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Tuesday 10 April 2012

Dom Gabrielli-

After Pasolini's Medea
  
there would have been delight once
in the scattered body of the victim
whose blood was smeared upon the grain and the pod
on the black and brown surfaces of the earth
his handsome face and hand his testicles
carried in a frenzy to unknown summit

so he was just a smile
at the executioner
his destiny a broken neck in spring
as the crowds gathered to scatter his axed members

the camera's deliberate shaking
like the smile a man sends to another
in the hiatus between jagged stills
the beauty of any wholeness is just colour
is just a body just a face a pair of eyes or legs
deep valleys and mediterranean rocks
burning in the power of almighty indifference

what then is a world without gods
what then is a world without sacrifice
the god that hid in an enigma
the god of a premonition the god of a smile
which ushered you to make love
as life depended upon it
to assassinate your rival
in the same wild act of love

gods were never benevolent entities
you could never talk to them
they admonished as they killed
they ordered the scatterings of innocent men's blood
they raped and pillaged for jealousy
they were the intolerable and the unjust

the hero is not himself
he is just the feelings he has
spontaneously between one sentence and another
between the orders of a fool
and the hideous spittle of a monster
just a conduit
between one god's game and another's fury
the dialectic of his insignificance
playing in fields of the unknown
the movement between one god's penetrating finger
and the amussis of judgement


Dom Gabrielli studied literature at Edinburgh and New York Universities and prepared for his doctorate in Paris and New York. Gabrielli’s passion for French literature and thought led him to begin writing, translating, and teaching. He translated widely including published works by Bataille,  Leiris and Jabes. In the early 1990’s, he left the academic world to travel and devote himself to writing. He has published two books to date. The Eyes of a Man (2009), his first book of poetry, and The Parallel Body (2010), which earned considerable praise. Several new books are on their way. Gabrielli has also published several individual poems and interviews, notably at Leaf Garden Press, The Poetry Bay, Vox Poetica and Real Stories Gallery. Gabrielli's books are here:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/search?searchTerm=dom+gabrielli&search=search. His own whereabouts on an axis between language and nowhere.

2 comments:

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  2. Intense and puzzling piece, Professor, and cruel like a furious mediterranean woman-god

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