The sun in the shape of starfish
The last wings raining down hard
Dolphins diving into breathlessness
Mass graves for fish and pigs
Mixed with cattle and their kind
The last bees in the carcass of a lion
Dead turtles mute the thunder
Elephantine absences push space
Closer our own extinction
Bats fall from the sky over Israel
Like prophecies gutted by time
Whales breach the surface of being
And like the earth washed ashore
On its own dead coastlines
Our faith in things unseen
Numbers us among the damned

Put my shoes on the table,
Carry me out cold tomorrow.
The malefic in the evil eye
Lives also with its sorrow.

You ward off a black cat
With the sign of the horns
Like a gardener trimming roses
Wears gloves for the thorns.

Ask spirits of the vine
But never pledge with water,
You’ll pour misfortune
On your mother and father.

A broom touching my feet
Brushes my dust across the floor
Or leaves me without love
Like a widower at the door.

Better a toccare il ferro
And to wear a cornicello
Than let evil in your soul,
A stranger into your void.

Like we wouldn’t have found Terra Nullius
And the Natives aren’t born of land.
But it’s 2020! Who dares not think ahead?
My heart is Italian, not my cement.
My mind is Sicilian, not my marble.
My spirit is wine, not angry permanence,
But fluid transience, song and love.
Down goes Columbus in ships of stone,
His navigations would always end like this,
Discovery and obscurity share a seascape
Of lost explorers in ocean graves.
We create false idols out of the living
But why celebrate the falsely dead.
I’ll not give in on loving and being no one.
Down goes Columbus, my heart sings,
I’ll live for the living and set sail for the end.