Poems by Ivan Pozzoni

 

THE TEMPTATION TO EXIST

(to Mariano Menna and Valerio Pedini)

 

The temptation to exist of your generation,

transforms, in mine, into an existence attempted by equation:

19 + 19 = 38 + x, always remains an unknown,

in the hope that by inverting the number of factors

the farm does not fail, leaving, in exchange, a stunned generation

counting its wounds, hypochondriac, at the mercy of academics and doctors.

 

This will be your generation’s turn:

the new vulgar nobility, born in the golden cradles of racing necrofinance,

will respond by lowering your pants and showing your butt

to the idiotic middle finger (art marketing), located, in Milan, outside the stock exchange,

and to the Milanese, in Caritas lines, asking for alms from the new German invasion,

accustomed, by now, to replacing the finale of the Ninth Symphony with the Radetzky March.

 

This will be your generation’s turn:

Ligabue’s concerts in front of 50,000 donkeys in a pack,

Mussolini, at least, managed to make 80,000 idiots dance at a time,

maybe it was an indefensible, discreet, acrobat

to declare war on Ethiopia with the exclusive use of lubricators,

without having the opportunity to use electric guitars and amplifiers.

 

This will be up to your generation:

the new De Filippisian singer-songwriters like Marco Carta,

-“Carta sings and (François) Villon sleeps” –

will lead you, cojon cojoni, to the discovery

of living off news broadcast worldwide,

slaves of a delirious truth made of indecision.

 

Mariano and Valerio, two twenty-year-olds looking for escape

two undamped, damn you!, victims of television,

holocausts chasing the hunger for fame, your five minutes of fame,

spent giving interviews to Paola Perego in all automaticity,

or, daring late-moderns, disciples of an unpresentable contemptuous «sapper»,

in an unimmediate and mortal conflict with «power»?

 

This will be up to your generation:

to line up, with a knife between your teeth, beyond the Brillo Box

or, like Roberto da Crema, to sell stainless steel batteries,

ahrarara, to sell Delorazepam in verses that will make us burn

or sell apartments in center with services on the outskirts, not ideal for families that don’t like to run.

 

ATELIER

 

In the late modern of the ancient western world,

every Atelier is transformed in our hands, from a craftsman’s shop,

into a shop window of mediocre goods in the style of a shopping mall,

where writing, in delicious septenary, like a new courtier,

is an exclusive mazdaistic criterion for not being anti-social.

 

Cocaine addicts of writing, in 2014 they write, aha, still septenary,

establishing the constitution of the Pornasio, Snow White under the dwarves,

or under the noses?, Fennel sellers of primers

and renters, by the hour, of asses, the new shopkeepers of the Atelier have a thousand hands,

and a bibliographic curriculum like “Twenty Thousand Wanks Under the Sea“.

 

As in the chains of large-scale distribution,

the modern Atelier is equipped with a C[ontrol] / Q[uality] office,

where, with methods of Christian Democrat embezzlement,

the Atelier editors struggle to package truths,

holy donkeys and new ones designated for artisan beatification.

 

Imperator – or Valerian (Publius Licinius Valerianus)?-,

finally a non-Christian Democrat act

to sacrifice a sincere ten-year friendship

to defend the interests of a capital company,

an emperor now deafened by hypostasis mania

against those who do not accept any type of proskunesis.

 

It will be of no use to you to send the usual bounty hunters

now, XXL carbide in the fetid tunnels of your Italy,

and being a ferocious barbarian, nordic bandit, of the forests,

i wait to skewer, one by one, around my Atelier, your heads.

 

 

HOLY SHIT, WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE BUKOWSKI?

 

It’s not easy to be at 2:25 in the morning, with a drink in front of you, tapping away on the keys,

i would never want my detractors, or the parasites, to accuse me of imitating Bukowski,

since i’m reading Holy Heaven, Why Do You Wear a Tie?, where there is no translation by Tiziano Scarpa,

staying – you understand me – in terms of clothing, on a day where Aldo Nove, alias Antonio Centanin,

sent kisses to my woman via Facebook, and where Peppe Lanzetta’s wife sends me

Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry Specification, also on Facebook,

and the only thing missing is Paolo Nori, who, fortunately, does not have an accredited account.

 

Then Ambra, in a menstrual crisis, loses her mind and accuses me that the greats of literature only listen to me,

without my ever having received letters from Manzoni, from Foscolo, from D’Annunzio, at least from a Federigo Tozzi,

or from a De Amicis, or from a Collodi, or from a Fabio Volo – they’re all dead! -, and forces me

to go on a trip to Ikea, to buy Köttbullar and Kycklingbullar, with horseradish sauce,

and i accept, as an anti-purchase function of leftover furniture: bookcases, cabinets, Swedish wooden flowers.

 

But Ambra is a splendid girl, and she loves me, even if i really do resemble Bukowski:

half pockmarked, half a life spent in warehouses, half a love given to brainless whores.

She puts me on a diet, the will to make me survive my 90 kg, she writes beautiful things,

that remind me of Paolo Nori, or Aldo Nove, or Peppe Lanzetta, or Ivanovijc Pozzoni,

she leads me with a leash of love to modern art exhibitions, Pollock or Pollon i don’t remember,

and when i piss outside the vater – like all mediterranean males – and i defend myself artistically,

affirming my right to a warholian oxidation painting on the floor, she doesn’t get too angry,

she’s a post-modern woman, terrified of mold and boredom, with a splendid ass.

 

Tonight, after having created the twentieth Google Chrome user, i’m having an identity crisis:

am i Mollorso, Topis, Catherine of Siena, Ugo di Vieri, Giovanni Berchet, John the Baptist or Jesus?

Am i Novgorod in the 14th century, the Duke of Brabant, a Mongol from the Golden Horde,

Stefano Nemanja of Raška, Nicola Bombacci, Ingvar Kamprad or a glass of fake Amaretto?

Maybe, tonight, I really do resemble Bukowski: and, then, screw my ten readers,

and the only one who doesn’t screw herself, Ambra, with her urgent smile that – she knows nothing – has been replacing Daparox for a week.

 

 

Ivan Pozzoni is an internationally recognized writer and poet whose work has been widely acclaimed across literary and artistic circles. He won prestigious awards such as the Raduga, Montano, and Strega Prizes. His poetry has been featured extensively, with Alberto Bertoni including him in the Atlas of Contemporary Italian Poets and numerous appearances in Gradiva and his verses have been translated into over 25 languages.

 

A firm believer in internationalism, he collaborates with literary magazines across more than 100 nations, spanning Albania, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Russia, France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, the United States, England, Africa, India, Ukraine, Mongolia, Poland, and South America.

 

Pozzoni played a pivotal role in the NeoN-Avangardia movement and authored the Antimanifesto, which was endorsed by intellectual giants such as Zygmunt Bauman, Umberto Eco, and Giorgio Barberi Squarotti, along with other prominent scholars and artists. Until 2018, he was regarded as one of the leading figures in international contemporary art.

Currently associated with Kolektivne NSEAE, Ivan Pozzoni remains an influential presence in global literary and artistic discourse.