Orfeo
By Frank Lima
To my friends
Each hair is a poem I gave my son
Each hair is my allowance from the universe
Each hair is a sunspot on someone's broken heart
The secrets that emerge from the psyche have no floor
They will get off on any floor when you least expect them to
They wear shadows that look like my mother
She could stop God but could not make it snow
She said the weather was a work of art
Like the last streak of wonder
In Medea's heart
You don't have to watch human
Sacrifice on television
Shut your window
Lock the door
Wait for yourself
In the corner
In the night
In the little house
That holds your tears
There is no piano
Just your green velvet
And the years you spent in Russia
As a little box in your mother's womb
With all her curses and her dreams of men
When I write poetry I hear voices:
KennethKoch rubbing his forehead
DavidShapiro swatting words
FrankOHara blowing his noise
PhilipBryant smiling upon me
Neruda drinking red wine
Lorca hailing a cab in New York
Vallejo walking in Paris
RonPadgett calming the world
TedBerrigan dignifying wise-guy poetry
JoeCeravolo on the radio with
Melanoma in the milky sky
Are you asleep?
No
Chopin is asleep on our new sofa
He is wasting his life away
His health looks like a dirty window
His heart has a broken leg
His breathing will go to the grave with him
I'm not one to part
I'm not one to hide my feelings
I'm the end of the corridor in your hands
This is a song of war
Because love is music
And its ferocious notes
Are oars that pull us apart
Death is incredible
It is man made
We change the names of the dead
When we bury them
In time they look back at us
And see us
The living
Like old doors in the wind
In the beginning there were small islands
Floating on poetry
These islands belonged to Joe Ceravolo
Joe's words are the body parts of poetry
Like the little children of the fireflies
Who set songs on fire when we cry
There is work to do on top of the forest
There are too many words on top of the forest
They are obscuring our conversation
If the trees aren't pruned our words will never reach
Their destination:
The telephones that hate love
And protect the dead from living
Will my daughter dress like Venus
Wrapped in exaggerated hopes?
Will the pill invent love for her?
Will her life take place on a
Mental and spiritual planet?
Yes
No
My daughter is a seed full of steam
Leaving me behind like a bad marriage
Helen Helen
My Helen of Troy
Once I placed a kiss on a spider's web
Because there is no evil in nature
The spider laughed
Now the kiss is as free as an insect
And the better part of our love
My other marriages were like the four seasons
That come and go
They have left me small stones
That spend their nights on the balcony of life
Watching Pathos and Comedy celebrate their wedding
Tonight I will write poetry
I will pile the world on my pillow
Like a paramilitary sous chef
Toss an avalanche of flowers
With sunlight and olive oil.
(David Shapiro)
4.25.94
Copyright Credit: Frank Lima, "Orfeo" from Incidents of Travel in Poetry. Copyright © 2015 by The Estate of Frank Lima. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.
Source: Incidents of Travel in Poetry (City Lights Books, 2015)