1. White Suit Liturgy
(free verse con ritmo interno che imita il passo disco)
He is still nineteen, still dangerous, still smiling like the world owes him nothing and he intends to collect anyway.There is another version: bald now, softer around the edges, carrying the weight of two children who lost their mother and a son who left too soon. He speaks of them in interviews with a gentleness that feels like contrition set to a slow ballad.But under every interview, under every straight-to-video paycheck, under every red-carpet grin, the pulse is there—subtle, relentless, the same four-on-the-floor that once made strangers in 1977 believe they could fly.He does not dance in public much anymore.
He does not have to.The rhythm is inside the bones now.
It walks with him.
It waits.Stayin’ alive.
Stayin’ alive.
The floor is a prayer mat of light.
He steps, white suit drinking every color,
hips snapping like a catechism of want.
Tony Manero, nineteen, Brooklyn in his blood,
raises one arm and the whole decade
leans in to listen.
Disco balls break him into a thousand saints,
each reflection sweating the same fever.
The Bee Gees are angels with falsetto wings;
the bass line is God saying stayin’ alive.
Years later the suit hangs in a climate-controlled vault
like a relic, but the body remembers.
Even now, in the quiet kitchen at 2 a.m.,
a foot taps under the table,
unaware it is still dancing.
2. Twist Theology
(Bop-inspired: tre strofe + refrain ripetuto, ibrido con frammento prosastico)
He walks into the diner like a man who has already died once.
The jukebox coughs, Uma rises,
fingers snap once—sharp as a contract.
They circle.
The twist is not nostalgia;
it is resurrection in 4/4 time.
The gun in his waistband forgets its name.
The crowd forgets the blood outside.
Only the bodies remember:
how to be young again for three minutes and twelve seconds.
One twist, and everything changes.
One twist, and everything changes.
(Prose fragment)
Later he will say the scene saved him.
Not the Oscar nomination. Not the comeback.
Just that moment when the hitman learned
how to move like someone who still believes
in mercy.
3. The Man Who Keeps the Beat
(prose-poem ibrido, confessional ma distaccato, con refrain finale)
There is a version of him that never left the floor.He is still nineteen, still dangerous, still smiling like the world owes him nothing and he intends to collect anyway.There is another version: bald now, softer around the edges, carrying the weight of two children who lost their mother and a son who left too soon. He speaks of them in interviews with a gentleness that feels like contrition set to a slow ballad.But under every interview, under every straight-to-video paycheck, under every red-carpet grin, the pulse is there—subtle, relentless, the same four-on-the-floor that once made strangers in 1977 believe they could fly.He does not dance in public much anymore.
He does not have to.The rhythm is inside the bones now.
It walks with him.
It waits.Stayin’ alive.
Stayin’ alive.
