The Dreams

I.
The Italian word for
FACADE is
not

faccia.
Faccia, Face.

Ta
mper with it.
Add a -ta and the face is complete
ly shrouded.

Faccia-ta, Facade.

II.
Here, some people are coated in
sun.
Others, makeup.

Faces
made down,
sent away.
Faces hiding.

III.
Firenze is exceptional.
Of all of the places in the world
this must be
the capital of
beautification. Beau-defecation.
A city so smeared with
bullshit, the falsified bleached white
walls seem to powder themselves
scentless.

IV.
It is a comfort
to be
back because,
to be
back is to say that, once,
I was
here. I need that comfort because when I walk here, I
don't feel that
I am.

V.
The man in the cafe whistles in the morning.
I like him.
His hair parted like a split cantaloupe, slicked back, black.
He whistles, in a bleached white coat and
releases
his song into the day. He
opens
his lips and rings for us to
listen.

VI.
After coffee there is
a church or a
mansion or a
battlefield of statues.

VII.
It is beautiful, this white, rose, pale green.

In the morning the Duomo makes me
"Cliche-cliche," cliche Cliche:
When I see the Duomo,
I am happy to be
awake.

VIII.
We enter the church and though
the frescoes are centuries old, we are asked for
their exact meaning.
How are we to know when
this is art? How can one answer exist if
one vastly complex mind created this? Unless,
unless many simple minds created this.

One painting was painted on the ceilings,
to hang over the citizens
in their dreaming, in their restless sleep of
a dream of
a life.

The oligarchy painted
Power.

IX.
I ran

away
,
walking.

I ran for the art; the art for
the sake of
the art.

I found

the Edge
of a dream.

X.
You know that place where
asleep beneath a quiet ceiling
the image arrives with
memories and friends and
the colors fade into
blackness as they become
brighter and brighter and brighter with
Certainty and Truth.

And then you wake up.
The Edge, right?

Do not forget. In Florence we wake up
to the Dream.
Frescoed facades.

XI.
The Edge was
bright. Like I said.

But mostly, it was sad.

It happened one youthful day when the two of them were
little two-hundred-year-olds. Rascals.
The Center had a dream and
when it woke up, it put on its
royal blue cloak, its
leather boots,
its mascara and sexy leather purse and the Center said to the Edge
"your thoughts are not worthy of my eternal ceiling" and the Edge went
to the edge, and
way out There
it got sad.

When I got there, I could feel:
there was no white powder on the walls.
It was brighter because nothing
no swath of freshly scentless orange stucco
no thick tablecloth or bargaining tent was covering it in muddy white.
The Edge was lathered in Florentine sun. And on the walls
you could feel just what it was thinking.

XII.
I guess that
with all that makeup on
Florence doesn't sweat much
Because I sure as hell couldn't find any water fountains.

So I went to the Bridge.

It too is an old bridge
filled with the one Dream.
The Dream is washed into the
green-crusted murkiness of the Arno
the very foundation of
the bridge.
So, Florence sells its dreams on

The Ponte Vecchio. That is why
it is an old bridge. (Everything we know is old, and aged because
everything is alive.

But) Vecchio,
old - that refers to the ONE old thing.

The Dream now hangs around necks and
fourth fingers in
Hollywood, while the people sleep.
I hope the frescoes in the Valley of Los Angeles are pretty
at least.

XIII.
I am entranced by the ceilings' beauty,
this strange form that power has assumed.
Hierarchical blood
in the guise of
inky rainbows. That is
(aesthetically)
pretty.

XIV.
Tonight, in pursuit of sleep and
in search of dreams,
I walk back.

Others are here.
We hope to dream
more than one
dream tonight.

XV.
am
dizzy
I.

On the return to Rome

My pan refuses
at its center
to heat itself.

Half of the egg cooks. We look
through the glaze of egg white
unbleached.
The hot walls spin as
nausea sends us searching for the
mildness at the pan's center.
But through this clear-cut window,
we can see where
we are.

XVI.
You are a vegetarian. Nothing with a face, then.
You eat fish?
What is this "face", you speak of?
Does that chicken you ate have one?
When does a baby become a boy
a chick a chicken?
We are all alive.

Look at my face.
We dream many dreams.