NYC Limits - 2 - OSTIA

Ostia, late in the morning. After the rain, on the beach, the haze is a cloud of children. Cora sits slacking at a round tripod hanging on the bums at the front porch of a bar shack. On the table a Dior and a Razor. Every five minutes the phone beeps. Cora is going the distance on a puffy roasted croissant filled with thick chocolate cream. Vanilla snowflakes are everywhere: on her fingers, lips, on the black tank-top and on her knees.

A rainbow-striped smack back from a fishing trip hits the shore. Two men are dragging over the sand amidst a crowd of supporting kids, then dock boxes are dropped. Fish is being sold on the spot, at the shoreline, to a growing audience of passers-by.

Cora is fixed on the scene, reminded by the sugar to give her crescent a take.

A morsel falls down splashed on by the phone a quarter of a second later while she detangles from the chair's frame and runs inside the shack. Everything is covered in sand. The flip-phone opens and rings.

Cora grabs a bottle of red wine from under the counter, backs into the light with a victorious cheer, takes a sip then digs the bottle half into the sand, picks up the flashing phone and answers.

- They only trust their Tamiflu. I closed for 28 millions, including hedging on most of the hairy assets. That makes me not exactly happy -

At the other end a soothing voice is crossing legs, moisturizing lips on a glass of Gordon's and sharpening on an ice cube.

- We're liquidating, not taking a bet. Is a good price. When you don't have to give a blow to each of these morons with the package you buy my smile. I'm waiting for you here. Enjoy the weekend.

Struck by warm acquaintance and thrown back into early afternoon, she looks deranged on the leftovers with plans growing to get drunk on the way back to the Hotel. With the Italian allies in the black and a second bottle of wine fit in the suitcase Cora is swiftly getting into her wheeler and on the road to downtown.

The phone, discharging on the passenger's seat, rings several times unanswered. On the fifth call, blinded by the sunlight on the rearview mirror, Cora answers the phone.

- He called?

- I would say yes, yes - She laughs.

- He was here early morning. I'll see him at 3 pm.

- I will most definitely get jealous. Are you going to fuck him?

- Have to think about that. He's quite focused.

- I know and that's my problem. Now I just want to get wasted.

- Take care

Drops the phone ends under her seat and for a while stops beeping. Sticks Dior on and speeds up to her Sheraton's cube. Out of the Mini it's 4 pm and she's framed into the security cam with bright green eyes wide open. Lipstick half gone, half a guesswork, busy with the memories of her conversation and on the stairs to her place Cora opens the suitcase against the door. The red wine is barely fluttering in the bottle.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

NYC Limits - 1 - KEREN SURRENDER

Keren sits alone on the blue leather couch by the window. It’s early morning. She is brushing her long white hair. The sound of suspensions cracks panning from left to the right of the room. Keren is wearing a white Waffle and is barefoot. She is loose, content.

Jimmy Dean sits legs crossed on the vinyl, office-dressed, Reebok Flip and rolled-up sleeves. A thin aluminum suitcase lies by, open and empty. Jimmy looks confused, waves hands. Although he is talking to Keren he is expecting her to ignore him.

- I thought it was the right thing to do. You know me. (whispering) I could not tell she was about to turn me down. Not like that. Not like that -

Nailing on his flap…

- You know, you were the one with a crush on her, I really… last week in Paris, both, did she smile and say anything to you? Or was it the market roller-band and hotel rooms? Did you sleep at Clad Sweeney?

Jimmy pauses, pushes on his legs up to the wall then hangs starring at Keren in silence. Keren is done brushing and is now turning to Jimmy with and idle face.

Jimmy walks to the blue couch and sits next to Keren, opens arms to embrace the cushion behind him and takes a deep breath. Keren turns to the man then speaks, marking every word.

