Modern Love Xxxvi (I'Ve Got It All Wrong) Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

Wearing the purple of summer, arising from the past,
Love is the only tradition that remains.
Coming from ruins, razed temples, pagan churches
transubstantive altar-pieces of bread and wine,
from villages forgotten among the Apennines or
Dolmites, pre-Rockies, post-Andes
where ancestoral breaths lived
wandering amidst manhattan
like steppenwolf
Along fifth avenue like a stray dog
into the metropolitan like a smiling hyena
into the Lincoln centre quad like a naked, david,
Watching hopeless sunsets, new mornings
over the east river, over the tiber, over the world
like the first events of neo-history
which I witness, by virtue of a passport
granted by a registry official
from the soft edge of the sharp points
of a buried age.
Ugly, am I, born of a woman’s entails
I, an ugly adult foetus,
modern as all the moderns
talking about a female Moses
who impregnated Adam, abel,
cain, with the anguish of semen
wander about, in search of
a lover,
the first woman
a woman with lipstick, driver’s license
a brother,
a family
who are no more

I’ve got it all wrong
Blundering again into the future
With the disdainful grace of uncertainty
Of that gentle poet,
Egoism, passion

I’ve got it all wrong, with my stuttering bravura
answering bourgeois questions
in a world of letters

Got everything all wrong

Back from another death,
like a burned cat,
driven over by a sixteen wheeler,
hung by children in olive groves,
as a warning of fecundity
fields of veiled plum and green
with the shade of renaissance forest,
in the background, Dali, Goethe, Cassandra
Virgil’s garden of earthly delights
below the strata of garish green, uncivilized
as the summer sun spreads overwhelming pain
in those fields, Apennine reds, Dolmite shacks
of Latin centurions-

I’ve got everything all wrong

Learning sign systems derived among laughter
while reading Camus, Plato, Dumas, Einstein, Silone
during the usual plane flights, train rides, bus stops
above and below the equator, comprehending
signs for deaf mutes, ideograms that shall become
once and for all, forever, international language
for tall, sublime naked worms
Grandmothers, grandchildren
of sycamores, maples, elms
ashes of Julius Caesar, bloated by tears
asymmetrical, like all of green,
a green that’s not Italian,
A green that’s not latin
a new green of the world
embodied in the forest
for eternity
Trapped, reappearing under clouds of mud
older than I will ever be
the fleshy color of pain
with five flesh colored roses,
Roses in the rose
First, in the beginning, was the Pain, suffering
(Ah, a shot of morphine, help!) :

I’ve got it all wrong, ugly gentle man!

Quinary rose, pain number two:
“blunderer of a lifetime”
like a river whose destiny to be no other river
is contained in the astonishing fact
of being a river
in a wollen sweater, ascertaining
from the summer sun
the absence of love,
down to the last teardrop,
now quite riduiculous
without the tears
understanding the cause
of my endless delusions
arriving at death,
without having lived
life offers one opportunity, only
I missed mine completely
And thus, I remain alive
to contemplate it, like a wreckage
a stupendous possession
that belongs to no one
A cripple with the ridiculous pain
of seeing everything granted to others
in a triumph of endless happiness
Without love, I am without love
while the bourgeois world is full,
full of love….
Summer sun gives migranes and erections-
dominating nighttime desires,
castrating to the last dropp of semen
resting in the chill of tiny flowering,
absorbed, perhaps, in some labor
unworthy of man

Blue rose of forgetfulness, pain number three
Pull off a petal and see it
red where it could have been white
white where it could have been yellow
as a wish, a wish for a whole lifetime
which by misfortune, fate, whim
allows
one sole way, only one form
this way…
Welcome to the analogic age
Operate in that field
as an apprentice
then give birth to Resistance
Fight with the weapon of poetry
restore logic, become civil
a civil poet
Now is the time of the Psychagogic
I am able to write
only while in the grip
of Music
due to excessive semen
or compassion
like someone dreaming of his own undoing
on the shores of the sea
where life is always beginning again
Alone, or almost alone, on the old coastline
among ruins of ancient civilizations
on the debit side of god’s ledger