| LOUIS PIRRO |
| the D A G O S P H E R E o t h e r p o e m s |
| & |
| DECHIRICO DREAMS Alienation So stark and pure Like a 1950's movie but on the edge of another century Or alone at night in Idaho And everywhere you turn The light is brighter behind you. |
| 1 9 9 7 - 2 0 0 1 |
| PENTIMENTI Men tread paths ever narrowing leaving them tiny specks in the distance or sacrificial lambs at the alter. I catch the scent of these other lives through dream, genius, or conspiracy. How quiet the world is with all this slaughter. Though we wouldn't have it any other way. |
| THE SALAMANDER An empty vessel now the white salamander Wriggles free Fleeing mysticism and materialism And heading back to the fire In which it once burned. |
| ODE TO CHARLTON PRESS Comic books and porn by Italian masters magazines printed on presses for cereal boxes low-budget, low-brow entertainment for masses and militia with business conducted behind curtains of smoke and red velvet Mob run ? Maybe ? I knew the the Art Director Jay Ragsdale but of course this is an alias. |
| THE DAGOSPHERE magnified by sun tiny pools of oil now glistening everywhere a billion great slicks on plastic & skins fabrics and metals once seen this whole greasy dago-sphere can't really be clean again with or without papers |
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| INQUISITIONS 10 million intellects wait in a frieze-like grouping above the black eye of a storm hovering near the empty chair awaiting executioner's orders and Van Gogh's letters to Theo afire like the fly under a glass |
| THE LAST PAINTER I am the last painter And I have not had an easy life. My only friends were the old masters Everyone else has AIDS. The Devil has chewed on my corneas like fingernails And spat them at the sun. The generation after me is fixed on video games And remain at their play stations. My work has not fared well So now with this last gesture Forget me... |
| SHAME When I leave the tree is red by neon light: and I steal toilet paper from a coffee shop. |
| X -RAY GLASSES I choose to act like a child, but I am not a child. The old man inside me can see right through you. |
| THE LAST MASTER I am the last master of a dying art I have become fat and lazy lack of discipline and disciples leaves me down and out the past towers above me like a tree while I stumble around the roots and drink |
| MORNING ASSAULT All lions come from broken homes for love of mothers not. Mornings assaulted are resolved and restarted by wayfarers, cave walls and cereal boxes. Jets fly above couples in coitus or monied suburbia proper. While yellow police-tape keeps us all away for today but not tommorrow. |
| (c) copyright Louis Pirro, 1997 - 2001 |
| first published in The Temple. |
| ( page 1 ) |
