Corporate Backs

It’s fire drill in the office
and every single soul is out,
away from life restraining edifice,
away from silly chores they never fail to tout,
away from lame reasons for making a living,
astray, and helpless, and almost dead
in that pharaoh tomb-like looking building

All milling in the sprawling parking lot,
a crushed down limb of the office block,
that spears up ugly and square and matt,
towering the neighborhood,
gray and flat,
like a huge, demonizing razor
with sharp, sleek, angled up edges
carved in concrete and glass and fake wood

The smoldering asphalt pond overflowed
with bodies mingled in the flamed up summer can,
big and small, bent and erect, tall and short,
rows of sacrificed soldiers in the parking fort,
a man, a woman, another man,
faking the joy of being together
under the fiery rain of the scorching sun,
toys made from the pinkish fabric of blood ,
lipsticky smiles smeared on their faces of leather,
etched shadows on the grey with white streaked canvas,
of bodies alluring or appalling in the summer heat,
the sweat on their cheeks shining like blubs, 
boobs oversized, undersized, or plainly ignored,
craving the touch of the springtime gone beat,
big fat slabs,
huge hips, tiny feet,
confident, forced,  accommodating laughs,
offending smirks,
flashy clothes, shabby clothes, half clothes,
bad jokes, good jokes, no jokes
politically correct employees,
stupid ideas, unreasonable hopes,
lack of any human empathies,
successful directors,
insipid lives,
gone underground dictators
in the corporate force,
suffocating, colorless human hives,
mind-feeble, socially genius hulks, 
cornered liberal minds,
glued for eternity to the lay low ranks,
never be generals,
jailed in the prison of the hierarchy,
hunt down by the ghost of the born to be dead company

Sweating,
faking,
hating,
farting,
surviving,
hardworking, phlegmatic, cheap hacks,
piled up together,
on the tarp made out of tired, cracked leather,
the pyramid of the corporate torso backs

When drill is over
and everybody’s heading back,
called to the daily operative order,
streaming through the narrow door
to ways of life they’re not fit for
it’s just backs,
torso rears,
corporate human spears,
labor force cannons built out of wax,
a stream of torsos wrapped in tight clothes,
the big boss has no name but a wider back than Max
who's a ratter,
as everybody knows,
and has a name, but no place
in the corporate front-runners race,
the heard of human backs
streaming down in the pond of lassitude
well groomed mediocrity or pure crassitude,
the slaughterhouse
of squashed dreams, washed hopes, ignored loves
that never get to bloom a life,
quickly pushed aside
by the murderous tide
of the corporate backs

Billions of Gods

Just imagine
There is a God for ten billion people
Who watches constantly over their shoulders,
And jots down non-words
In his wordless notebook,
And nudges them
With a small pain in the back
When they think mean,
And puts the pain of remembrance
In their penitential mind,
When they do mean,
And this God needs to keep the books of each one of us,
Like a good accountant,
And make calculations, and issue daily reports,
To check the amortization date of each one of us,
Then submit the order of our withdrawal
From the crowded market,
And reassignment to celestial work,
In the depth quarry of the quiet universe,
Where words cannot be,
And thoughts cannot be,
And the sparks of spirit
Become the currency of the real meaning
Of “to be”

Would such a God worry
If one small ant
In the ten billion ants colony
Would kill three ants,
Or ten ants,
Or one hundred ants?
And such ant would be a serial killer
In the ants’ world
And all the other ants would think
That God is going to punish the sinner
Now and then and after

And the ten billion ants colony
Would be twenty billion in a few universal seconds,
And then one hundred billion by the end of the hour,
And God will be the same,
Lonely,
And overworked,
And maybe drowsy with an ennui
He couldn’t shake off,
Like a hangover left by a hectic party of staying alive,
And be, simply be,
Where everybody wants to dance and sing and enjoy the company
Of the fellow ants

Which God would be able to do such work?
And why?
And that proves my point
That the unseen cockpit of the universe
Is the place where billions of Gods must be,
And work together,
And each one of them takes care of a few souls,
And each one of them may think his way,
And have his way,
And what’s good for some of us
Is not good for others,
But the rules of punishment
Remain pretty much the same
Because they’re written
In a codicil written by the primary group of rulers,
Our Foregods

The Universe is large enough
To accommodate billions of Gods at work,
Who never take vacation,
who never take a break,
who never cease to exist,
Because someone up or down or in there
Needs to keep track of the tiny trips
Of each ant
In the ants colony
Relocated in a distant corner
Of the timeless space

Outgrown

I know this guy
who got pissed off
when his wife showed us an old picture of him
ws a child,
all dressed up in a flashy robe,
green with white laces
to the hem

She was browsing an old album
with family photos,
the old pictures starting to lose their lustre
and their colours
like the people they pictured,
some of them dead
and moved to a new state,
Of colorless memories

