I just read this article
on how to make people
love you instantly- look long into their eyes/ twitch less/ smile slowly so
they think you will only ever smile at
them thus

100%

We guarantee. That. Even though
people are now text
all text, all binary coding
-connected, yes- But numbers have always coexisted happily
the point is:

if by some chance
you meet a person/ smell their scent/ watch the light pooling
on their dusty skin

you now know how
to make them love you
(instantly and forever)

I've learnt only a few things
these past years (not instantly)

living people leave their ghosts everywhere (you know this)

Art is a good way to forget you're not special.

Along the way there are stories and putrefaction and sometimes both
at once

And libraries. So many libraries.

But with all of this, I still wish I'd known
back then
how to make you love me instantly,
forever
not a small wee bit that one
moment
that one
night
that long time ago.

Venice was a place for sudden ******
a stiletto plunged in velvet
vengeance tied in a knot of silk
piracy on any dark canal
robbery under quiet bridges.

Water laps the crumbling walls
salt hunger creeps up
seeps between stones
worms its way through cedar
settles in the sagging shelves
where old books bound in leather
edged in gold, embossed with crests
are best left well alone.

In these libraries of the lagoon
chapters and paragraphs
sentences and phrases fragment
nouns lay down with their verbs
creating images from metaphors
startling and sublime, but hidden
kept in these word-chambers
they slide away in time.

Each passing month, each day
restless and uneasy
festering in this state of decay
Venice is still
the place of death.


© M.L.Emmett