- We were somewhere. Paris… or something. Had more sex than we usually get from these trips. She did not turn you down. You sank the whole affair yourself -

Keren is starring, awaiting, slowly tracking Jim’s breathing and wavering her hands on his lips and neck. The hairbrush has been dropped. Jimmy is amused by the girl’s sudden re-calibrating, legs crossed, toes pushing.

- I could not pronounce her name. We dug the metro and wringing the sadness in cinema-scope coloring at 3 in the morning, a gorgeous, sun-kissed Friday morning like now. I wished you were with us on the up and downs of the vodka outbreak. I really missed you -

- Up next Riverside, Jimmy. Coffee is at 3. Cora is in Rome on the Citi swaps with UBS and stuck up to Sunday. I have an audition in 40 minutes at Atkinson. Just don’t call her -

As the noise from the awakening cloud of chemistry outside starts pouring in Keren disappears.

Jimmy staring at the camera relived, his muscles relaxed. There are after all so many things, he thinks, for him to love.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

On the shine of a sunset beach
bicycles on the boy's birthday
fast moving shadows
scratch a twist of stars
in the sand the young boys
pull to picture the scene
now you tell me
breathing and laughing thru your skin
in waves between magazines the rain
the sunshine stumbles in repentance
and though I'd like to laugh
at all the things around us
in the harsh light of day
somehow back though the wavering weeds
like a paper plane in the sun
I'm diving

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

Look around the scene
everyone is dancing
some dead some imagined
some hit the street.

Crack in a motel room
stretch out your hands
like a compass
your practical balance.

Register
the wind floating
the men walking
the disciplined shadows.

Widen to gather
a fine world
the glint of a light
touch-tone your way out.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

The sea to its leaves,
the waves to their darkness.

With no ease down
the old language sleeps
through the fire
on a breath
on a step
a subject where
repetition
a body walking
each night into the minutes
trying into existence
one must be careful
a thing or gesture
not attached to where
even darkness and night
have disappeared.

Someone should know
we're no longer human.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

They live on the fourth floor.
When they look out their window all they can see is the other window.
When they awake in the darkness on the phone is the other phone.

They don't know each other's names.

A wire-mesh barrel rolling every 30 seconds
at certain hours
between nightfall and morning.

Beyond the pane is green grass holding back.

He says people make him feel strange.
He knows all the old songs.
He’s fifty years now.
He has moved ahead.

The Winter’s Wheel tramples our singing.
Work out.
Don’t quail.

She stands along the pale dock-light.
She puts on some make-up.
She looks back at those forks along the way.
She has nothing to lose.

The old of the new world's steeples
against the window
nothing will know that you are gone.

What they survived.
What they could not live.
What they were.
What they stood with.

What by their lights is time to.

She didn't want to do
nothing
with anyone.

There's no anger or patience.

They live on the fourth floor.
When they open the door all they can see is the other door.
When they awake in the darkness the hand that shakes is the other hand.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

Whenever I write in numbers
to seal the water triple cap off
the drowned girl beneath
lifts her head by a slow degree

falls about her knees
like buds upon broken glass
the hands above the head
to get my headphones on.

Whenever I write in numbers
to black with civilization
these phantoms at their innocent gasp
lift glue upon my language run the route fall

in a tethered pose
like Jesse
the dark roses two years later
to a leaf of social furniture.

Whenever I write in numbers
to form a common breathing passage
the river that there alone we followed
lifts the art of each sung through

in walking paper
like the carrying skin
the vineyard stands
to trace our footsteps.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

There's a hush in everything you do
a feeling across the words

the waves conflected exert
wandering droplets of

your smile
touching places
within this teasing beauty
inside remains

short of the left side
a touch to stifle your steps
which leaves me feeling
you is all I need.