We were laughing
because we were drinking red wine
and we were alive
and our minds tricked us into thinking
that we’re going to stay that way
indefinitely,
and when the woman found that picture
of his bold, overweight man,
dressed up like a girl,
we laughed even harder,
and then he lashed out at her

Suddenly the wine wasn’t that good,
it tasted sour and stale
and we were all ugly and withered and consumed,
deformed bodies with their living log
written deep down in their skin,
lit up with the tired light
of their eyes

I wanted to tell that guy
that he shouldn't worry,
that he’s not the person in the picture
anymore,
that there have been billion of individuals
with the same name,
and social insurance number,
and civic status,
but different biological selves
between him,
the man sipping from that glass of red wine,
upset at his wife,
and that silly boy,
looking at him intensely and trapped,
dressed up in the green robe
of a girl

Every child is a total stranger
to the adult who grew of him,
every youngster is a total stranger
to the limpy old man who grew of him,
any tall, lushy tree is a different plant
from the tiny sprout
which found the strength
to pierce the heavy skin
of the earth

It is a world of total strangers,
who have the same name, birthdate and birthplace,
drinking from the same dreams
sipping from the same memories
sharing nothing else
than a slippery flake of eternity

Bored

I can bet
that sometimes
Michelangelo got bored
of being a genius
and all he wanted
was to fuck, eat, drink

I can bet
that sometimes
Hitler got bored
of being evil
and all he wanted
was to paint, dream, sing

I can bet
that sometimes
God got bored
of being the Creator of All
and all he wanted
was to rest under a palm’s shadow,
listen to the playful drum of waves,
on a sandy, white beach,
on a tiny green island,
in the middle of a blue ocean
that is not,
must not be
in paradise

Ideal

It’s only a few times
when you stay so close to the ideal
that its shadow protects you
from the sunburns of real life:
in school when you learn about Socrates,
or Napoleon,
or during the first furtive kiss,
or during the first night spent out
under the honey rain of city lights,
or when you watched on tv
the first landing on Moon,
or after you made love
for the first time.

Then you have to pay back
for once being seen
in the company of the ideal,
so close to it
that you almost touched it.
You seated in the front seats row
of a morning show
that has no reruns
for quite some time.

Freed up from ideal,
you’re chained to banality,
only for the rest of your life:
please you moronic boss
between the 9 and 5 daily corporate rape,
kissing good night
your silly, overweight woman,
and your dumb kids,
chained in front of a computer display,
opaque to your love,
tripping over in your house
from things that you don’t need,
letting the world powerful bastards
messing up with your mind,
cleaning it thoroughly with jets of lies,
from their powerful propaganda guns,
laying down on the couch,
so far away from the ideal
that you cannot see it anymore,
even with your powerful lenses
built with the latest technology.

You paid your tickets,
you had your early fun,
the morning show is over,
there’s one more rerun to come:
your death.

Restaurant

A restaurant
is the showroom
of a slaughterhouse,
where evolved carnivores
devour together dismembered,
thoroughly chopped animals
and laugh heartedly
while vowing love to each other
or kissing their carnivore children
or making plans of travelling
in their carnivore future,
on special
carnivore deals

A good restaurant
is one
where millions of butchered living forms,
hunted down and killed
by the human predators,
are served for delightful engorgement
on fancy, shiny plates
by highly acclaimed chefs,
who are mass murderers,
chief executioners,
dressed up in the colour
of innocence

Organically Chained

The Americans sent people to the Moon,
the Chinese fire the engines of their rockets now,
while the Russians take a break
to draft the plans for a family resort on Mars,
later on who knows whose turn is
to challenge the infinity of space?
Moon has become a favorite travel destination
for the almighty.

People make movies about people
travelling at light speed
through the sparse fabric of the universe,
through its defiled galaxies,
passing by the smaller stars like insignificant train stations
where nobody gets off, nobody gets on,
and when they encounter other forms of life,
the alien species,
they look disappointingly rough and rude,
and they’re ruthless and beastly,
some drink human blood and eat human flesh,
even if they are far more technologically advanced
and they don’t need buttons and dashboards on their machines,
they command them with thoughts
and with feelings,
while we, the old plain humans,
still remain the most accomplished race
in the universe,
the all six rolling evolution dice,
the supreme example of morality, wisdom and courage
in the Universe jungle,
the Romans of the outer space

The only thing, folks,
is that we’re organically chained to this huge carbon pot
called Earth,
we need to much sleep,
we need to eat cooked animal flesh,
we need to breathe the air exhaled by trees,
and we live the short lives
of the prairies rodents.
We’re just another form of grass,
of tree,
of fish,
of fly,
we’re just carbon and water
in a soup of carbon and water
that needs to remain in the crock,
and not spill through the space
We’re designed to live our lives
travelling light, travelling close
Inside the wonderful garden punctured with the waterfalls
of life and death,
inside and outside of us

We won’t ever reach another galaxy
but only with our thoughts.

