Ivan Pozzoni: Selected Poems

Illustration: AI

JOURNALISTS

On the website of the Corriere della Sera

Come out marquette (in)worthy of the Gazzettino di Valmadrera,

the freelance webetic, who have never had the misfortune to work,

churn out pieceworks of bullshit that not even Baget Bozzo on the altar,

in a relentless pursuit of fake news and the scoop with every insert,

they beat, at a kilo a piece, the road that leads to Studio Aperto.

This is the same category that insistently interviews

the unfortunate during an earthquake,

without suffering, as a counterpart, in the street,

the application to the muzzle of a copious enteroclysm,

being able to reason with someone who lives

on the number of typefaces he pounds in the press room

considering human dignity out of fashion,

is like making Cicciolina drive a pump-truck.

Will anyone ever be able to explain to a cultural trader

living in a caricature market publishing,

victim of the hypertrophy of supply of articles without demand,

that independence and truth do not fit into the lexicon of horticulture,

The bold Houdinis of the utilitarian neo-sophistication

with the collapse of the mechanisms of hyper-capitalist publishing,

will end up being, finally, in their underwear,

demolished by the contempt of having been a ‘journalist’.

OUT OF ISCHEMS

Try, once in your life, to stop living outside each ischeme,

without constant ink interruptions to the vein’s phoneme,

so that the western crisis becomes an occipital crisis,

with the saving of ants increase the consumption of cicadas.

As you stopped reading, at least stop writing

‘public’ that doesn't exist and forces us to sell books like vacuum cleaners,

Porta a Porta, where Novi Aldi goes on Vespa and returns Bompiani,

after abandoning Theseus' ship, in whiff of hurricanes.

This is the century, or the millennium, of the professional artist

not knowing how to do anything, you are content to remain a figurehead,

among the various shrewd actors and actresses of the publishing market

willing to give their children to a rom in exchange for an inch of shelf space

in the prestigious Feltrinelli bookshop in your town

you don't want to stop living out of ischems, c'aggia fa?

THE BARBARIAN AND THE PRINCESS

To you who observe with your bistro eyes my discontents

you defuse me with a smile, you neutralise me with a love

as enduring as a Compact Fluorescent Lamp,

becoming aeriform, neon, argon, krypton,

maybe it's the krypton that deactivates my Superman cravings,

climbing up my spine with catlike paws,

dissuading me from gobbling, from drinking, from brawling, from stopping writing.

Princeza romana, eu sou seu bárbaro,

i keep wearing white tank tops in my black underwear

not washing the dishes, banging on the keys,

better than washing the keys and banging on the dishes,

i kidnapped you on a raid on the coasts of Gaeta,

enchanted by you, late-modern Circe,

capable of turning pigs into men,

pig's heart is equal to the human heart,

you alone have understood this, in twenty years, with your insulinous carefreeness,

with your insecurities, with your premenstrual breakdowns, with your questioning face,

always capable of disconcerting me, square mime destined to go bald,

without replacing me.

Princeza romana, eu sou seu bárbaro,

yet without being able to dedicate Odi barbare to you,

i am not equipped to hate anyone, or to mix metres,

- what shall we do, half a metre?- better my aptitude for duelling,

Ro rocamboling, half Cyrano de Bergerac and half Socrates,

i'm convinced that you prefer me whole, and long-life,

not having the ambition of the modern woman

to turn her man into an asshole.

AT THE TAVERN OF SOLID LOVE

My little love, solid, you, today, fell

and i was not there to support you, with my aggressive biceps

of a barbarian from the northern forests, my face painted blue,

lying in the spasmodic berserksgangr of drinking from the skulls of the vanquished,

it all begins with a trembling, chattering of teeth and a feeling of cold,

immense rage and a desire to assault the enemy.

