Frank Lima

I thank the spiders' webs and the circus dancers who stain our eyes with
Rapid movements and authorize our handcuffs to make no distinction
Between night and day or love and hate.
No one will know the sum of our arduous daily separations from bed to

Work. These pillars actually belong to you since I have not counted them
Or know any more than you do where they are or in what country they
Still exist. We can put all our concerns into a loaf of bread and French
Kisses, go to movies and watch the splashing milk on the screen imitate

the forest in the moonlight. Why all the fuss about the patrons becoming
Feathers, discharging their ideas of nobility on the evening news? There
Are no lights in the theater just soft snow from the balcony that is the
Little red schoolhouse where all this began.

Actually it was because of you I did not attend as often as I should have.
I was too embarrassed to face you across the clay modeling tables since I
Always felt like the clay in your hands was a cartoon version of my teen
Years, dear slippery-fish ladies of the sleepy west.

Don't forget, my early life will be yours, too,
With its self-descriptions of poetic justice,
The tiny creatures we write about can describe themselves in the moss
We leave behind.
...

My father was
A blossom,
And I was his fragile
Epiphyte on his
Days off.
The purple
Dogs of years
Gone by
Watch him smile
At the horizon.
His feretory
Catches the
Rain from the
Smoldering sky.
These fields are
Fallow and dried
Gullies where gin
Sparkled
In the morning.
My father's remains
Are smooth like the
Starlight that
Makes my life
Slightly yellow.
...

Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27
We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy
and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became
Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the
steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants
were waiting for him to unearth the sun in Elissa. The clouds
were as cool as a dog's nose pressed against our cheeks. I
notice your eggshell skin is as creamy as a lion's armpit as we
cross the horizon on strands of Yeats' silver hair. There is a
light coffee flame in his eyes guiding us like an old Irish house
cleaner holding a candle in a black and white English movie.
Yeats' lips look like an angry Rimbaud illuminating poetry with
his youth and vigorous sunlight. He knew eternity would vanish
the sun at dusk. He caught it with a rainbow tied to his finger.
There was nothing left after that. We cross the equator
heading north following Emily Dickinson's black bag containing
stems of her longer poems preserved in darkness and memory
like wild pearls thrown overboard to avoid capture by Spanish
pirates. The islands below float by like water hearts in a child's
aquarium. We are candy wrappers being blown across the
waxed floors of poetry. We land on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Whitman's past-port face is grinning at the nineteenth century
in the thorny arms of Gerard Manley Hopkins whose head was
set on fire by God's little hands. The hands that circumcised
the world. Gertrude Stein is a match flaring on a young
woman's pillow whose birthmarks have been stolen. We cross
the green Atlantic into World War One. We are met by Rilke
dressed in his Orpheus uniform wearing white sonnet gloves
that once belonged to a stone angel. Rilke offers us a glass of
amontillado made from Lorca's private stock of gypsy tears.
The sherry is not quite as dry as Wallace Stevens' lush mango
metaphors of familiar objects. Although Stevens' poems are
fragrant, there is a lingering afterthought of Pound on the
tongue. Pound collected his misty feelings to make raindrops
into European and American poetry. Vagueness became as
sharp as a pencil. Our blue box is not allowed to attend
Apollinaire's birthday party held by the august Académie
française on the Eiffel Tower. He is being awarded the "Golden
Frog Souffle Award" and a one-way ticket to the Greek and
Roman past to spend afternoons with Williams filling wheel-
barrows with the twentieth century. Both Apollinaire and
Williams could hail a cab on Madison Avenue in any country.
After the bash we toured Paris and London with D.H. Lawrence
who kept stopping to relieve himself of the great mysteries of
life whenever we went by a Bavarian gentian plant. He claimed
he was writing poetry for his new book: Acts of Attention for
Love Poems. Eliot was rebuilding London when we left. It
reminded him of Detroit or Cincinnati or Saint Louis. He was
removing despair from the weather. He thought it affected
people's minds and did not want to overload Mayakovsky's
emptiness with old English churches that pray for water heaters
and cloudless nights. Mayakovsky, on the other hand, insisted
there were bugs in Russia who could write poetry just as
interestingly as Eliot. The Russian winter is elegant cruelty
compared with the English milk-toast weather: "A man without
a cloud in his trousers is not a man." Eliot thought this was the
most boring statement he had ever heard. Although
Cummings' poems appear unintentional on the surface, he did
not act like a drunken amputee at the dinner table and always
said pleasant things that came out of nowhere. His
conversation was experimental but logical and he investigated
words, mixing them on paper with a pencil. Cummings was all
etcetera after a few drinks. We move the sun to South
America. Neruda had become an organic poet writing about
the fulcra of yes and no. He wasn't home when we got there,
so we went over to Allen's for some microbiotic poetry. As
usual, Allen was rolling incense and howling at America. Allen
was always mystical and beautiful when he walked on the
Lower East Side. When he stepped into the old Jewish
pavement, he mystified the habitués. David Shapiro, the Djinn
of subatomic poetry, asked Allen what was the future of poetry
in the borough of Queens? Allen placed the palm of his right
hand on David's glistening forehead and said: "David, don't you
know? The future has no future. It is very old and doesn't
worry about its future anymore, because it has so little left of
it." Allen made suicide exhilarating when he wrote Kaddish.
Finally, suicide could talk about the pain of living with
unbearable beauty. Beauty was Frank O'Hara talking to Second
Avenue with a diamond in his head. We were the personal
details in Frank's harem of private lives when LeRoi insisted on
becoming black, abandoning us for a noble cause, according to
Frank, who loved Imamu Amiri Baraka. We were the details in
Frank's poems and living one's life was a detail in Frank's life.
John Ashbery arrived from Paris on a plane made of expensive
suits, shirts, and ties. Like his poems, he was sparkling and
squeaky clean, dressed in elegant language. He is the
daydream that had become a poet. His subject is to have no
subject. Perhaps a casual reference to someone special. He is
a poet of the less obvious in life: the sestina made of clouds.
We crossed the equator on our way to a cocktail party for Gary
Snyder. There is no other life for his outdoor poems,
hitchhiking on hands-on love. Gary seems to have time to
write poems about the notes in his life. Kenneth, on the other
hand, has a paper cup full of wonderful poems. He can write a
poem about a cathedral living in a paper cup. Kenneth travels
everywhere with his paper cup. At a certain time of day,
Kenneth finds room in his paper cup for perfect days and
perfect moments:
Perfect moments when Frank spoke to us.
Perfect moments when Allen spoke to us.
And they sang to us
with human wings
upon which we sleep.
...

I put my hand
Into the dream
That falls upon
The air. It
Touches me a little,
But I don't complain.
I'm almost asleep
When I get there.
Where Byron
Lost the scent of his
Life, over there,
Where the dreams are.
It's always
Hot, like
The eyes of the
Dream. Sometimes
The dream is
On the dunes
Watching the molten
Ocean burn the sun.
The dream scours the
Sand in your fish
Tank for the plastic
Mermaid who is gaining
weight. Nevertheless,
We go to the edge
To watch the dream
And the repetition being
Hurled ashore like
A drop of blue,
You wrote in a poem,
In a language
You alone
Understand
In the dream.
...

These empty words are so remote. They are stories someone wants
To believe at the end of the century. Everyone gathers their sea of telluric
Pain to greet the beginning of the new world.

Cars stop and watch the deck chairs limp across the street to await
The coming of the new year. It is the end of summer and autumn and
Winters and springs, and panzer infatuation.

After four hundred eighty-one years, I cannot pull out the Spanish arrow
In my eye. Suddenly everything I knew was inhuman:
The oceans, the tadpoles in their new cars. The clams became
Cheerleaders. The palm trees, strippers, and everyone forgot,
Deer are the shapes of God.

His official language became Latin, when he ceased to be a Jew,
Biting his nails and collecting cans like a cheap minister with sunny gold teeth.
The tender years that once wore oysters would never speak to Him again.

