SHORT
( Franz Krauspenhaar ITA - BREVE - tras. Giovanni Agnoloni )

If you start panting while you’re trying to tie your shoelaces

it’s time to smoke lilies at a grey grandpa’s birthday party

you can still find him on the University directory, where they still have

shameless grandpas, celebrating birthdays with cakes and candles.

They suggested you should lose some hectograms

but they meant kilos: that person was really

kind. But, indeed, today you’ve got scared

you’ve seen air whistling away through invisible windows, sucking up

remote summers, with lips of ancient girls pronouncing your name with the

sweetness of a star-dream.

Between nostalgic dreams and the speechless freeze of a panic attack

you stood among the flowered columns and flowers in the buttonhole of

a miraculous dawn, reddening your chest, as if you were a saint.

Eternally suspended on boards of fear and affected laughters
you walk in the evening, breath with your gestures, tear words out of the street
you say stop once more, I’ll quit smoking, I feel bad, I’ll take care of my health.
And now, yes, you’re smoking, ‘cause life is short
of course, and you’re not so wrong, and you feel a shiver of guilt
along the myocardium. But you stand it
as fiercely as you can, it’s a strong temptation
but your breath doesn’t allow you more.
Your life is a wild run before nighttime comes.