Sitting long after midnight
the eye begins to see the night
Julie and Candy
flowing with birds

after the rain stops
the landscape is another scene
and every rock drifts
but cannot leave

in the broad day
we come at last
which leaves me feeling
you is all I need.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

Who we are and all they are
you know right here now
on the board but what comes first
comes along unnoticed

Sunda, Ayla, Reena, the little embrace we must
get to know the young air darker
as we rip for every ground
all that is missing we'll not know


where I imagine her long fingers
have only ourselves to sell

and if it grows holding its warmth

to get the hang of it over the free-fall

and then dying off the nail shooting
at each passage
we have never risen

from a slant of the evening sun

I picture her here
cracking over the details in her lap
I picture her here

and no matter how long in grace.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

As the tides of human emergency
hitting the dive onstage
rejoice without hitting away
alive at both ends

I have begun
ten minutes past eleven
to refrain from representation
and retracing that it is another sixty minutes

as blood runs out like water
and circumstance irradiates the playground
bordering the cracked walks I walk
astounded

in the snow melted
shivered in the new wind formations
how clouds crumble
silently drifting

before I know
all I want to do
the clock moves to twenty one
as through complicity confidently forgotten

you separate the dark from the dark
to signal forty-four
the trees buck and quake
by the magnetic hectic bang

I know you do not know who I am
engaging downward from
warlike talent downcast glance
every torrent burns.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

With the Santa rally well underway
behind the long arm of the law,
the crowd has it and the man in the straw hat stands in the red marquee under the ballroom.

The seasonal demand cycle,
the nocturnal pulse,
one need never leave
the front-run it and perhaps get smashed.

What happens to the O-ring when you're wrong,
talking in the tongues again
a band of light across a blade of grass,
when it was never

by a single gesture.
We would move back,
dancing too close,
arriving at the wooden gates.

It courses through the cables laid for,
it mounts to the candles and beats
tender,
blue like the sky

and changes all the time.
Involved with the surge,
in the one-day dialogue meeting,
confines of New York to grab the greenie.

Enjoy some other sign of my will that people do not,
entirely specific of breathing in the spring air,
I am always looking away
or again at something after the photo gallery.

Not yet 10 p.m.,
Ms. Greenhouse takes a drag of her cigarette,
smiles away sweetly.
I wrap myself in slanders.

© Fortunato Caragliano. 2007-2010. All rights reserved.

It is not always easy to explain our views.

It is not easy to explain, to a kid for example, that geckos are fun and friendly animals.
It is not easy to explain to an adult that not all that makes sense is necessarily to be pursued and fight for.
It is not easy to explain why the primary and most likely result in not a distant future of the so-called war-on-terror is America drifting to isolationism rather than further gaining in global confidence.

And the most difficult thing for me to explain to others is how I approach the use of white on a web page successfully, that is:

1) embrace CSS circumventing the risk to fall into an obvious and unwanted blog-esque look
2) deliver a minimalist image without turning into provocation
3) give the user hints and hooks without the support of background color panels

I recently redesigned Coruscus, our Agency, following the above conditions and possibly goals. I was not expecting a lot of attention but indeed attention was. I did not explain the following minds what was not needed and because it was not I would like to thank them publicly for the kindness and support:

Carol Guevin of netdiver for including coruscus.com in the Portfolios section, the people behind DailySlurp and DesignMeltdown for showcasing the site, WebCreme for including our site in their beautiful gallery, Thomas Marban of tom.ma for including Coruscus as part of his screen-blog, CSS Smooth Operator for carrying our logo on their home page, Nick Dunn of css-galleries for the work on his CSS aggregator which includes our site.

To all these fantastic people (and the other people, designers and not, that have been supportive of this redesign) Thank You.

A pinch of salt in the news enchilada may pass undetected: Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, joined Apple’s Board of Directors today, August 29th.
Speculation is green for this occurrence but I remember last time Steve Jobs joined a Board of Directors that was not Apple’s, Pixar was sold to Disney the day next. Not to say Apple will be sold out to the Juggernaut of search engines but possibly something else of the most interesting kind: integration.

