From Byzantium -- parts 3 and 4

MAROONED
Tuesday, September 11, 2001: 8:48 AM
The Next Movie of Marilyn Monroe

Marooned at the World Trade Center
Visions begin. We fall down
with steel crashing onto
the old Westside Highway.

One memory: I study simple crows
languishing on the steps unmoving
and calm they peck at dust.

No, that is my dream.
I am a movie star in flight
as well as this man. I am
also the boy at Yankee stadium
nursing at my breast.
He called himself Edward.

Yes, I am the child of
diseased father and mother--.
Without safety I shift
from one harm to another
to return again. Somehow
I have lived these years
from 1953 to 2001
and will revive longer.


2.
"I am the woman who fell from grace"
I ask how was it possible --
I am long pregnant?

If I pause will some die
in my place under
broken steel pillars?

Yes, I remember
as words trickle
down my thighs after
sex shifted yellow
window light to an
awkward peach and pink --
raw steak on hot coals.


3.

I met the Director for coffee at 7:15 AM.
I knew what he wanted when I answered my phone.
He often dresses as a crow and I meet him
as Blue Jay and we fuck on demand.

I made him more human than bird.
He does not have to ask, and as walls and floor
shake on the 87th we were thrown outward;
his wings malfunction. His cock stuck
inside thighs. I do not give up easily.
He was not an illusion.

We are instant amputees
when we ride concrete dust
into the bowl and maneuver
former arms and legs
to roll fingers; my sky
glows as my trail passed.

We fall. I hold the top rung of air.
Why do I survive?

I live at the rough turn of steel
asphyxiated in wire, concrete
and plugs of semen left behind
for composite civilization
defined with out past or future
as silly condoms left empty
on the rest room floor.

Held down and strangled by gravity
I scream fate and sulfur smoke drifts
for weeks over the lower New York
and then out to the river Tigris,
and into eyes of 3000 who died.

Why am I alive?
Are they casualties with numbers?

I live. become "les autres",
and my lover another crow.

I tap on my own shoulder
in his bird's daze.

Did you listen when Ted Hughes’
whimpers while Sylvia
untied legs redemption leaped
to repeat books silenced twice.

First: death did it. Second:
Ted bled Sylvia's letters white

I crawl to turbid air
and edge by edge break open
the lines of Neolithic caves.

We have always been there
at the foot of the art
that makes symbol into
the flutter of arms
and limbs as descent
growls into discovery
of some truth written
down to be screamed.

I become heroic in this drop--
In one moment I wake in Alexandria
in the years 612: I pass many
stops and starts. Time falters
as Sappho strophes. What year is it?
Is it 745 AD in Damascus?
I loved Paris in May and June 1968
and Tel Aviv in 1965 was pure.

"Human kind will emerge to Renaissance,"

I shriek as I fall.
I love my milky breasts
They compare to the Pieta,
not that you can see her under
that gown he sculptured
long before the World Trade Center.

Hold us Crow!
Strings of lead drop
from North tower,
I recall everything
I am now Edward
child of Teresa.
Marilyn passes my
lips as I kiss what
was before it exists.

After my mother's
natural death,
I murdered memory--
prurient fables.

I crawl easily out window
made the long last step
and I tumble out of history
and into another plateau
where sky is violent cherry
with the taste of glue
recalled in notebooks
dog eared and dirty --
I create that blank
dimension where mutation
was gained and we waited
in line for another
ending to ride out
of the building
and exit by elevator;
sex in the vestibule
becomes more than life
renewed or Christmas
party in a brokerage
house during a bull
market when prices roar.


4.

Nothing plots. New plans confirmed.
Answers are wrong. Notes destroyed --
Here is Marilyn's maze as she traveled.

Inside the absolute island of Crete
she collect broken icons to hold
the lost origin so we escape
as a pattern of disconsolate
number theory equations proven wrong--

I played with God in a musical.
wrote the book when I was ten.
The music never played.
I loved my parents.
Later, in silent death
I assumed a fabricated life.

Crow, I agree to your deal.
How can I survive as I jump
off the edge of the window?

Crow, push me out of purgatory.
Crow, are you listening?
I do not know the answers.
You said you knew everything --
promised redemption --
but I smash to the ground
with my crushed skull
bound inside femur.

Crow?
Crow?

"The horizon is black, blank
and the landmark has vanished."

###


From Byzantium -- Part 4
Broken Heart

There's more to death than standing
at a firing squad and suffering extinction.
It's not that simple.
Lights are put out and terror bleeds
by heroic steps caught in the outer mind's rise
within humble miracle of American Airline Jets
when fear ripped from rage and guilt into depression.

While the assorted "leaders"
of the world slam war into peace
and break the windows of a brokerage house
on quiet day in September, does it matter
that the street's Vesey in New York City
or some grand boulevard in Vienna
before and after WW1 or Hiroshima.

I imagine Adolph Hitler separate from time.
He grew in a fraudulent frame. If he had been
murdered in 1930 would his war have stopped?

Today, I worship souls who died
jumping from the 90th floor.

Can you imagine the look of the clouds
surprised with Houdini trickery?

When your spine liquefies, bones and muscles
quiver and in final response your heart
softens, flat and without emotion.

If you are lucky you have no memory –
not that there can be your life again.
Are you the hero of the death?

"What choice did I have,"
you scream at the ice cream man
whittling his confectionary fingertips.

Where is the glory? You die without
ceremony and medals. Are you empty?
The river below is not called "Victory"
It is not a river but an esturary
a drowned sea, an place where salt
and fresh water mingle as lovers will.

The Top Sgt. said, "No dead man can be a coward" --
If you calculate tides from old fashioned spectra --
that's a redundant promise with a false bottom
made by your father who ordered you to fellatio
while he beat your nine year old skin
as steak bone grilled for Sunday dinner.

You never forgive mother as one witness of abuse
She in her isolation called as the Siren,
lifting you to her bed for immortal comfort
as Aphrodite did or Athena might the Lord Daedalus.

The present is more than the
summary of 2001 or more than
the destruction of a monument.



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