MACHINE

MACHINE

“The autonomous logico-fantastic machine is something I like insofar as (and if) it serves some real need: the need to enlarge the sphere of what we can imagine, and to introduce into our limited range of choices “absolute rejection” by means of a world thought out in all its details according to other values and other relationships.” Italo Calvino

you must have
read this poem yesterday

or maybe you are
planning
to read it
tomorrow

stop me before
I ramble on erroneously:
you may well
have read the poem
today
    already

perhaps
    you are ahead of me

just how it is
       how this machine works:
nature of the game

it could be  stone-cold fact

that you
are always ahead of me

maybe you read it
when I was undressed

might have told me
I would have dressed
smartly for you

or gone all Lagerfeld
dressed
       to kill

but what use seduction
when I may
well
    be dead already?

what use
          putting pedal to the metal
linguistically speaking
upping the ante
so that
        my words
                 might touch you well?

you read this poem tomorrow

you read this poem
                     how things at
that moment dictated
                       everything

and
    short of signalling every cue
or clue

     nothing I could do

NO SURPRISE

NO SURPRISE

no surprise
this is just a mirror
and you know mirrors

see yourself there
wondering how the light
could figure you out at all

no depth you have
is what you assume
perhaps
definitively conclude

but when the reflection
moves first, poses
a question
how can you
be so sure?

and who is meant to
act nonplussed

downplay the magic that
undeniably exists

something transformative
in the air you pick up an image

try to place its scent
hold it
up to the light

strange how it
lets itself
react
to your presence