Women's History Month: Gabrielle Garafolo's "To JHS"

To JHS

Love, maybe? Oh, stop your silly questions,

It’s always the same old story,

Those endless fruits of the loom

Mummy and dad are too foolish to discard,

And the black ribbons in the hair of a girl

Who’s pushing like mad the mobile buttons

To the beat of a frantic rhythm

From her crutches dancing wild,

Such a great blast!

C’mon, Kore, stop it, stop diverting your eyes,

Time to get rid of your waves, husband and life,

Let it go, forget that seeds never die, as an elderly scribe

Says to those artsy souls she hangs out with

In the deep of the night, when shadows creep

Into squares and arcades, and ancient stones

Hardly glimpse, for too long they have seen

That bloody court of miracles, the place where she lives-

Just like a horror comic you say?

No, it’s only too real, and so is her trashed soul,

Even if an elusive light granted her the honours of war-

Who cares, candles glow so frail,

They can’t fight the Moon

Nor can words fight demise-

OK, she lost, but teens in love keep carving

Their names on some crooked tree,

Percussive sounds keep sheltering

The tangled branches of a jungle

Born at the dawn of time-

By the way, how often she yelled no to the light

And slept with the dark? Maybe a few times,

Before the prophet came here to gather men and souls,

That, and their wild, primeval eyes

Whenever young creatures fall down

From a blue Electra Glide,

Demise, gales, and barren stars their only friends-

Afraid tender caring is not in their nature,

But hey-ho, she loves dark-haired minstrels’ hands,

She even lets go those cranky ladies who hissed to her

You renegade, you cut and run

Whenever life screws up-

‘Cause, you see, their souls are crooked,

Hers is not.

But who’s gonna live, she wonders,

Maybe a walking skeleton too busy

With obsessions and HIV,

Or Pluto always on time, he, his bloody seeds,

And a girlfriend too ready

To shear through wild blue waves?

Anyway.

C’mon everybody, let’s go, the sweepstakes in full swing:

Bikers, riders, wild parties crowding into ice-cream parlours:

They too frozen in ice no hatchets can break –

Of course, no one to give shelter, no sky,

No clouds, least of all that ditzy moon

Too hung up on silver shawls and permed hairdos-

Oh well, typical women, don’t you think so?

©2019 Gabriella Garafalo

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Blue branches”, “ A Blue Soul”.