My little love, fragile, you, today, fell,

and there is a tavern behind our house, all brianzola, your new world,

there is a tavern that serves a hundred and a hundred types of risotto

to spread on your wounds and on your skinned knees,

where i, imperative man, can still interpret every amber darkness

in your wise child's eyes, manipulating the kaleidoscope of your irises,

voluntarily uncovering my flank to the dagger of your arctic lucidity.

If not a tavern, our love, resembles us: we eat and live,

remunerating each other, victories and defeats, hôtellerie, we bustle and eat,

until the innkeeper Godan, the god of stubborn ‘poets’, slams a mug of mead on the table

invite us to dance at Walhalla, Mocambo a contrario, dance far away, to the end of the worlds,

you will return to the simple freshness of your sea, you wandering caetan siren of sand,

and to me the fog-damp earth of the valley without ascents or descents will not weigh on my zinc.

In the ancient taverns of solid love continue to mix fog and sea-water,

outside thunderstorms, lightning and thunder, liquefied by the cloudburst everything is drying out,

and we, we eat and live, we bustle and eat, sheltered, in our reserve of happiness,

aware that, hovering in the air, in the long run,

the misty ice crystals will flow into the sea.

THE INHERITANCE

On a bourgeois family of honourable society

a surprising inheritance happened, between head and neck,

an old aunt whose death everyone, including me, secretly cheered on

dying she left her nephews money, flats and jewellery in safe,

and the nephews, cleverly, far from getting into a toast

started to fight.

The grandchildren with the keys to the flat got the idea

to retrieve the jewels with a record worthy of Mennea,

without taking into account the insignificant circumstance

of having acted without notifying the notary and the entire cousinhood.

Reacts ferventerly the wife of the Carate chrome-worker,

busy settling his bankruptcy in instalments:

he is a thief who fucks three spoons

he is a saint who does not pay his workers severance pay.

Responds, proudly, the brother of the new Arsenii,

my brothers left her cheque books,

and all, indignant, entrench themselves behind obstruction

in deciding which apartment each will be assigned.

The cousins from Veneto, accustomed to the plateau,

Want, at all costs, the five flats in Bassano;

the cousins from Monza do not agree: they are fearful

that the rented houses in Brianza conceal defaulters.

How will it end? Negotiations begin face to face

worthy of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis,

everyone claims muggings andplots scams

as if they were guests at Maria De Filippi's.

The only black misfortune is my situation,

my mother, granddaughter like everyone else, vacca malora,

still hasn't noticed her aunt's death!

Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced Law and Literature in Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world; He collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. Between 2007 and 2024, different versions of the books were published: Underground and Riserva Indiana, with A&B Editrice, Versi Introversi, Mostri, Galata morente, Carmina non dant damen, Scarti di magazzino, Qui gli austriaci sono più severi dei Borboni, Cherchez la troika e La malattia invettiva con Limina Mentis, Lame da rasoi, with Joker, Il Guastatore, with Cleup, Patroclo non deve morire, with deComporre Edizioni and Kolektivne NSEAE with Divinafollia. He was the founder and director of the literary magazine Il Guastatore – «neon»-avant-garde notebooks; he was the founder and director of the literary magazine L'Arrivista; he is the editor and chef of the international philosophical magazine Información Filosófica. It contains a fortnight of autogérées socialistes edition houses. He wrote 150 volumes, wrote 1000 essays, founded an avant-garde movement (NéoN-avant-gardisme, approved by Zygmunt Bauman), and wrote an Anti-manifesto NéoN-Avant-gardiste. This is mentioned in the main university manuals of literature history, philosophical history and in the main volumes of literary criticism. His book La malattia invettiva wins Raduga, mention of the critique of Montano et Strega. He is included in the Atlas of contemporary Italian poets of the University of Bologne and is included several times in the major international literature magazine, Gradiva. His verses are translated into 25 languages. In 2024, after six years of total retrait of academic studies, he return to the Italian artistic world and melts the NSEAE Kolektivne (New socio/ethno/aesthetic anthropology) [https://kolektivnenseae.wordpress.com/].