Non è che dalle cuspidi amorose
crescano i mutamenti della carne,
Milano benedetta
Donna altera e sanguigna
con due mammelle amorose
pronte a sfamare i popoli del mondo,
Milano dagli irti colli
che ha veduto qui
crescere il mio amore
che ora è defunto.
Milano dai vorticosi pensieri
dove le mille allegrie
muoiono piangenti sul Naviglio.

Stick with me, friend.
I’d like to make a distinction:
I revere writers but do not deify them.
My heroes and role models must be grounded,
Must have so-called feet of clay.
And there’s always something more in my craw,
Whenever I see scribblers carved in marble,
Glorified to the point of divinity and magic.
Because in my heart of hearts,
Reverence for writers,
Is an odyssey of disillusionment and

I fancy myself a man of letters,
Although “Humanoid of Keystrokes,”
Might be more apt; an appellation,
Digitally au courant.
I am a man on verbal fire,
Perhaps, I am of a Lost Generation myself.
And don’t you dare tell me to sit down, to calm down.
You stand up when you tell a story.
Even Hemingway--even when he was sitting down--knew that.
Let us go then you and I.
Moving our moveable feast to Paris,
To France, European Union, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy.
(Stick with me, Babaloo!)
Why not join Papa at a tiny table at Les Deux Magots,
Savoring the portugaises,
Working off the buzz of a good Pouilly-Fuisse
At 10:30 in the morning.
The writing: going fast and well.

Why not join that pompous windbag ******* artist?
As he tries to convince Ava Gardner,
That writers tienen cajones grandes, tambien—
Have big ***** too—just like Bullfighters,
Living their lives all the way up.
That writing requires a torero’s finesse and fearlessness.
That to be a writer is to be a real man.
A GOD MAN!
Papa is self-important at being Ernest,
(**** me: some lines cannot be resisted.)
Ava’s **** is on fire.
She can just make him out,
Can just picture him through her libidinous haze,
Leaping the corrida wall,
Setting her up for photos ops with Luis Miguel Dominguín,
And Antonio Ordóñez, his brother-in-law rival,
During that most dangerous summer of 1959.
Or, her chance to set up a *******,
With Manolete and El Cordobés,
While a really *******,
Completely defeated & destroyed 2,000-pound bull,
Bleeds out on the arena sand.

Although I revere writers,
I refuse to deify them.
A famous writer must be brought down to earth--
Forcibly if necessary--
Chained to a rock in the Caucasus,
Their liver noshed on by an eagle.
In short: the abject humiliation of mortality.
Punished, ridiculed and laughed at.
Laughing himself silly,
******* on one’s self-indulgent, egocentric universe.
If not, what hope do any of us have?

Writing for Ernie may have been a divine gift,
His daily spiritual communion and routine,
A mere sacramental taking of dictation from God,
But for most of us writing is just ******* self-torture.
The Hemingway Hero:
Whatever happened to him on the Italian-Austrian front in 1918
May have been painful but was hardly heroic.
The ******* was an ambulance driver for Christ’s sake.
Distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers,
In the trenches behind the front lines,
A far cry from actual combat.
Besides, he was only on the job for two weeks,
Before he ****** up somehow,
Driving his meat-wagon over a live artillery shell.
That BB-sized shrapnel in his legs,
Turned out to be his million-dollar wound,
A gift that kept on giving,
Putting him in line for a fortunate series of biographic details, to wit:
Time at an Italian convalescent hospital in Milano,
Staffed by ***** English nurses,
Who liked to give the teenage soldiers slurpy BJs,
Delirious ******* in the middle of the night,
Sent to Paris as a Toronto Star reporter,
******* up to that big **** Gertrude Stein,
Sweet-talking Sylvia Beach,
At Shakespeare & Company bookstore,
Hitting her up for small loans,
Manipulating and conning Scott Fitzgerald—
The Hark the Herald Jazz Age Angel—
Exploiting F. Scott’s contacts at Scribners,
To get The Sun Also Rises published.
Fitzgerald acted as his literary agent and advocate,
Even performing some crucial editing on the manuscript.
Hemingway got payback for this friendship years later,
By telling the world in A Moveable Feast,
That Zelda convinced Scott he had a small ****--
Yeah, all of it stems from those bumps & bruises,
Scrapes & scratches he got near Schio,
Along the Piave River on July 8, 1918.
Slap on an Italian Silver Medal of Valor—
An ostentatious decoration of dubious Napoleonic lineage—
40,000 of which were liberally dispensed during WWI—
And Ernie was on his way.

