Children and Small Fish by Jonathan Rizzo

I like fairy tales.

But not those with Princes and Princesses,

royal weddings and royal babies attached,

that I don’t care about

and in truth I find sad and empty of colors, magic and humanity

in their pompous military and imperial parade.

Crowned heads adorned with rotting shells.

The only fairy tales worth writing

and that I want to read to my children

they are of children like them who cross the sea.

They set sail, sail, dock and grow.

Of children who become men.

Of children who become princes.

Of children who marry Princesses.

Of children marrying girls

that cross the sea to become

Princesses bringing rare beauties in dowry,

solar ray of distant oases.

Children, little Princes and brave sailors.

Beautiful fairy tales

where you can close

with a happy ending,

gentle limit, border coast,

the beginning of the journey its first end.

As in the Mediterranean,

western gate and tombstone

of our Christian morality.

Here it lies and sinks

what remains of our humanity.

Floats like wood on a cross,

tsunami of compassion

that brings little fish back to shreds on the beach.

The little fish children,

dancing confetti,

free roundabouts,

the butterflies of the deep sea.

Ulysses, an old man with a weary beard,

stubborn memory,

remained on the sea to watch

the distant stars

in their eternal chatter they dance,

caresses, shores, shore, eternal wandering, just sailing, the stars, the sea.

The silence the waves returned.

The mirror of “Nobody” reflected back.

Odysseus Mediterranean meat

to count

on the sand the bone

subtract.

Ports closed for offended castaways.

Sailors,

no man abandons himself into the sea.

At the cost of not returning

with him,

at cost.

While Ulysses on his knees

he held the dirt in his hands,

little fishes in love kissed his feet,

like blossoming hedgehog flowers

and thorn petals in the eye,

Ulysses the sailor, Ulysses the castaway.

Beautiful fairy tales

when it’s not raining,

read like clouds.

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