1 Two of the coolest brand in IT are partnering on betting that Microsoft Vista is going to be a major embarrassment to Redmond’s agonizing monopoly but see the Zune initiative as a threat in the long run (AAPL needs GOOG).

2 Apple is from now on going full-frontal against the former Gates company (Bill’s out gardening with Melinda) and the miserable states of affair that is called the disbanded Microsoft Software Division (GOOG needs AAPL).

3 Google is going to switch to Apple hardware for most of its numerous factories (AAPL needs GOOG).

4 Google is going to buy on the dozen or so multimedia-oriented and Apple branded software pieces that are iLife and iWork (GOOG needs AAPL).

5 Google is going to embrace the iTunes Store for audio and video replacing the miserable Video store have now (they both need this).

6 finally The Googlians are going to fix .Mac and integrate it with their services once and for all (AAPL needs GOOG).

But the whole package of semi-obvious predictions looks possibly too predictable. Apple is set for exploding sales next year with both audio, video and PC products, what they are going to need is sit side-by-side on the couch with the only other company that is an established nightmare to MS and MS’s lack of understanding of web-as-a-service. WAAS has so far been a thorn on the side in Apple’s crown of jewels with only two, masterfully executed and very successful exception: the iTunes Music Store and the Apple Store.

Some very sweet goo is dripping in Cupertino with new iPods, faster Mac minis and now the right infrastructure to jump 2.0.

A small notch on the paper, one with consequences. Expect a lot of them.

Was it not for the insane-wet-wave-hot of the week past, on the way to (aspiring at) getting a taste of Siberia, I should call these interesting times. Perhaps interesting in an unusual way. We have a few answers and a reminder: I have to teach kiddo the proper spelling for big-bang; her big-boom is flatteringly French sounding and unfit to an educated 6-years old. Make note.

We go to the mountains and camp with the fire and lakes, the smell of mint and a chimney. It wasn’t you on the corner in White Avenue honestly I imagined it would spin me out of the picture. Out of the picture, next to the store with Bob, Kate and Lou, staring at all those other shells, rolling down the slide, speaking your team’s language, from nowhere to out there.

Taken in by the wind-works I watch the squirrels gather in the gallery sorting thru water throws some childhood game backwards. Once in the story when they snap off another click I rage to believe downstairs a really good cup of coffee across the tray awaiting for social investment. With the grass, the milk, the devoted family by the runway, a frame of the view someone else covers. Lookout your six when you curl up.

The shattering clouds cut the morning sun off then the line of purples after the storm glancing on the tiles, two wooden poles hold the frame and from their wet narrow track the billboard girls deflect in the other window, brushing where everything is lips closing in a chime of plums, oxygen, gold and regret. Pink as birthday balloons, light the rainbow emerges from the dull lake to the east, the running water, the billboard girls speak.

Humming in the air that masks us clear by the hundreds trafficking droplets of blood warming my hands then up on the beach for a minute. A thousand leaves chained to the air conditioner burst with a puff and roll in the snow speeding away. A thousand leaves for me to give the little laughing, drop the little chainsaw and fall asleep on the pillow.

I live in the land where the waterfall flows thru a pool and thru the ocean the sparrows revolve, the scale grows, a bump or a trail of miniatures, maps and insects crowding to meet me on this street. After and before every morning she gets on the phone and the couch, the wedding gift, a critical stance. I hold in until I begin typing when I step across the sleep I stretch at a fraction of a breath. This is part of what I like.

Two people in the room blinking, falling into place, painting. A backbone kicking and kicking to start the plot in every recess first in the needle. Everyone will work it out right about now.

I am dating no dramatic layouts but a collective fortune. In the face of deliberately misconstruing the wounding as a kind of case, disseminated, faked by frustration, the light indicates no coincidence. Boxes thru boxes, thru 27 miles of shrubby cactus then the 56-foot tall iron gate. You have arrived.

© Fortunato Caragliano. All rights reserved.