Was there ever a more arrogant, world-class scumbag;
A more graceless-under-pressure,
Sorry excuse of a machismo show-horse?
Look: I think Hemingway was a great writer,
But he was a gigantic gasbag,
A self-indulgent *****,
And a mean-spirited bully—
That bogus facade he put on as this writer/slash/bullfighter,
Kilimanjaro, great white hunter,
Big game Bwana,
Sport fishing, hard drinking,
Swinging-****, womanizing,
*** I-******-Ava-Gardner bragging rights—all of it—
Just made him a bigger, poorer excuse for a human being,
When the chips were finally down,
When the truth finally caught up with him,
In the early morning hours,
Of July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.
I can’t think of a more pathetic writer’s life than
Hemingway’s last few years.
Sixty electric shock treatments,
And the ******* still killed himself.

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In the U.S., call:  1-800-273-8255  

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So why am I still mesmerized by,
The whole Hemingway hero thing?
That stoicism, the grace under pressure,
That real men don’t eat quiche,
A la Norman Mailer crap?
I guess I can relate to both Hemingway the Matador,
And Hemingway the Pompous *******,
Not to mention Mailer who stabbed his second of six wives,
And threw his fourth out of a third-floor window.
One thing’s for sure: I’m living life all the way up,
Thanks to a steady supply of medical cannabis,
And some freaky chocolate chip cookies
From the Area 51--Our Products are Out of this World—Bakery
(“In compliance with CA prop 215 SE 420, Section 11362.5,
And 11362.7 of CA H.S.C. Do not drive,
Or operate heavy equipment,
While under the influence.
Keep out of reach of children,
And comedian Aziz Ansari.”)

So getting back to Hemingway,
I return to Cuba to work on my book.
During the day--usually in the early morning hours--
When “the characters drive me up there,”
I climb to my tower room,
Stand up at my typewriter in the upstairs alcove.
I stand up to tell my story because last night,
Everyone got drunk and threw all the ******* furniture in the pool.
By the way, I’m putting together my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I can’t decide between:
“I may be defeated but I’ll never be destroyed,” or
“You can destroy me but you’ll never defeat me.”
The kind of artistic doublespeak they love in Sweden.
Maybe: “Night falls and day breaks, but no one gets hurt.”
God help me.
I need to come up with a bunch of real pithy crap soon.
Maybe I’ll just smoke a joint before the speech and,
Start riffing off the cuff about literary good taste:

“In my novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example, I had Maria tell Pilar that the earth moved, but left out the parts about Robert Jordan’s ******* and the tube of Astroglide.”

Stockholm’s only a month away,
So I’m under a lot of pressure.
Where’s Princess Grace under Pressure when I need her?
I used to work for the Kansas City Star,
Working with newspaper people who advocated:
Short sentences.
Short paragraphs.
Active verbs.
Authenticity.
Compression.
Clarity.
Immediacy.
Those were the only rules I ever learned,
For the business of writing,
But my prose tended to be a bit clipped, to wit:
A simple series,
Of simple declarative sentences,
For simpletons.
I’m told my stuff is real popular with Special-Ed kids,
And those ******* that run
The International Imitation Hemingway Competition,
AKA: The Bad Hemingway Contest.
The truth is: I always wanted to get a bit more flowery,
Especially after I found out I got paid by the word.
That’s when the *** and **** proved mighty useful.
        
