Obsta

she's piqued,
she just can't deal,
it's simply over her head,
it's not fair, oh no, Christ no!
she knows no rest since long ago
(but no matter how dramatic
the issue is quite static...)
these are the things that happen to her
when she hopes... but shouldn't

carta

Querida sobrina,
Quería hablarte de esta mañana, que tan triste te noté... te acordás?
Te miré con dulzura.
Te sonreí antes de irme.
Tu novio te hablaba anoche de su hablar de vos a los demás, de su orgulloso hablar de vos. Vi sonrojarse tus mejillas. Estabas contenta.
"No, a la mujer se la deja encerrada en casa..." decía él con tu rubor de aplauso, "más si es hermosa y fascinante como la mía... y sí, la voy a mandar a rendir materias para equiparar su título..., y me decían 'pero naturalmente como no frecuentante', y yo, 'lógico! ni ahí de frecuentante', jajaaa!"
Yo no quise interrumpir tu felicidad. A veces el orgullo también es una forma de control, porque quién no se vuelve dependiente de aquel orgullo que alguna vez pretérita logró causar?
Ruborizate sin culpa. Cosechá lo que puedas, tu eterna excusa para no denunciar lo injusto. Pero solo para bien. Y que la ecuación final sea resolvible.
A la noche vuelvo y pongo en el horno las papitas.

cuba libre

-En mi familia tengo quien me dice oye pero tú haceh demasiado.
-Sí, poque tehtá desahuciando, ya te digo.
-Y tengo quien me dice oye que no haceh una mielda.
-Eh así, chica.
-Sí, pero son todoh el mihmo, muhé.
-No te sigo, chica.
-No te culpo, muhé. Vamoh a la playa.
-Vamoh.

friday

tomorrow evening we play live...
the season starts when we arrive
my wig and lenses top the jazz
my high heels looking for the gas

I sing in the car
I play on the stage
I smile at the stove while I
fall down the stairs

stride my stride, try to play my game
thought you could but you're not the same
tomorrow evening we play live
and on my screen yesterday says hi

He repeats it until it drives home.

Realidades de Ciertos Hijos

Existe el mundo. Y existen los mundos. Tenés dos, tu mundo es tu cuarto en el universo de tu casa. Tenés trece, tu mundo son las delicadas relaciones de la así llamada "escuela media"... donde realmente te forman... o no. Donde si sos nena te volvés silenciosamente mujer con una mirada asustada en un cubículo del baño, y sufrís las flechas de las malas y las envidiosas, que por lo general coinciden. Donde si sos nene, y no sos deportivamente ágil, te catalogan como gordo. Y si sos gordo, seas nene, o nena, es como llevar una pelota de plomo encadenada al pie.
Y existe el submundo de ser el de afuera y encima ser bastante especial.
Las demás minorías, en vez de acogerte, de unirse para defenderte, te acusan, separan, y maltratan mucho más que la mayoría.
Sentís desilusión más grande que tus años, sentís añoranza de como tendrían que ser las cosas sin ni siquiera poderla describir.
Situaciones pasajeras que en el instante son eternas. Caídas, humillaciones, contrastes, críticas, desprecio, injusticia, junto con el jamoncito del medio de la merienda... si tu mamá se acordó.
Y cuando te viene a buscar, ella, tu mamá, mira tus ojos, tu sonrisa, espera a ver qué tal sobreviviste... espera ansiosamente que no se haya roto lo irrompible.
Y como cada persona de fe, y como cada obsesivo compulsivo, el suspiro de alivio llega también hoy. Llega cada vez. De lo contrario, tendría sentido.

Relent a Little Less

Audrey?
Lily? What happened sister?
He hit me.
What? The sonofabitch? Again?
That's right.
Jesus Lily, what're you gonna to do about this?
I don't know, my friend. I suspect it's happening. Something is pushing inside me. It's beyond my powers to stop the fury I feel in and around me. I don't know what to expect and that scares me.
Ok. Listen carefully. Remember that song by Sting, the one you lovingly dismissed?  Beware, though, because your soul, my sweet darling, is manyfold.
Yeah, if Neapolitan sfogliatelle exist, I don't see why the human soul should be any less complicated.
See? You're already feeling better.
Indeed!
'at a girl. I'm coming over, metti su un caffé.
Click.

