Frank Lima

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.

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

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.

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.

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.