Most of these poems were first published in Pina Piccolo’s Blog 2023 to 2025. The cover photo is by Tracy Allen, taken in April at Point Reyes National Park, Limantour beach.
The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times
And you crept up
so ominously quiet
Spirit of the Times
that we couldn’t even
feel your presence
but for a draft
we thought was weather
As you stared
incredulously
at us from the corner
liquor store
or behind the stall
at the gun fair
Zeitgeist that creeps
sowing rubble
taking shreds
of worn out
Ideologies
and repurposing
them for the kids
so they’ll parade around
in obscene hand me downs
of history
on a raft full of holes
You just sat there
Espirito du tempo
and Marveled how
we couldn’t feel
our callousness
hardening
our eyelids
to prevent the scales
falling from our eyes
You did not slouch
toward Bethlehem
Esprit du temps
you merely snickered
at the self-combustion
we were feeding
but refused to feel
until self-deflagration.
Pina Piccolo, November 19, 2023
Looming
What’s crouching invisible on the horizon
-a different density
– a sphynx of existence
unperceived by our antennas
– a dearth of words
enfolding or exposing the Event
it just looms there
directing the traffic
of flocks
the panopticon
of volcanos and faults
laughing at human conjecture
plans and cognition
geopolitical conjunction
the looming finds it hilarious
that prophets and dowsers
weathermen and seers
pridefully scan the sky
casting a befuddled eye
only to be doused with
a smattering of star dust
solar flare and magnetic atoms
– a slithering puzzle
– enigmatic eel of a skyline
Pina Piccolo, 7 October 2024
Revelation Horizon
The gravity of the situation
Did not allow any light to escape
The deep hole we had dug
Ourselves in
We stood at the edge
Wedged between
Necessity and action
Rippling and undecisive
With the weight of Sisyphus
Inside our inner dimensionalities
Glimpsing the sky for
Archangels with swords of fire
Yet beneath our feet
The ground boiled and shrank
The species turned brown
And shriveled
No horsemen appeared
On the revelation horizon
Only weary encampments
High noons of the fragmented
World masquerading as
Cardinal points of doom.
Pina Piccolo, June 13, 2024
A portent from the Oort Cloud
Where not on earth but on the Oort Cloud
did that thin, shame-filled dust
wafting from a Louisiana chamber
settle, as four-year old Sofia,
silent angel at her side
scribbling notes she couldn’t offer
on a silver plate to butter up
the law-soaked judge
a granpa uttering sing song
non sense, wide eyed at how low
your black robes can take you,
cringing at the words
the ritual commanded
come out of his mouth.
Unschooled in the ways of los majores
Sofia took that look to mean the same
and Judge Souffler words “Do you know what a laywer is?”
to mean the same as when Granpa Manuel would ask:
¿Quien tomo a las galletas?
¿Quien dejo salir a el perrito?
¿Quién no recogió sus juguetes?
and playing along swung her head
wide left to right, right to left and again and again
a twinkle in her eye as you do
when your abuelo inquires
whether you understand your naughtiness
hoping you’d promise to never do it again
30 April / 1 May, 2025, in transit between California and Italy
On turning into a rock
What’s past, too far to fathom
What’s ahead, enveloped in mist
You hang here, on the moment
Breathing in and out the shifts
Holding off the plummeting
And on the ready to alight
Fear in your heart wishes
Sudden deep hibernation
Inside a sanctuary of choice
Sheltering in the soft fur
Of instinctual self-preservation
Unbeknownst to you, bounding
And leaping within something that
Can’t be monetized or weaponized
Or timed is the shifting kaleidoscope
Of your inner patterns, your joys and wonders
Yearnings refusing to be lolled or lured
May they turn into a boulder, staunchly stuck
To deviate a course or a multitude of pebbles
Specks of stone rolling in perpetual motion
Set to alter this river bed and flow.
Benicia, 15 February 2025
IRL, or In Real Life
A delivery of embalmed flowers
Shimmering delta water at high tide
Plastic particulate in mothers’ milk
The sun splicing through a redwood forest
Drones buzzing bears from habitat
A sister’s hand steadying you as you slip
Algorithm at the helm
A secret wound slowly closing
The ground beneath your feet shaking
Ancestral voices heard through a conch
The stench of an era rotting
The ylang ylang tree blooming, regardless
Whales led astray by sonar
A new life cracking an egg
Dread paving the way to paralysis
Humans rediscovering that nothing is still
At this juncture everything falters and shifts
Be nimble on your feet, there is no known path
Pina Piccolo, Benicia, February 4, 2025
Pina Piccolo is a bilingual poet, writer, translator and sole editor of The Dreaming Machine. Her work is published both in print and online, both in Italian and English. Her favorite topics are language, politics, migration and resistance. Her musings can be found in her personal blog Pina Piccolo’s blog / Il blog di Pina Piccolo.