I live at La Finca Vigia:
My house in San Francisco de Paula,
A Havana suburb.
My other place is in town,
Room #511 at the Hotel Ambos Mundos,
Where on a regular basis I _
(Insert simple declarative Anglo-Saxon expletive)
My guantanmera on a regular basis.
But La Finca’s the real party pad.
Fidel and Che and the rest of the Granma (aka “The Minnow”) crew
Come down from the mountains,
To use my shower and refresh themselves,
On an irregular basis.
At night we drink mojitos, daiquiris or,
The *** & coke some people call Cuba Libre.
We drink the *** and plan strategy,
Make plans for taking out Fulgencio Batista,
And his Mafia cronies,
Using the small arms and hand grenades,
We got from Allen Dulles.

Of course, after the Bay of Pigs debacle,
You had to go, Ernesto.
Kennedy had the CIA stage your suicide,
And that was all she wrote.
And all you wrote.
Never having had a chance,
To tell the 1960s Baby Boomers about class warfare in America.
Poor pathetic Papa Hemingway.
Lenin and Stalin may have ruined Marxism,
But Marx was no dummy.
Not in your book.
Or mine.

Non è che dalle cuspidi amorose
crescano i mutamenti della carne,
Milano benedetta
Donna altera e sanguigna
con due mammelle amorose
pronte a sfamare i popoli del mondo,
Milano dagli irti colli
che ha veduto qui
crescere il mio amore
che ora è defunto.
Milano dai vorticosi pensieri
dove le mille allegrie
muoiono piangenti sul Naviglio.

Non è che dalle cuspidi amorose
crescano i mutamenti della carne,
Milano benedetta
Donna altera e sanguigna
con due mammelle amorose
pronte a sfamare i popoli del mondo,
Milano dagli irti colli
che ha veduto qui
crescere il mio amore
che ora è defunto.
Milano dai vorticosi pensieri
dove le mille allegrie
muoiono piangenti sul Naviglio.

I catch the rapido train from Milano and edge slowly westward through the stops and starts of frozen points and village stations. The heating fails and an offer of warmer seats in another compartment. I decide to stay here. I put on my coat, scarf, hat and gloves and sit alone. In my grieving time, I feel closer to the cold world outside as it moves past me, intermittently. Falling snow in window-framed landscapes.            

Sky gun metal grey
shot through
with sunset ribbons.
                                                                                                          
Dusk eases into black-cornered night. After Maghera, the train seems to race to the sea. It rumbles onto the Ponte della Ferrovia, stretching out across the Laguna Veneta. Suddenly, a jonquil circle moon pulls the winter clouds back and shines a lemony silver torch across the inky waters. Crazed and cracked sheets of ice lie across the depthless lagoon. The train slows again and slides into Santa Lucia. I walk into the night.                                                                                               
Bleak midwinter      
sea-iced night wind
bites bitter.
                                                                                                      
No. 2 Diretto winding down the Canal Grande.  The foggy night muffles the guttural throb of the engine and turns mundane sounds into mysteries. Through the window of the vaporetto stop, the lights of Piazza San Marco are an empty auditorium of an opera house. Walking to Corte Barozzi, I hear the doleful tolling of midnight bells; the slapping of water and the *****-***** of the gondolas’ mooring chains. Faraway a busker sings Orfeo lamenting his lost Eurydice, left in Hades.
I wake to La Serenissima, bejewelled.                                                                                                                           
Weak winter sunshine
Istrian stone walls
flushed rosy.
                                                                                                          
Rooftops glowing. Sun streaming golden between the neck and wings of the masted Lion. Mist has lifted, the sky cloudless; I look across the sparkling Guidecca canal and beyond to the shimmering horizon.          
Molten mud
bittersweetness demi-tasse
Florian’s hot chocolate                    

I walk the maze of streets, squares and bridges; passing marble well-heads and fountains, places of assignation. I walk on stones sculpted by hands, feet and the breath of the sea. Secrets and melancholy are cast in these stones.                                                                  

At Fondamente Nuove, I take Vaporetto no.41 to Cimitero. We chug across the laguna, arriving at  the western wall of San Michele.  I thread through the dead, along pathways and between gravestones. At the furthest end of the Cemetery island, Vera and Igor Stravinsky lie in parallel graves like two single beds in an hotel room. Names at the head, a simple cross at the foot of the white stone slab. Nearby, his flamboyant mentor Serge Diaghalev. His grave, a gothic birdbath for ravens, has a Russian inscription; straggly pink carnations, a red votive candle and a pair of ragged ballet shoes with flounces of black and aquamarine tulle tied to their the ribbons. So many dead in mausoleums; demure plots; curious walled filing cabinets, marble drawer ossuaries.
                                                                                                      