Wreck-it Raffaelly

Hello, fellow woman.
I am a ferocious being. I live within the woman who expresses my thoughts in this moment...
I exist.
My name is... well hers, my earthly host's, is Lily.
She just had a breakthrough, my host that is.
She just realized I'm not all that bad.
I may have floundered in the past, but I am strong now, and I know to keep my temper.
But I also know how to unleash it.
I wasn't even casted, just think of it.
She's realizing that sometimes, to keep herself sane, she needs to let me step in.
I'm her savior, sometimes.
I'm her personal fucking Wreck-it Wratharella.... sometimes.

lullabies

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Fabrizio's Advice

As you're unfashionably sliding down, too far from the edge to clamber back up, just push one problem at a time into the funnel's end and you'll be just fine.

From Moon to Fusaro

Once, when I was living in Buenos Aires, I got invited to a seemingly innocent luncheon, by an Italian friend of my father's who must have run out of people to invite right about the time we spoke on the telephone to exchange courteous smalltalk, resulting in my being his plus one.

The year was 2000 so I was about 24, and the place was an enormous conference room filled with tables, all adorned as for a formal party or wedding, white satin bows behind the chairs and all. I sat beside Stecca, my father's friend, and soon learned that nobody knew each other at any of the tables... not even people and their plus ones! We were all sort of suspended there, eating delicious food and wondering just why we were there on a metropolitan but sunny Sunday morning. There were formal attires of every kind and representative of every religion, there were businessmen, journalists, and spiritual leaders, families, even farmers dressed in elegant suits... we started listening to speeches which sounded like the typical peace and love speeches which open UN conferences, and clapped, and conversed with the perplexedly happy people in our tables. During a break, presumably for smokers to go out and smoke, I found myself speaking with a distinguished elderly man who simply said, ésto debe ser de Rosa Cruz o del reverendo Moon... I looked at him questioningly and later began to understand.

The master of ceremonies gently nudged us on, one course after the other, cups constantly refilled with bubbly champagne, and at some point we were handed small sheets of paper and small pencils, and were jovially instructed to discuss I no longer remember what aspect of peacemaking or conflict resolution in the world, with the other alcohol-drenched members of our tables, and to have one of us go up to the stage and present our guidelines... It was at that stage that I realized that this was a complex maneuver to identify possible key elements for their movement, which was, as the old mysterious man in the break had insinuated, nothing less than one of the Millenium World Peace Summits of Religious and Spiritual Leaders organized by Reverend Moon and his moonites, which was focusing that year on the themes of conflict transformation, forgiveness and reconciliation, poverty and the environment.

As it turned out, I was an instant leader at my table, and was the one to deliver a small speech containing the opinions of the 5 or 6 seated with Stecca and myself, and was at once flabbergasted and honored to be locked in on by the moonite scouts. Like predators, they tried to hold me down when I came offstage to thundering applause, and told me I had some serious talent. I never saw any of them again, but have remembered the incident many times. There are scouts and sharks everywhere, there are scouts and sharks and scouting sharks in your shoes and in the reflexion on your car window. 

And today, some 15 years later, I was reminded of that singular luncheon with religious leaders who took it all so seriously, those promising prospects for my future as a public speaker and diplomat. I had just finished reviewing my translation of a video speech by a fervent activist and political thinker, Diego Fusaro, and thought to myself:

I'm good at this. I'm really good. The moonites were no fools to identify me. 

Fear

what if death found you now, so out of place,
all your pods and spells dispersed...
I bet you still believe
that in the pool of your eyes,
perhaps in vain,
its echoes askew,
time would finally stop...
Oh, you fool!

the road not understood to be the one that needed to be taken

nice road