Poems: Philippe Costaglioli

Blood Count Ah, Franz! How does one become without truly realizing it, a man made out of words and images? One day, you know it, you accept it, you even celebrate with a strange smile this certitude. And suddenly you are so grateful, grateful for the faintest word, the most transparent image to allow you to stand up. Grateful that they love you. Then, vacillating, illuminated with this strength and absence that ruin and inhabit us, you go on, into the marvelled air. Oh, what would I be without you, butterflies of my blood? A voice says thank you. You close your eyes, you continue, you are holding a thread between your hands. And you feel alive. You feel alive, like never before.

Moving In It is the sweet muttering on the table the pierced page of my book of fibers this little whole that leads me to believe in the glittering skin of things I have always always wanted their music and the strange suits you cut from shadows to help you penetrate the fresh chambers of absence There you will unveil yourself With a little tickling of your veins I love this little job also feels like pushing an old grid to only discover a field burnt yellow and forgotten but free where a rusty little chant whispers in our ears the sacred rules of being and bites us Then it is our turn with or without book and pierced of course it is our turn with or without book yes our turn to mutter.

What You Have Taken If I am asked to justify your gestures I’ll just unfold a landscape devastated serene by bursting the thin pouch of the day the day we loved each other or the day one might say we bought together a dagger of tears and sugar to better weave our little fight with death Pain is a sheath that we both have polished but the hand I’m now missing (don’t you lose it) only belongs to me I will retrieve my dialogue with the beasts that live in light and air And off with the mask! I’ll have to learn again how to caress a face This also will be the gesture of the justs But for now I’m putting back devastated serene my tongue in your pocket.

Self Portrait Without really know- -ing it I have learn- -ed how to unfold how to forget myself and to extract out of my pocket yet another pocket yes I have lear- -ned how to be yes real- -ly how to be whole and pierced how to be sewn with gold and absence.