April 2023
John L. Stanizzi
jnc4251@aol.com
Bio Note: Hello my dear friends. The poems I've submitted this time are a little more experiental that the poems I usually write. But I was thinking, my last three books were all quite formal - that is to say, they were written in various classical forms. So...I thought I'd revisit the style (sort of) of the kinds of things I wrote when I was in my twenties - that is many, many, MANY more years that I care to talk about. Thanks so much for reading, I genuinely hope you enjoy these — they are quite different from what I usually submit. Grazie, Dear Friends.

Blackout

asleep with thunder asleep with lightning
under wet blankets of rain
lightning the color of daylight in dreams
 
*
 
morning’s slow breathing
bright tunnel of recollections
and the ghost of delusions silently closes the door
 
*
 
twenty sparrows’ tracks
where they have flown
in the sky

*
 
silver spotted skippers dance in the close air around the butterfly bush
touch down on purple blossoms
quietly applaud
 
*
 
the day moving forward slow and enormous
and exactly like this
just this once
 
*
 
morning’s wrinkled sheets
stiffness in the body
and the bones of annihilation in a heap at the door

Incensed Translations

one more bit of evidence
that proves I’m an old man
is the fact that by 5 p.m.
I must struggle to make 6,
with pain, stinging insects,
crawling all over me
				
is this anything like 
what it was to be passionate 
I cannot seem to recall,	
feeling the inclination
to report it as a grievance

untroubled sensuality
would expunge any 
ignited wrath those days	
winter or summer
we were oblivious to any temperature change 
other than the one 
we kindled with our bodies

and for decades
powerless barges	waterlogged
were pushed into 
nothing but the static future
their cargo the catastrophe 
of our past which never changed
(how could it) not an image	 not a metaphor
not a single line
…just constant bobbing awash
going nowhere

the present will always be buckled
by the obstinacy of the past
the two of them bonded together
giving everyone the impression
that there was no past	       no present
as if it had been one long story
changing imperceptibly
as the years vaporized
©2023 John L. Stanizzi

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