Bare, whispering Poplars
swaying swirling shadows
graves rest beneath          

I walk to the other end of the island and frame Venezia in the central arch of the Byzantine gateway.  I see that sketchy horizontal strip of rusty brick, with strong verticals of campaniles and domes. It is here, before 4 o’clock closing time, I throw your ashes to the sea and run to catch the last boat.                                                                                          

Beacon light orange
glittering ripples
on the dove grey lagoon.

© M.L.Emmett
First published in New Poets 14: Snatching Time, 2007, Wakefield Press, Kent Town SA.
To view with Images: Poems for Poodles https://magicpoet01.wordpress.com

Detective stories have been making a splash on European screens for the past decade. Some attract top-notch directors, actors and script writers. They are far superior to anything that appears over here -- whether on TV or from Hollywood. Part of the impetus has come from the remarkable Italian series Montelbano, the name of a Sicilian commissario in Ragusa (Vigata)who was first featured in the skillfully crafted novellas of Andrea Camilleri.

Italians remain in the forefront of the genre as Montelbano was followed by similar high class productions set in Bologna, Ferrara, Turino, Milano, Palermo and Roma. A few are placed in evocative historical context. The French follow close behind with a rich variety of series ranging from a revived Maigret circa 2004(Bruno Cremer) and Frank Riva (Alain Delon) to the gritty Blood On The Docks (Le Havre) and the refined dramatizations of other Simenon tales. Others have jumped in: Austria, Germany (several) and all the Scandinavians. The former, Anatomy of Evil, offers us a dark yet riveting set of mysteries featuring a taciturn middle-aged police psychiatrist. Germany'sgem, Homicide Unit -- Istanbul, has a cast of talented Turkish Germans who speak German in a vividly portrayed contemporary Istanbul. Shows from the last mentioned region tend to be dreary and the characters uni-dimensional, so will receive short shrift in these comments.

Most striking to an American viewer are the strange mores and customs of the local protagonists compared to their counterparts over here. So are the physical traits as well as the social contexts. Here are a few immediately noteworthy examples. Tattoos and ****** hardware are strangely absent -- even among the bad guys. Green or orange hair is equally out of sight. The former, I guess, are disfiguring. The latter types are too crude for the sophisticated plots. European salons also seem unable to produce that commonplace style of artificial blond hair parted by a conspicuous streak of dark brown roots so favored by news anchors, talk show howlers and other female luminaries. Jeans, of course, are universal -- and usually filled in comely fashion. It's what people do in them (or out of them) that stands out.

First, almost no workout routines -- or animated talk about them. Nautilus? Nordic Track? Yoga pants? From roughly 50 programs, I can recall only one, in fact -- a rather humorous scene in an Istanbul health club that doubles as a drug depot. There is a bit of jogging, just a bit -- none in Italy. The Italians do do some swimming (Montalbano) and are pictured hauling cases of wine up steep cellar stairs with uncanny frequency. Kale appears nowhere on the menu; and vegan or gluten are words unspoken. Speaking of food, almost all of these characters actually sit down to eat lunch, albeit the main protagonist tends to lose an appetite when on the heels of a particularly elusive villain. Oblique references to cholesterol levels occur on but two occasions. Those omnipresent little containers of yoghurt are considered unworthy of camera time.

A few other features of contemporary American life are missing from the dialogue. I cannot recall the word "consultant' being uttered once. In the face of this amazing reality, one can only wonder how ****-kid 21 year old graduates from elite European universities manage to get that first critical foothold on the ladder of financial excess. Something else is lacking in the organizational culture of police departments, high-powered real estate operations, environmental NGOs or law firms: formal evaluations. In those retro environments, it all turns on long-standing personal ties, budgetary appropriations and actual accomplishment -- not graded memo writing skills. Moreover, the abrupt firing of professionals is a surprising rarity. No wonder Europe is lagging so far behind in the league table of billionaires produced annually and on-the-job suicides

Then, there is that staple of all American conversation -- real estate prices. They crop up very rarely -- and then only when retirement is the subject. Admittedly, that is a pretty boring subject for a tense crime drama -- however compelling it is for academics, investors, lawyers and doctors over here. Still, it fits a pattern.

