wp_9364050, Autore presso Filippo Lubrano

Being Yourself Works

wp_9364050 — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 15:05:48 +0000

(To a certain extent)

At the hiring interview for the position inside your heart

The Manpower guy read a couple of lines from my cv

Queue up here, he says

The job is highly demanding

And no retirement fund is granted.

“Trust me” I say “I’ve been studying for this moment

For ages”

“Well, you’ll begin today.

Just lie there, together with the masses

That everyday are walked upon

On their chests

5 to 6 pm, sharp.

Your contract will be renewed every morning”

I’ve been thinking about an app for dentists

All it has to do

Is reminding you no to go there

All you need is a couple of pics of the last time

Shattered gums, rotten teeth

A domestic Vietnam

Everything

Just

To laugh better

At someone who remembers us

Pristine

What we’ll become in 20 years.

I’ve been playing left-side defender since I was a child

Been dealing with ankles

Tackling knees

In my living room

Stands a huge collection of cracked shin guards

The guy playing number 3 is better than I am

He dares to go for trivela

And he know how to trigger an offside

The coach kicks me in when we’re losing 0-3

It’s 3 mins past the 90th

I don’t give a shit about football

I just sit here

Every fucking day

On this cold-stone bench

Hoping for an injury to his feet

A thunder of bad luck

A glitch of the shinbone

In this rubber stadium, football temple

My personal hate gym.

I even tried to clean my soul up

I put it in the washing-machine, 90 degrees, together with socks, shirts and underwear

Socks got out unpaired, no wonder

All the rest, completely blown up

A laundry Mururoa.

Whenever I hang my clothes, normally

Clothespins fall on the lady downstairs’ balcony.

She gives them to her dog for lunch

Deliberately

A Rottweiler in the body of a poodle.

Wifi doesn’t work at home

I call the call center

20 minutes of Johann Sebastian Bach

Then someone answers

It’s Johann Sebastian Bach

Kinda irritated

He speaks 19th century-German

But the present one would’ve been enough

To make me not understand a single shit

So I just opt for my normal strategy

Delegating the activities I don’t fancy doing right now

To my future self

And this is mostly why

Who I am today

Is linked by an atomic hate

To the one who came before him.

People need to hear things don’t work for others either

Better, if things, for others, go even worse

This is the remaining sense of poetry

I can lose my bet on everything

But not on you, walking away.

L'articolo Being Yourself Works proviene da Filippo Lubrano.

I’d Bring You Here

wp_9364050 — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 18:15:11 +0000

Would the world be close to a Supernova implosion
A Champagne Supernova, as they used to sing
Would the world be about to end up in a couple of weeks, say
– wouldn’t it already be happening
I’d bring you here
Over the next weekend
Wouldn’t we be able to wait for the Lantern Days
Here
Where the skyscrapers are anorexic
And they rely on bamboo crutches.

Here, that’s where I’d bring you
Where scoliosis and sciaticas are healed with vacuum cups
– you have to subtract to donate, I learned it here
And human backs become checkers game.
We wouldn’t need masses on Sundays
Just incenses to be brought at the temple
Rice bowls with antenna chopsticks
– Our divine lightning rods.

This would be our last city,
The one after which we would feel no need to move forward:
We would go for picnics where the bridge dives into the sea
Before becoming itself again
And we would have rice paper copies of all our belongings;
We would remember that kids are never to be touched on their heads.

Should you feel lonely, you could just go for a walk to the New Territories
There would always be someone with you, to share the discovery:
A monk, a banker, a maid, a rare animal.

But none of this will happen eventually
No mass extinctions,
Not that fast, at least
No supernovas
What about Champagne, then?
It’s just a Veblen good, definitely overestimated.

It will just be the two of us,
sit on that very isosceles-triangle-shaped rug,

In the dark

While we pretend not to understand each other
And laugh about it
Challenging each other’s leadership on who’s feeling more ‘more or less good’
While the sky
Unprovided with bamboo crutches on that meridian,
Will take us by the occiput
With its portoro hands
A cherub’s cry as only soundtrack and geographical coordinate
Without
Paying us
The over-expected
Attention.

L'articolo I’d Bring You Here proviene da Filippo Lubrano.

Starting Over

wp_9364050 — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 07:14:12 +0000

(written at Gotham Writers)

The weather was hotter, there were no reasons for seasons. Tuk-tuks, swinging wires, skyscrapers – that was not the jungle I meant to be – food was crappy, people were aliens.

People have always been aliens, even the girl next door I’ve been trying to approach for so long forgetting any kind of objects a man can forget – salt, pepper, mozzarella for my pizza, a clean pair of socks, eggs for carbonara pasta, a good dvd, someone to watch it with.

I left for the only reason one should leave: I had nothing to learn anymore over there. And I was too far away, East. So I decided to balance and move too far away, West, where at least people are aliens, food is crappy.

At least now I am poor enough not to bother myself that I might sound cool just because the GDP of the country I come from is 10 times higher than the average.

I earn my day playing chess in Union Square, I play better than any Ashkenazi Nobel prize, I can beat Kasparov and Bobby Fischer at the same time, playing blind, but regularly I do have to pretend I lose, otherwise they would not allow me to stay there, collecting pawns to be able to eat prawns, using knights to get the chance to spend some nights in a proper sofa, worshipping bishops even though I’m that kind of an atheist.

I started over, 16 months after the last time, and that’s what happens every 16 months. At the beginning I didn’t choose the timing: time chose me, that’s the way life goes.

I heard the girl next door once said: the guy is cute, I’m just afraid he would forget our date, should I dare asking.

L'articolo Starting Over proviene da Filippo Lubrano.

(Untitled – Bangkok, November 2015)

wp_9364050 — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 08:46:00 +0000

You taught me spirits don’t move

but horizontally, in order to be safe,

all you’ll need is a trivial hurdle

between the sofa and the bedroom, oriented

the way the feng-shui suggests. A Benjarong teapot,

the one from your mother, a carved door

reflecting the multiple aspects the Naga can exist.

We went down to the chalk-stupa temple

the motionless stupas, that allow no livable cavity

on top of Buddha’s relic – a trace of hair, the ultimate nail.

We stared at ourselves as if the lake carps were

about to swallow us, shred our terrestrial meats

apart, to reincarnate in a lower circle,

a rat, a dragonfly, a monitor lizard.

Garuda’s wooden profiles were crutches for the oxygen

of the world, I would have leaned your silk

dress to invert the reproductive process, teach the butterfly

how to come back to the status of a silk worm, that giving your life away

was just not worth it, that no pashmina embroidery

deserves the final act, the one nobody

will narrate – just the latest of the countless ignored miracles.

The image of your neck overwhelmed all

this, the recess between your shoulder blade

and your atlas where your skin twists and stumbles and changes

its color, where I’d pour loads of tiger

balm, the fire of red tiger balm would

burn up to lathe your outline, to soothe

your domestic grieves, with a major blaze.

Considering giving your life away, to be a string

benefitting of your human warmth.

L'articolo (Untitled – Bangkok, November 2015) proviene da Filippo Lubrano.