The female spider became a lesbian, devouring our new long legs,
That would never again climb the toy steps our fathers left us. Although
Our legs are hairy and the lilies of a theater, the gentle lips of
Our pyramids rest on our souls like a lover's fingers.

How many aspirins will we take to reach the surface of truth?
My existence is for sale. The dawn is learning English.
The waves of the sea are unionizing.

The stones that were once our troubled hearts are eating chocolate.
I come to sell you fish, the bread in my blood and my existence.
...

Crows see us as another invention.
Like summer and beauty,
They shimmer at sunrise in their new cars,
Change their names and color when they see us.
When they fly, they're the bite marks on the sun,
And nail-scratches of black against the sky.

We matter little to them as we are.
They prefer hamburger, youth,
Oxygen and mineral water.
And, of course, we sell our souls to a passing crow,
Because we're shiny things they take to heaven.

Crows are always polite to humans.
They have lots of money
And live at a party that never ends.
We're the junk genes they left behind,
That play Aztec football with our heads,
When we dream and lose.

Crows have relatives everywhere.
Human warfare moves across the sky
Making more room for them to fly.
We're just a meal in the next world.
We're the hole in the sky.

Crows are legends and instructors of grace.
They are the dots in the fog,
And the flight of the uterus.

Crows are the printed warnings
Of a wasted life.
They will never leave or abandon us.

When we take our last breath,
Navigating through our mistakes and lies,
The crows will take our last word.

We are the last citizens of a pale race of crows,
Rearranging the furniture in the mind of God.

Crows turn the planet on its axis when we die,
And do nothing to the body we'll remember.
Our souls are their meal of the day.

And the blue marble in its beak,
As it flies away,
Is the world leaving you.
...

I need more time, a simple day in Paris hotels and window shopping.
The croissants will not bake themselves and the Tower of London would
Like to spend a night in the tropics with gray sassy paint. It has many
Wounds and historic serial dreams under contract to Hollywood.
Who will play the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, and who will braid her

Hair? Was it she who left her lips on the block for the executioner,
Whose hands would never find ablution, who would never touch a woman
Again or eat the flesh of a red animal? Blood pudding would repulse him
Until joining Anne. That is the way of history written for Marlow and
Shakespear. They are with us now that we are sober and wiser,

Not taking the horrors of poetry too seriously. Why am I telling you this
Nonsense, when I have never seen you sip your coffee or tea,
In the morning? Not to mention,
Never heard you sing, although some claim it is quite grand.
Will you teach me to sing like Chaliapin? Will I impress you with my

Cartoon Russian accent? I like sour cream and borsht;
We went to school together. My minor was caviar and blinis.
This is what it means to listen to Boris Godunov late at night.
Cool mornings are for Lakmé and songs of flowers for misplaced lovers.
But why should we speak in a foreign language to each other,

We are not birds. I have other stories too strange and beautiful to be
Told. They have no sound or memory. They will rest on your lips when
You bring your hands to your mouth to stop their gush of air against your
Face. We should go back and meet again at the street fair of cufflinks.
Our hearts teach us how to fly with wings of pain.

That is the price of the disarticulated lessons we should not abstain from
Playing. The accumulated misdemeanors add up to the most egregious
Felony: ignoring the demands of the heart. We remain in abeyance to
The muses who are only interested in their outcomes,
We are just the worms on their hooks of selfishness.

What do they care, we are not Greek. We are just a dream of pleasant
Comic arias that suffice as whims in the morning.
We are small enemies to them with strange large hearts that control the
Weather in the heavens. They cannot change or unteach us not to
Trespass their quarters of endowment. Perhaps, after all, you are an

Affable spirit bubbling over with your own deductions to minimize the
Pointed dots in your beautiful endeavors.
Although I feel like a bird with a broken wing,
Each day I think of you I fumble an attempt to fly to impress you with
The color of my paper wings.
...