None of the main characters devotes time to soliciting offers from other institutions -- be they universities, elite police units in a different city, insurance companies, banks, or architectural firms. They are peculiarly rooted where they are. In the U.S., professionals are constantly on the look-out for some prospective employer who will make them an attractive offer. That offer is then taken to their current institution along with the demand that it be matched or they'll be packing their bags. Most of the time, it makes little difference if that "offer" is from College Station, Texas or La Jolla, California. That doesn't occur in the programs that I've viewed. No one is driven to abandon colleagues, friends, a comfortable home and favorite restaurants for the hope of upward mobility. What a touching, if archaic way of viewing life.

The pedigree of actors help make all this credible. For example, the classiest female leads are a "Turk" (Idil Uner) who in real life studied voice in Berlin for 17 years and a transplanted Russo-Italian (Natasha Stephanenko) whose father was a nuclear physicist at a secret facility in the Urals. Each has a parallel non-acting career in the arts. It shows.

After viewing the first dozen or so mysteries of diverse nationality, an American viewer begins to feel an unease creeping up on him. Something is amiss; something awry; something missing. Where are those little bottles of natural water that are ubiquitous in the U.S? The ones with the ****** tip. Meetings of all sorts are held without their comforting presence. Receptionists -- glamorous or unglamorous alike -- make do without them. Heat tormented Sicilians seem immune to the temptation. Cyclists don't stick them in handlebar holders. Even stray teenagers and university students are lacking their company. Uneasiness gives way to a sensation of dread. For European civilization looks to be on the brink of extinction due to mass dehydration.

That's a pity. Any society where cityscapes are not cluttered with SUVs deserves to survive as a reserve of sanity on that score at least. It also allows for car chases through the crooked, cobbled streets of old towns unobstructed by herds of Yukons and Outbacks on the prowl for a double parking space. Bonus: Montelbano's unwashed Fiat has been missing a right front hubcap for 4 years (just like my car). To meet Hollywood standards for car chases he'd have to borrow Ingrid's red Maserati.

Social ******* reveals a number of even more bizarre phenomena. In conversation, above all. Volume is several decibels below what it is on American TV shows and in our society. It is not necessary to grab the remote to drop sound levels down into the 20s in order to avoid irreparable hearing damage. Nor is one afflicted by those piercing, high-pitched voices that can cut through 3 inches of solid steel. All manner of intelligible conversations are held in restaurants, cafes and other public places. Most incomprehensible are the moments of silence. Some last for up to a minute while the mind contemplates an intellectual puzzle or complex emotions. Such extreme behavior does crop up occasionally in shows or films over here -- but invariably followed by a diagnosis of concealed autism which provides the dramatic theme for the rest of the episode.

Tragedy is more common, and takes more subtle forms in these European dramatizations. Certainly, America has long since departed from the standard formula of happy endings. Over there, tragic endings are not only varied -- they include forms of tragedy that do not end in death or violence. The Sicilian series stands out in this respect.

As to violence, there is a fair amount as only could be expected in detective series. Not everyone can be killed decorously by slow arsenic poisoning. So there is some blood and gore. But there is no visual lingering on either the acts themselves or their grisly aftermaths. People bleed -- but without geysers of blood or minutes fixed on its portentous dripping. Violence is part of life -- not to be denied, not to be magnified as an object of occult fascination. The same with ****** abuse and *******.

Finally, it surprises an American to see how little the Europeans portrayed in these stories care about us. We tend to assume that the entire world is obsessed by the United States. True, our pop culture is everywhere. Relatives from 'over there' do make an occasional appearance -- especially in Italian shows. However, unlike their leaders who give the impression that they can't take an unscheduled leak without first checking with the White House or National Security Council in Washington, these characters manage quite nicely to handle their lives in their own way on their own terms.

