


The palm of my hand

throbbing rock under a layer of ice

blood vessels ready to burst

in excrescence of bones


Fingers numb

screech in mute rhapsody

leaves, orphaned leaves

twigs caught in the pond’s

wintry embrace


Fingers alive

dreadfully pale

reaching out to the tree

through its burnt breaches of bark


Trickling

stalagmites

tight, so tight


LOVE POSTHUMOUS


Tinkling on the roofs of Pavia

muffled notes of a snow sonata

a pregnant woman lifts a plank

lays it by the crosscut saw

the plank falls to the ground

and while he bends over

the saw improvises an act of torture

echoes of raw flesh

severing of two phalanxes

he flees into the open whiteness

the right side of his trousers

glowing with incarmined blood

impassible flakes continue to spray

the city’s landscape

a sanguineous ghost slithers

between its narrow alleys

knowing not whether he is the soul

or the mere lodger

of a carpenter once named Mario


At the sight of his appartition

the woman drops her needles

ball of yarn

unrolling obliquely across the room

she blemishes

remains agape

then smoothly glides into

the retreat of unconsciousness


Blind to the scene, a creature

more human than embryo

wrenches itself from

the inhospitable womb


In the morning when my eyes

are still in a haze

I see huge butterflies

fluttering their wings

like black angels

at night I dream of a blue Pegasus

and an Amazon clasped

in a single mane

I and she

my mother and I

Memory posthumous for which

until the end I shall bear the remorse

the remorse of having torn her entrails

ever recurring remorse

whose untenable burden I am

with my 5’ ft 10” of bone-tissue

encumbrance


Retrospect of a play

images familiar

prenatal visions

the shred of a finger pointed

at mother’s cheek

shred changing into a saw

the saw brushing her delicate neck

bloodless beheading

an infant whimpering with rage

rage turned nostalgic

love sublimated

love begotten by the woman-martyr

for whom I shan’t cease to yearn


Love Posthumous


STILL LIFE


3.8 shivers south of the heart

yet another section of the artery ablaze

an icy wind sweeps at gusts of

two thousand kisses

per beat

frantically I try to catch

a handful of those crazed kisses

but succeed only in slashing my palm

the gush freezes

turning into a purple

stalactite

it pierces through the nostalgia vein

then all at once

you hear the bang

bones hollowed out of their dream cells

“farewell” she whispers

her hand freed from my grip

“we wern’t meant for each other”


THE PRISONS OF LOVE


what is it that makes love so uncharitable

turning the heart into a time bomb

and you into a gentle-faced terrorist?

feel how it scuds along the arteries

like churning breakers

while the silence of permafrost

wells inside your bones

how everything jumbles up in the head

where the seasons have lost their bearings

and the memory cells refuse to connect

you used to marvel at nature's discoveries

but now understand that man's quest for infinity

is an ongoing battle against his own imperfections

why else would he spend his resources

trying to tame matter and antimatter

quelling the fires that set our planet ablaze

and that which spills out of the sun

it is love he wishes to domesticate

that most treacherous and uncontrollable quantity

which, for God knows what reason,

originates in the heart and wreaks so much havoc

you then close your eyes and, suddenly, start melting

before the smile of a little boy


THE ROUNDNESS OF YOU


I want to say it in a thousand tongues

yet none said it better than my own

and since you are no longer in the flesh

it is everywhere that I want you to be,


like now, at Franco’s deli

where I have just bought some Parmesan cheese

grainy and slightly moist, piangente

the way you always insisted,

it melts in my mouth

and I savor the roundness of you


tondo, tondo, liscio come una luna d’avorio


I needed you to go for a while

then you misunderstood me and left,

you thought, forever

but you didn’t count with that roundness of you

with which my whole being was besotted

how you would laugh when I sang

the marvels of your skin


dans tes rondeurs encore je me glisse


this evening I asked the confectioner's

for your favorite marzipan chocolate

and I ate it on my way home,

then again that whiff

and the ineffable roundness of you


gold auf weiss, rund herum

wie deine feurigen Augen


half asleep, my lips drunk with your milk

whilst a hand cupped your buttocks

as if God had no other designs for it


la redondez de tus pies


oh I couldn't resist that pair of blue suede shoes

and had the pretty blonde attendant try them,

remember, the one with whom you shared

the same size?

she sold them to me for a song


I could go on and on

exhausting Babel

and its myriad tongues to evoke

the roundness of you,

which indeed I shall do,

for that taste of eternity

Publication Date: 12-07-2009

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