Things suck here, but the future is the future for a reason.
The laptop that I was using growing so
mysteriously sludgy that I can't use it
though my car is relatively on its wheels again, which is something
it's quite possible I'll miss a question or something
Remember that you need to get your porn

Yury went to school. I wrote some and did the blog.
no real news on the visa problem.

LA has become a difficult place, but I would never
wear a serial killer t-shirt--

I'm hunting and pecking, the heating in my apartment is broken
so I'm dressed for the Arctic
and huddled
next to a very inadequate space heater.
But whatever. Once a year and all that.

There's a screening ere long, and I'm going.

* _{dennis c.'s p.s. words can be read on his blog}

I had a son three months old
flushed into the toilet in the silent night
the doctor said 'no heartbeat' three times
and I shed stupid tears in the plasticized
smudged room to the barricades
being a father was good for that while

repositories of dust and guano and crammed pots
wherein roots bend around until dirt is consumed
the faces of the buildings line them some face to face some very close
sometimes I lean out of the ledges, I bend backward from the streets
they're hanging on the other side, and I imagine it's you
  hanging clothes, watering plants, tilting your head
driven by my sight to half a wave

not knowing what to do with your body I used
  before you get it in.

why you? because you never cared for a balcony when you had it,
  and now you live in a city where to smoke grass is
allowed but balconies're not, 'cause they cost too much
but it makes no difference anyway, you know
the air kept changing today, and balconies still look clogged
  of the air abandoned
by the lives that lived it.

on the eve of the fifty anniversary I only remembered of, of Allen Ginsberg's poem 'America', a lousy roughed out homage

Italy I won't apologize for writing you in english since italian is not serious enough for you,
not that i want to be serious about it,

Italy sixty five euros January 17, 2006,
the buds are on the orchid branches, sparrows and blackbirds flock to my terrace for our seeds,
every neighbour hates his neighbour,

Italy it's been months without rain, every sponge is dry and the dust embroiders the pargets

Italy, yes i may be imitating Ginsberg right now, what do you care anyway. It's not the anniversary of his death, only of his verse,

   and your newspapers have other asses to disclose,
so get on with that, Italy, whip up your crew of drudging pros, tell 'em the few times i mistook for serious their excuses of jobs,

Italy i used to find you attractive.
Italy all the bad signs are here now.
Like the fact that i, who could have been the most talented of all, dropped it all not as withdrawal,
more like carving up a window off in the cave,
and pulled it off

Italy, I gave back the enviable all-inclusive occupation with mafia support, PhD in mafia,
time wasted behind the magic awning of the rewarding crime you had prepared for me,

Italy, i won't use the clouds you had picked for me, as the briefings, your cool web design, ticket restaurants, convenient politcal oral sex,
as the envy, as there's nothing I can do for the trees, pilot projects, sex in the office,
as the teams, temporary job, the clubs, as all the frustrated faces who love to repeat 'I don't need this in my life right now',

Italy will you just try to listen for once. Get off the chat line for a while, even if that makes you less friendly or sexy, I lost contact with you because i don't have a TV,

   on the other hand, TV was eating my dreams away, you called from the grave, what can I do to make it up to you? Won't you tell me of the shows I missed? Are the oligarchs really smiling at me?

Italy, of course i don't have any answers, not even advices, and i don't really care for my friends, i am writing you this poem only to have a little talk,

Oh Italy, now that you're electoral again i wish the word communism was banned from your vocabulary forever, as the word family, both your best lies

Italy bad signs are here, but you keep asking for the good ones, and I happen to know two of them,

I could not hate you when
your neurotic hairy knuckles made fun
of me, and looked at me
in disbelief,

I could not hate you when you said on
my first day on the earth, there's no way
this kid will love me

I wonder, how many times you thought to get rid of me
since then, to get rid of this ghost? or was the occasional beating implying it,

I could not hate you when you were so stingy,
like we had to count the pieces of toilet paper we had to use

you, lonely bully egg-shaped head
who would stop by behind me at the table and grasp
my side to laugh at my jumping,
I still can feel it,

I could not hate you when you boasted
about the girls you had and then
you asked me to keep it down when my girl was over

you painter molotov-thrower middle-class engineer stalinist,
love-needy, overpowering, nail biters, bald egg-shaped head,
wodka drinker,
why did you changed only when you felt
you had been clubbed enough? Is this as rational as you always
claimed to be? Just asking,

I could not hate you when you never allowed
us to call you two "dad" and "mom",

since you wanted your children to call their parents by their regular name, as evidently you thought
your name was very important,
I thought that too,

I could not hate you when I asked you "why is that?"
I did that once, and you said,

I don't remember what you said
no doubt it was another of those
dusty clouds of oddly shaped imperative words
you used to pull before you all the time
assuming they were thoughts,

calling them, "conceptions of the world"

I could not hate you, so I won't be the one
to wake you up from your dream,
your complaint of misfortune,

since you've been so damn good in
forgetting what you've done. I respect that.

She's not italian, she comes from outer space
we look in the eyes across tables and faces
we don't smile each other if just for a second
given time to tap a glance or a beckon
She wears her black hair short, she has a smooth skin,
her meaty lips dance is as deadly as a sin
that thick dark frame of her wise glasses says
she's insecure and she likes it the rough way
Outside the place of the vortex goodbyes
I stand and reach for her faint blue smile
beyond the window pane she bows her head
into neon light she's slicing white bread
I follow her hand moving as a toppling wing
I look away and that's what I wanted to sing.

tench'iu fella,

bat'de scai is grei end blu tudei,
mi biing older nau

tudei aiem no'teppi bud,

cos de scai is mor grei
end les blu

ai no, is stupid
forghiv mi bicos ai uanta bi
iongher, so iang enaf,

to bi pischèl¹ foreve,
uic'is not dat fan ider.

(Don't worry if you don't get it. It's just a macaronic thing dedicated to those out there who do not enjoy that we write in english being italian. And to ourselves. And to all of you unlucky enough to know)

_{1. pischèl, pischello: naive youngster}