Anyone who lives on the Continent or spends a lot of time there off the tourist circuit knows all this. The image presented by TV dramas may have the effect of exaggerating the differences with the U.S. That is not their intention, though. Moreover, isn't the purpose of art to force us to see things that otherwise may not be obvious?Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

I’d rather drink my **** than take another word
‘Cause all that “telemundo”, *****, you know I’ve heard
I should have killed you when I had the perfect chance
That very moment when I caught your sorry glance
You said “Nutella honey baby, just don’t tell’er
And I will make your every fantasy ***, true
I’ll make your life a beach ‘cause you’re my light, so stellar
And there will never be another one but you”
Now, what a load it was, don’t know where to begin
The “candy ‘licious” or the “sugar mint Milano”…
You’re Michael Angelo but when you touch my skin
I feel like I’m Alyssa hot-***-***** Milano
I should have killed you, ****, I could have killed you twice
Before you made my life much darker than your eyes
But now that you’re alive and chained against this bed
Let’s play a little game I call The Walking Dead

I’ve never come to feel what
I have been so long risen away from.
I’m too stressed to be dead,
which lets me be too stressed to know an end.
to feel the lonesome flat-line of a world so desolate from
what I need,
and everything I know.
All I long for is to see one
from before.
From when I was me, and they were them.
Two different people sitting ***** in different vats
holding empty glances, grasping at the hope of a future that would never be.
Empty promises of my own binding.
Never said, but felt.

There is no one in the world but I.

I still see the trees
and feel the wind that
gently shakes the leaves
and the big buildings
when the light is fading
and the evening
is more than a promise
that people going back home
like ghosts of June
can't keep even though
Milano is looking great
and you come to me
and say hello pumpkin
can we live in this park
forever and eat melon.

Delgada y sinuosa
como la cuerda mágica.
Rubia y rauda:
                                dardo y milano.
Pero también inexorable rompehielos.
Senos de niña, ojos de esmalte.
Bailó en todas las terrazas y sótanos,
contempló un atardecer en San José, Costa Rica,
durmió en las rodillas de los Himalayas,
fatigó los bares y las sabanas de áfrica.
A los veinte dejó a su marido
por una alemana;
a los veintiuno dejó a la alemana
por un afgano;
a los cuarenta y cinco
vive en Proserpina Court, int. 2, Bombay.
Cada mes, en los días rituales,
llueven sapos y culebras en la casa,
los criados maldicen a la demonia
y su amante parsi apaga el fuego.
Tempestad en seco.
                                            El buitre blanco
picotea su sombra.

I have a friend from Milano. His name is Marco. I’ve known him for years and years. Since we met on a train to Brussels. He took me to meet his friends. And I got involved with one of them. Things didn’t end well with him. He was a player. (Marco’s friend, not him.)

And for a long while, Marco and I lost touch.

---------

Many years later, we reconnected. You were on Facebook. I wasn’t. But I signed in just to look you up. There you were. An indescribable feeling. To see you, after all that time.

Since then, we became friends again. And have been now, for several years. You live in Dubai, in a high rise. I live in Minnesota in a suburb with lots of parks and friendly neighbors. You travel every week, to exotic locations, like Egypt, Oman, and Saudi Arabia (although you do say you hate that place). And back to your home in Italy, and to our old neighborhood in Brussels. I travel a bit only to see family, in Tennessee or Texas occasionally.

We have chatted a lot exchanging details that have shaped us. I told you of losing my friend to suicide, when I had just that day, found out. You told me of your childhood in the church, and that now you don’t care for faith.

I told you, on one occasion, “I'm so uncultured. Once I went to see Nutcracker, and already my mind was having ***** thoughts, and the male dancers came out in their tights, and did a very ladylike dance, where they jumped up and down on their toes, to a twinkly, upbeat tune. I giggled so much I got “shushed.” But still I couldn’t stop.
The more I giggled, the louder I got!"

You said, “I should take you to the opera. My mom used to take me to Verona." You said it was splendid and phenomenal. And I was instantly sold. I said, "I won’t understand anything." And you said, "Yes you will." I imagined myself like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, tears running down my cheeks at the end.

But, you know you can’t take me to the opera in Verona.
Because I might fall in love with you.