Lypophrenia

Prologue

Poems fail
when loves fail
Don't listen to what they say:
a poem needs love's heat
to survive
cold time...

I’ve invented a place
to go when I am deeply sad,
sad to the unmelting ice inside me,
sad to the crystallized tears,
when the regrets start, small white panther cubs
that nip and their bites sting.
Lipiu is what I call the place I've invented
to go ...

Then he whispered, clutching my sleeve, sweating, "Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they're counting the miles, they-re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really ...

There is a haunted look in SALVATORE's eyes, he is searching his memory for
something he can't find, then suddenly sees, as if in a dream...his hand thirty
years before going through the routine gesture of hanging a receipt on the nail,
over the others, mechanically, without even looking...and he shuts his eyes as
if fearing the truth. Her last words have wounded him. He shakes his head, ...

CINEMA PARADISO. PROJECTION BOOTH. INT. AFTERNOON Flashback.

ELENA'S VOICE
(Off-screen)
And I didn't have time to wait for
you to comeback...

From the bottom of the spiral staircase, ELENA'S FATHER is waiting nervously,
yells up at the projection booth.

ELENA' S FATHER
Elena! Hurry up!!

YOUNG ELENA
All right, Daddy!...

In the projection booth, ALFREDO is sitting on a stool, near the
projector. Seen from the rear, the YOUNG ELENA ...