Poetry Alessio Zanelli

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Alessio Zanelli

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in over 180 literary journals from 16 countries. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

The Treasure

One’s true self is not easy to come by. I’ve been looking for mine through the scanty days of purity, before acquiring consciousness. About to call the chasing off, under the clear impression that it’s infeasible, just an effortless step away from another idle pinnacle of achievement, it’s finally dawned on me that it’s always been under my nose. Right in front of my silly gaze. I will hence leave the summits to the gales, cross the forsaken bridge one last time and descend into the treasure dale. I will forget all that’s been obsessing me, abstruse estimations and calculations, and let my simulacrum disappear into thin air. No longer sick with quests and findings, I will sit facing the mountain and wonder how the whole distance covered computes.

(Alessio Zanelli)

Who am I?

She still has strength in her hands, that of a life’s work, domestic and more. An infinite strength. Everything else is gone. She stares me in the eye, as if asking Who am I? She squeezes my hand into a fist, clutches it, then pushes it away, time and again, slaps the back of it, in a frenzy, knitting her brow and curling her lip, presses her foot against my thigh, to ward me off like an intruder, to then reach for my hand once again, and pull me close to her, as if asking Who am I? She plays with my knee, moves it in and out, at regular intervals, delivers rapid-fire buffets to it. Her brawn is her scream, as loud as thunder. Her gaze is her anger, her fierce defiance. She puts her head back, as if asking Who am I? Rage, sweet and silent but tameless, an unbounded, pitch-dark desert, the ocean storming in a glass. On the moon. Nowhere. As if asking Who am I? Primitive force, pristine nature, prime transition. Life, yet. As if asking Who are you? Who am I? Squeeze, squeeze my hand all you want, as hard as you can. Don’t be afraid. You have earned it for sure. I love you the same, if you wonder Why? Why?

(Alessio Zanelli)

After

Challenge under tricky skies, a run, chasing what is left of older selves, minding neither rainstorms nor the sun, just the past in which my belfry delves.

Pangs distract me from my destined path, as if courses could be still retraced, yet regrets and losses boost my wrath, leading me astray across the waste.

Mountain profiles line my narrow track, I can straggle only in between, slowly, on and never turning back, lest my slippy future should be seen.

Feelings mend the texture thoughts disrupt, I behold the clouds to stand the day, quite exhausted, listless, time-corrupt, waiting for the skies to shade away.

(Alessio Zanelli)

Mice On A Ball

In times past enormous rodents stumped around luxuriant plates, no smaller breathers could defy their rule. Then the furnace was imperceptibly younger. When the inanimate intruder dropped by, nothing so big could go on ambulating. They all ended up fertilizing the baked soil, sinking in the crust. The tiny mice, that had come into existence shortly before and survived the fireworks, little by little came out of their dens and rose to power. Yet no reign lasts forever, and theirs indeed was the most sudden and short-lived of all. As well as the last. When the furnace, after a snappy blast, began to cool down, the ball was gulped. The sky went crimson, even at night, and this time nothing could escape the blaze. Not even the canny mice, helpless in front of the blushing giant. Their life-span proved to be as brief as the flame from a straw compared to an ex-millennia-dormant volcano’s eruption.

(Alessio Zanelli)

B's

Bombs. Blast. Blood. Blast. Blood. Bombs. Blood. Bombs. Blast. Bombs. Blood. Blast. Blood. Blast. Bombs. Blast. Bombs. Blood. Bombs. Bombs. Blast. Bombs. Bombs. Blood. Bombs. Blast. Bombs. Bombs. Blood. Bombs. Blast. Bombs. Bombs. Blood. Bombs. Bombs. Blast. Blast. Bombs. Blast. Blast. Blood. Blast. Bombs. Blast. Blast. Blood. Blast. Bombs. Blast. Blast. Blood. Blast. Blast. Blood. Blood. Bombs. Blood. Blood. Blast. Blood. Bombs. Blood. Blood. Blast. Blood. Bombs. Blood. Blood. Blast. Blood. Blood. Bombs. Bombs. Bombs. Blast. Blast. Blast. Blood. Blood. Blood.

(Alessio Zanelli)

The Risen

When he slid out of darkness, an entity of silence and paleness that would scare the shit out of Frankenstein's dire wretch, the world had fallen foul of truth and lies. All that could be encountered was a miry, nauseating, irreversible blend of the two. It had become so rife that almost no one remembered what its single constituents looked, smelled or sounded like. No one bothered or wondered, no more. He did.

It took him quite a few days to readjust to sunlight, albeit the sky was often dull, as if he had never possibly left the vault. Weirdly enough, thirst and hunger were not twisting his stomach, while he soon realized how so many things didn't seem quite right. His mind was really at a loss. He had bit the big one in the line of duty, but now, watching people and behaviors, such a noble deed would make no sense.

To his baffled eyes, receptacles of lifelike memories, nothing of what he ran across was understandable, even conceivable or admissible. He never broke his silence or lit up his face again, just kept wandering streets and squares, sneaking as close to the walls as he could, in the shade, better if at night, a shifty silhouette all of them avoided. As if out of the line, or out of it. However headstrong, he couldn't take it.