Dom Gabrielli-

morning nostalgias

unclutter this mind, pray undo it altogether. break down the walls of this person impudent enough to still hold a name which desires, which begets, which conquers , which imposters with all the signifying magnets, which invades all the particles of fire which burn, which burn my brother, which burn within, which burn without

where are your fingers, your cigarettes, your baby lips, your smiles, where are the storms which never quite carry, which never deliver, if only the dusts of deserts, the powders of my poems

only half of me is left and that half is dead, in permanent resusitation, aching hands and burning sands. what then is this middle, this inner-outer space, where the molten key, what then are you who slide between time spheres without pain

i know the way to blue. i have wandered the same breezes, the same smokes, late in the midnight diminishing, when the poems awake, the fellow pens, the distant brothers and sisters who tell us what they find

it is not so much an uncluttering. that is just the prelude. to let your voices speak. to see the memories of this windswept mind. to see you again. smiling in your wheelchair. holding my hand, shaking shaking in late spring hallway by the laurel bough and terracottas of fragrant basils

smooth is time perhaps. but only flattened, conquered, dispatched to another dimension. there is no ego without time. you can only become other in the releasing, in the becoming photograph of your person. let me be, let me go. come to me sweet memory of you, dead you, tomorrow

liberated i speak to you, a miniscule freedom, won, in battles with the demons of searchlights and goons unaware of the straighjackets they wear as uniform. i can fail tomorrow in the selfsame way. but is there a tomorrow anymore

where are you silver leaves and open boughs, where are you dead grasses and copulating lizards, black snakes and cistern geckoes, where are you turquoise tramontana blues and heavy sirocco grey-whites, where are you hands full of weeds, black nails and garlic fingers, where are you heart of goodness, song of nothing, wind of blue, wind of you, where did you go, where does this end, where are the coils of smoke which circle the sunflowers of reason, where are the open minds of rampant peapods, where is the scathing cactus irony of summer, where are you my nudity, my pain

Dom Gabrielli studied literature at Edinburgh, Paris and New York Universities. He has 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. Gabrielli has published two books to date. The Eyes of a Man (2009), his first book of poetry, and The Parallel Body (2010), which he recently translated into French (Les Corps Paralleles, 2012). Gabrielli travels extensively from his home in Salento, Italy, where he produces extra virgin olive oil.