Dear John,

Some weeks ago I wrote you a letter
it felt like running backwards
to a time and place that bore little resemblance to what I thought I was
for that I used to travel so much
through words and images and symbols
I scarcely felt alone
as I was constantly moving and had hordes of characters hanging around.

Living since has been feeling like stepping further into a sticky
stinky slimy mud
Entering the Nothingness of a world of
reasonable thought and (sometimes polite) savageness
in which all my fellows cannot follow me.
I think I disgust them
all covered in realistic boredom and
crude stillness.

Dear John,
Sometimes I feel the urge of writing
but it soon fades
as so many people and creatures did
(you included)
then I am assaulted by shame
and embarrassment
of being unable to cope with this evermounting
reality
Also, incapable of fantasizing
I've turned you, so concrete and real (somewhere
out there)
into an old phantom

(maybe this time you won't disappear when needed)

On unvegetable plants

Some weeks ago I bought a plant. A succulent, to be precise. The uncheerable office would at least have a cute, though rather boring, being.  Boredom should be displayed at the office entrance, instead of its untrue name. “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”. Strip it off, it shall be useless, and a burden.

So, within those barren brittle walls I have spent quite a lot of time, breathing judicial thickness, mites and dust. Preventing myself from leaping to find open air – which is easy enough, once the windows are sole glass panels, inopenable. Trying to imprint some sense in the anguish that spreads through the central air.

I was pretty satisfied with my succulent, which, to me, had shown signs of adapting quite well to the unfriendly place. Watering twice a week, and leaving it in the parapet during the weekends, I had the impression that it was actually growing, happy to leave a dull shelf in the supermarket.

Today however I was surprised by the assertive analysis of two colleagues that declared that that was no plant. It’s fake, they peremptorily stated.  Bewildered, I examined it. I had already watered, cherished, caressed. An unvegetable plant.

Unconvinced, but hurt all the same, I refused to tear a leaf and settle the matter. It would not make a difference. Stunned by being incapable of differentiating a living thing from a piece of plastic.

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