Rico Cleffi


the repeater must not fail





Again, again, again at Waldheim (under the influence of Rexroth)

Sat in the cemetery, taking stock of the martyrs
eternity already blowing through his own bones
gone as they were
yet in posterity, jotting down
the irrefutable coalition of the blood of men

whose blood shall we use for the ink this time?
so many defeats to draw from
massacres stacked on top of pogroms
the telling less distant now
sharper in proportion to the losses

sat in a cell, waiting for the chair,
to get it over with
wrote his own epitaph (all of ours, really)
give flowers to the rebels failed

what would they make of this?
those who went to the grave so certain of victory,
what would they make of the current nightmare(s)?
the Parsons, the Vanzettis those August Spies?

now, time is weaponized
language monetized

they've got nanoseconds,
numbers to entrap you with
reverse amortized collateralized
time, like money, a lie

our myths they dismiss as quaint, naive
does anyone believe the shit propping up this whole thing, though?
but they have the guns, the banks, the courts, the schools
always ready to dispense a good lecture on self-reliance
and the work ethic
as they sentence you
one way or another
whether to a cell
or, for the lucky ones, the endless tedium, of the clock
of worn out back, blown-out knees

what would they make of this, the great revolutionaries of yesteryear?
what would Durruti make of this shit? Emma Goldman? The Kronstadt sailors?

Don't ask me,
I don't spend much time in graveyards these days
at least not those kinds of graveyards

it's a funny breeze today
eternity maybe blowing through us all a little bit

if you listen you can hear time running out the clocks
grinding those farcical contraptions
to dust



A  poem not generated by AI

Enticed by the allure of the self-flushing toilet
Swift removal of life’s messy bits
soon advanced to the point 
where the machines do the shitting for you
all the muck removed from the equation
synthetic ice sterility, urinal cake aesthetics
funhouse mirrors concealing surveillance cameras
it’s easy to get conned, the house holds all the cards
too easy to believe the bot promising candy,
that the wolf really does want to be friends

delivery drones might as well teleport,
they appear as apparitions
bringing apricots free of blemishes
obscuring the calloused hands that pick, the missing fingers,
the backs that bend

what grand entrance the mechanical attack dogs must make
 efficiency perfected
obscuring the hands that grip windpipes

the dream of capital and those who sit behind its gates,
 the impeccable circulation, 
a perpetual motion machine 
the great constellations a string of commodities

don’t worry, they say, you will never be obsolete,
we will always need people to prop up the hologram



A curse for the times

Somewhere between this week’s mass shooting,                    
this week’s chemical disaster, this week’s wildfires,   this 
week’s glacial collapse, this week’s flooding,         this week’s 
bank run, this week’s horrific bodycam footage, this week’s 
pogrom, this week’s tortures

Sometime when the windows cede the unconscionable 
streetlight to something passing for daybreak, may you hear 
only the ever-present sirens and the car alarms and not the 
birdsong deceptively sprinkled over the top to mask the scent, 
may the wind in your lungs winnow down to a faint rattle in 
your chest, rendering your ability to laugh at it all yet another 
act of supreme futility, may the doom in your scroll roll off 
your screen, blanketing you with the muck that can never be 
fully cleansed, just for a week may this happen, so you will be 
restored and refreshed just in time for next week’s fresh round 
of horrors

Bloodwork

We dispatched experts to track the blood, to scrape bits from pavement, tally it on clothing, extract it from shrapnel, from mangled bits of bone and flesh. Chalk outlines were drawn, pictures of the splatter blown up for full effect, Rorschached abstractions presented on the evening news. Blood was analyzed, and weighed, analyzed more. There was so much of it, in the interest of classification, we divided it into two categories, us and them. The science of blood was eschewed in favor of a philosophy of blood. A daunting project, not since the census had we seen such an undertaking. Students and the unemployed were enlisted. A works progress administration of blood and blood letting. Against the naivete of those who started to see no difference between the stuff—it's all the same, they'd say—some of us began to see the various gradients in their full spectrum. With a trained eye (and nose) you could get a sense of those who were the most deserving of justice. Could smell the varietals, pick out the region the martyr hailed from, right down to the block.

A glorious time for martyrdom. Ours were avenged, more were created on their side. Blood begat blood begat blood
                begat


Rivers flowed through the streets, running into the sewers with purpose. Blood shed enough to fill reservoirs. Vows were made to avenge tomorrow’s martyrs today. To rip the words from tongues. To rip tongues from throats and larynxes from necks. Heads rolled. Roughshod we ran. Eyes gouged, sphincters torn. They retaliated and we retaliated. Preemptive attacks were launched, and great victories were won. Losses were suffered and reprisals made. Keep tabs as we could, at some point we lost track. We realized we were drowning in the stuff.



affix the mark to the shell

Rico Cleffi’s work has been published in Otoliths, Fifth Estate, Roi Fainéant, the Brooklyn Rail, Flatbush Review, Urban Omnibus, the Village Voice and elsewhere. He is a regular reader at the Rogue Lit series out on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn and he edits the radio-issues website, Frequency and Amplitude (freq-amp.com). Born in New Bedford, MA, he has lived half his life in Brooklyn, New York.

 
 

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