the grapes
remind me of the whales
gathering salt for the ocean

this is a poem about my life

you've interrupted
my life and death schedule
which gives me that poetic look each day

this is a poem about my life

where was I before I met you?
I was eroding on my way to work
and slept a lot
deep in the subways

this is a poem about my life

then I met your lips
on that windy day
I stopped poisoning my life
on Monday mornings

this is a poem about my life

when I met you
you were undressed
like a stone in the rain
I swam after utterly naked

this is a poem about my life

before you leave me to heal
I will find you someone to love
who will be shaped like a box

this is a poem about my life

before you leave me to heal
I will become an apple
and hide in a clock

this is a poem about my life

I will plant these wild lines
they will grow into honey
and weep in the spring
for you

2.14.94
...

in the beginning
there was no end

the ground we
walked on was
a memory

our shadows
false stories

our clothing
space without time

darkness was the
color of angels

and the stars did
not weep

2.25.98
...

For Frank O'Hara

I
The lights are out
The cats are hungry
The room is full of gangsters

II
The dishes are dirty
The icebox is empty
I dream of celery and a compass

III
The roof is upstairs
The window next door
A guitar in the shower

IV
The hours disappear in my room
Where is my blue pistol
The door-god is knocking.
...

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
...

During the day I play at drowning
looking for the smoke
of eyelashes and faded hair
the lilac shadows of blood
and the ruins of coffee
but a night
I dream of the last syllable
in my mother's heart
the last red word in her lungs.
...

My angel, don't think the great stillness is wooing us:
We just haven't slept the same among the letters that have a habit of
Recognizing us. Those beautiful letters live in Paris all year around.
For even the best of men go astray with words within the gentle depths

When they are to express something unutterable.
But I believe nevertheless that you need not be left without them as a
Part of me, as a recreation between hesitations,
The boundless ones in moments of doubts.

If you have this affection for things that don't really matter to the poor,
Then everything will become clear, more coherent and somehow more
Conciliatory, not perhaps how I manage to function from day to day
Taking Kenneth's last words to be my daily gospel that 'we must write

Every day,' but in your innermost consciousness and wakefulness you will
Know I have patience with these black lines that I share with my most
Intimate friends to say I'm still writing to you.
So I sincerely beg you to have no remorse with matters of the heart,

For it is a foolish, overbearing organ that does not have a place to rest
Except in our sleep with dreams it cannot have during our times of
Playful awareness. I only seek, as well as I can, to serve the last
Wishes as a poet. What else is one to do with these unsolved hearts on

Paper? Otherwise they are of no use to anyone but the dreamer who tries
To cherish matters of the heart, like closed rooms to the public in some
Grand museum filled with treasure, or like books written in a strange
Tongue hidden in the library of moments we let slip away fearing it was

What we wanted from the beginning. We stopped searching for the
Answers because we could not live in their blue tents. It's a matter of
Living everything. Live now, and perhaps you will then gradually, without
Noticing it, one distant day live right into the answers of the heart.

8.3.03
...

I wanted to be sure this was our island
so we could walk between the long stars by the sea
though your hips are slight and caught in the air
like a moth at the end of a river around my arms
I am unable to understand the sun your dizzy spells
when you form a hand around me on the sand

I offer you my terrible sanity
the eternal voice that keeps me from reaching you
though we are close to each other every autumn
I feel the desperation of a giant freezing in cement
when I touch the door you're pressed against
the color of your letter that reminds me of flamingos

isn't that what you mean?
the pleasure of hands and
lips wetter than the ocean
or the brilliant pain of
breathless teeth in a
turbulent dream on a roof
while I thought of nothing
else except you against
the sky as I unfolded you
like my very life a liquid
signal of enormous love we
invented like a comet that
splits the air between us!

the earth looks shiny wrapped in steam and ermine
tired of us perspiring at every chance on the floor
below I bring you an ash tray out of love for the
ice palace because it is the end of summer the end
of the sun because you are in season like a blue
rug you are my favorite violin when you sit and
peel my eyes with your great surfaces seem intimate
when we merely touch the thread of life and kiss

7.30.69
...