Patroclus does not want to die a victim of his own sweetness,
masked by the anxiety of pervasive [contemporary] aggression;
the embarrassment of the city busy behind Achilles’ shield
was not meant to be worn,
the incontinence of bloodstains on Achilles’ harness,
marching with the empty, stereotyped rush
of every post-modern hero
across the polluted sands of a Po Valley Troy.
Hector does not want to repeat the same gestures in a loop:
steer the chariot, aim, plunge the spear into the heart –
plunge the spear into the heart, aim, steer the chariot;
a rugged warrior takes no pleasure in seeing women’s tears or horses’ pain,
focused on finding the right farewell words for his wife,
anti-Dionysian deus ex machina, slot machine, ready to wield
Patroclus, the proper mechanisms of reasoning, honor, nation, family.
Achilles does not want to howl his frustrated rage,
rushing torn, dazed, bewildered, onto the battlefield road;
rabid pit bulls fall with a lethal dose of antidepressant,
drag corpses from chariots, shred garments, abduct Danaean priestesses,
unable to negotiate affection with the glory of a father,
repeating himself endlessly, a surviving Siamese twin.
Patroclus must not die, forcing us to toast to a three-card game where
sweetness wins, reason wins, vitality wins –
sweetness loses, reason loses, vitality loses-
Patroclus dies, Hector dies, Achilles dies, everyone dies,
reason pierced, sweetness succumbs to an unfinished life,
and we, forced to mediate, never middle-max heroes, mass-media martyrs,
remain singing halfway, condemned to stay halved.
Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced
Law and Literature in Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world; He collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. Between 2007 and 2018, different versions of the books were published:
Underground and
Riserva Indiana, with A&B Editrice,
Versi Introversi,
Mostri,
Galata morente,
Carmina non dant damen,
Scarti di magazzino,
Here the Austrians are more severe than the Bourbons, Cherchez the troika. et The Invective Disease with Limina Mentis,
Lame da rasoi, with Joker,
Il Guastatore, with Cleup,
Patroclo non deve morire, with deComporre Edizioni and
Kolektivne NSEAE, with Divinafollia. He was the founder and director of the literary magazine
Il Guastatore – «neon»-avant-garde notebooks; he was the founder and director of the literary magazine
L'Arrivista; he is the editor and chef of the international philosophical magazine
Información Filosófica; he is, or has been, creator of the series Esprit (Limina Mentis), Nidaba (Gilgamesh Edizioni) and Fuzzy (deComporre). It contains a fortnight of autogérées socialistes edition houses. He wrote 150 volumes, wrote 1000 essays, founded an avant-garde movement (NéoN-avant-gardisme, approved by Zygmunt Bauman), with a millier of movements, and wrote an Anti-manifesto NéoN-Avant-gardiste. This is mentioned in the main university manuals of literature history, philosophical history and in the main volumes of literary criticism. His book La malattia invettiva wins Raduga, mention of the critique of Montano et Strega. He is included in the
Atlas of contemporary Italian poets of the University of Bologne and figures à plusieurs reprized in the great international literature review of
Gradiva. His verses are translated into 25 languages. In 2024, after six years of total retrait of academic studies, he return to the Italian artistic world and melts the
NSEAE Kolektivne (New socio/ethno/aesthetic anthropology).
Read other articles by Ivan.
This article was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.