Some say we’re doomed
to stay chained to our heaven,
to be forbidden to travel
to hell.
I say:
What’s wrong with that?

Road to Paradise

Most of the people think
there’s no paved way to paradise,
and some of them,
who can afford it,
like those Egyptian pharaohs,
pack up lots of luggage
to keep them comfortable,
while travelling to paradise.

But I just found out
that the road to paradise
is a two-way highway
and now the question is
not what you take with you
but what you bring back
when you return
from paradise.

In the end
I solved my terrible dilemma
by picking from the sand two tiny fragments
of dead corals
washed ashore
in one of those daily paradise storms
when it rains with suns
and snows with moons
and everyone grows a pair
of wind wings,
to travel free
from wonder to fairy tale

Island of Paradise

The people who live
on that island
located far away from the planet Earth I know
by driving daily on its highways,
in the country of Paradise,
should be exempted
from the wrath of the people’s justice:
for each crime a punishment.

The strong arm of the law shouldn’t be allowed
to touch them,
the divine justice shouldn’t apply in their case,
and they should take full advantage
of their special status
by building a life of crime
and immorality
and adultery
and swindling
and out in the open villainies.

Apparently these people
have been relocated right behind the gates
of heaven,
so there’s no Judgment Day coming for them,
they can do whatever they please
with no paradisiac or divine consequences
or even degraded level
of their afterlives.

Having people living on that island
also proves the point
that heaven is a touristic destination
with more than two millions of yearly visitors,
most of them coming from the evildoing mainland,
who are granted,
for an affordable cost,
a brief vacation in Paradise.

But they barely get used to the alleys of Heaven,
that they have to pack their bags
get crammed in the airplanes,
heading back
to their ordinary,
miserable lives.

Many of them want to take with them
a heavenly token, a small gift,
to prove to their neighbors,
and their co-workers,
and their school buddies,
that they have been in heaven,
bragging nonsensically
about splendors that cannot be
and deeds that cannot happen
when they’re going to show
resting in their very palms,
a glittery shell picked up on a beach,
out of the many heaven outposts
of the Island of Paradise.

Divine Plan

I am a bag of meaty bones
a tank of body fluids
a fishnet of neurons,
an unraveled string ball of nerves,
and I know the plan when the mailman will ring
to pick up the expired package
of my life

But I don’t know
what’s the plan
for all my memories
and my loves
and my hatreds
and my joys
and my pains
and my mistakes
and my triumphs

All these memorabilia
collected from finished and unfinished trips
into the still unexplored park
of my existence,
caressed now
by the night’s cold hands

Nobody knows the divine plan
for the storage rooms
of our lives

Why so much secrecy?

Killing Machine

Last night,
laying on the couch,
worn out by another day
spent among humans
in their caducous kingdom,
where they do and undo things
just to tease death,
laugh in Its face,
throw in a good challenge for It,
when death is only
the tap of fresh life

I was playing with my cat,
my black, shiny, sleek cat
who is a privileged form of life
because she doesn’t know
her time is finite
and she doesn’t build things
that won’t last,
knowing they won't last,
and when she hunts
and kill,
she doesn’t enjoy it,
she just does it

Suddenly the cat scratched me,
then ran away,
went on hiding,
and her claws like knife blades
were still buzzing painfully under my skin
giving me shivers,
the long rosy bloody marks
the leftovers of an unexpected hunting party
made me think of the pour mouse
and its horrible demise
by that formidable weapon
a tiny, shiny, sleek cat
carries in its soft paws

And what about lions
and panthers
and vultures
and sharks
and bears
and stingrays?

What about them?

YOU carry the most formidable killing machine
ever created,
ever conceived,
the atrocious terminator,
the ruthless executioner,
the brutal assassin
of everything that is alive
or has a shadow
or emits a sound

You carry it under your skull,
a comical protective shell
made out with hands of child
from a friable bone,
ironical bunker for such a beast
that cohabitates with your feelings
and your untold loves
and your undisclosed sacrifices
and your unshared generosities
and your stifled dreams
and your faith
and your bravery
and your rectitude against distress,
all these living together
under the same frail roof
with a beast craving destruction,
emanating
bad, eviscerating thoughts
caressing with claws of words
the delicate skin of the feeling
like a sharp, rugged wrapper
made out of aluminum foil

Your brain,
this disgusting mass of gray matter,
appalling conglomerate of organic fats,
humoral sewer,
that will build some day
a cannon more powerful than sun,
and with that will scorch the planet,
will reduce it to ashes,
to a fuming cosmic chimney,
just for fun,
just because it can be done.

This is the real killing machine
that only YOU carry,
my twin brother,
my sibling,
my own self