Nessun Dorma in a time of plague

 

Here and There and Everywhere 69,5 x 69,5 cm - acrylic on paper

 

A SELFISH LOVE POEM ( BELLEZA MALATA)

Pollen on the olive leaves again.

San Baronto, Arezzo, arrosto vitello con patate.

I want to come back to you as soon as I can.

The fattest lemon ever seen, and felt, was in Sicily.

Rolling off a garden table, it nearly broke a big toe.

I wouldn’t mind pressing my face to the nose gay

of a Milanese perfume whose fragrance rises off

the olive hued, peach-fuzzy neck of its maker’s

   elegant daughter, then lingers in a tall-windowed room.

(Ah, the old romance scam. Sounds creepy too, but it feels empirical.)

I’ve always thought that, under certain conditions, wine

without food is marginally regrettable. But food without the

rough density of a country red or a noble Brunello, what’s that?

Scarcity. I don’t like the austere. It’s too thin-lipped, hard bodied, 

empty inside, Nordic in its responses. Not at all like the peach

that seduced me once in the hills above Vinci. Leaning back

when I bit into it I still got squirted, white shirt wrecked.

I don’t know how much of you will be left but when

you feel better I’m coming back to love every region of you.