Daniela Gioseffi
WE'RE MADE OF STARS' DEATHS,
Yet, often we
don't have the table manners
of crocodiles, a hundred of which will feed
on one hippopotamus, taking turns-
one eater at a time- while others
hold the floating prey
still in the water to share,
one after the other taking its turn:
bite then spin away to chew,
take hold again,
and wait another turn.
We've come from stars,
made of exploding stars,
and dream
of star wars to come.
POKING OUT MY THIRD EYE
I want to get rid of it! I'm tired.
I want to poke that eye in my mid-forehead
right out of its missing socket!
It's always viewing things objectively
From above and afar-thinking incessantly,
when I want rest and merely to enjoy! Forever
finding words to turn every human fart
into some sort of art.
It never closes its lid.
In fact, it has no lid!.
It stares in the night like a frightened kid.
It watches everything with nocturnal sight,
sees things that aren't visible
as if it were a lighthouse in the fog,
always pointing and waiting for ships:
things, thoughts, symbols, allegories,
narratives, aphorisms, philosophies
to come sailings in on its beam.
It tires me terribly when I want
to simply enjoy living with two eyes
open and sometimes shut.
My third eye is stuck in its rut.
I don't want that third eye always snooping
around, bugging me out, pooping
symbolic stories. I don't want to think
about making an artful stink.
It makes me comment on daffodils
as if they came out of a poem by Wordsworth
instead of knowing he put them in,
because his third eye was bugging him!
Always seeing a seagull as a freedom;
chirping birds as poets singing;
clouds full of smog, all pink and blue at sunset
as signs of global warming; a young skinny woman
with purple hair as self-destructive; the rings in her nose
as anger at her parents. Truth and beauty as a rose!
This poem cost me sixty bucks to write,
because I lost my new leather gloves on the subway
blinded by my third eye which now keeps
my hands cold, and sometimes makes my two eyes
with lids blind with contemplation or satiric wit unkind!
If only it were situated in my behind!
LOST TREE OF HEAVEN
- a Tritina
Between my childhood house and the house next door
was a strip of concrete where a lonely Ailanthus tree,
older than the houses, stretched arms toward the sun,
and seemed to smile in my window, filtering sun,
especially in spring when screens opened the door
letting in zephyrs to stir new leaves of the old tree,
and tiny aromatic white petals danced from my tree
as if it were given snowflakes from the sun
to sprinkle softly down on me, small in the open door
to heaven's door where I'd live finally
above the tree in sun.
UNDERGROUND,
At one end of the subway platform,
a man in a red flannel bathrobe
with a shopping cart full of junk
and a big silver cross
hanging from a thick chain
around his neck , preaches
how too much greed is destroying
everything. He rants
down into the subway stairwell
as from his pulpit
as weary workers travel to and fro,
ignoring him.
On the other side of the platform,
a man with a keyboard
hanging from a thick chain around his neck
sings plaintive jazz of love lost
over the din of the demented
preacher. Then,
shuffling along the edge of the platform
walks a stunningly gorgeous, black woman
with long dark hair flowing
down her back. She wears
the orange safety vest of a Mass Transit
worker, and behind her she drags
a heavy plastic garbage bag
full of trash she's hauled up
from the dirty tracks,
and I, lonely poet, always
watching, wait
for my ride home.
MY AGED FRIEND HAS BROUGHT ME SPRING LILACS
I go walking in spring with my 86 year-old husband
I'm 66 and and like Sisyphus just reaching the top
of my first climb. He's ascended
this mountain before to the top
to have his stone slide down
again, only to hobble it to the top,
again to have it slip away
to the bottom. I gesture at this and that
new view, remarking: Fresh green!
Star magnolias! Yellow daffodils! Red tulips!
Sticking buds opening!" He does not look
to the side, up, or around, but gazes down
intent on his trod. Perhaps, he'll succeed
in pushing his stone over the top this season.
Later, as I rest from reeling in awe.
he journeys home from a hunt, staggering
with a purple torch alight.
My old husband has brought me spring lilacs.
"Dark purple like my old heart," he offers,
shuffling toward me, "Bright green
like your young eyes," he says.
Is Ecstasy Comfortable? There was one pair of lovers who had just met and were melting in the throes of the first blushes of romance and marriage. The world was an exciting place and all things in it new and unfamiliar, including the lovers' bodies to each other's. They worked themselves to such high pitches of ecstasy trying to achieve ecstasy that ecstasy became no less then excruciating. They loved, gazed, smiling, into each others sparkling eyes, watery with joy, brimming with pleasure, and waited for the day when their love would stop consuming them, setting them afire, burning them to happy cinders. They labored for the day when their bodies would know each other's so well that their ecstasy would no longer be excruciating, but comfortable. Meantime, another pair of lovers, who had known each other for decades, were cooling in the last throes of romance. The world was a complacent place, and all things in it old and familiar, including the lovers' bodies to each other's. They no longer worked themselves to high pitches of ecstasy trying to achieve ecstasy. They were satisfied easily with the old married taste of each other's pleasure which became daily less pleasurable as it became sure of its own being. They loved, gazed understandingly into each others' eyes, glowing with embers of a fire nearly vanquished, glowing with the last vestiges of happy cinders, and waited for the day when they would part from each other and remember their ecstasy, so well, as to relive it with renewed excruciation. |