Orpheus

The underground is dark and humid
From the wet eyes of lost souls
Flowing past with empty eye sockets
That they fill with chewing gum
And New York accents.
The way is bogged down
By the melting asphalt
Under their feet and shoes and soles.
The city cop and his K-9
Stand guard over the flock
Like the pig next to the hotdog
And I descend the stairs with my own humidity
Fumbling poetry in my hands
Onto this scene of fluorescent mire.
She saw me first
And I felt the cold
Of a skeleton hand, a sacrifice to Anorexia,
Surging like the freeze of a snakebite.
Had she left three years ago
Or only minutes before
Nestled amongst genuine handbags
In Chinatown’s agora?
We begin to celebrate for the finding
Of those lost things
Which should never be found.
She asks for gum
And finds the poetry inside
Which I begin to recite and make
Those first vibrations that are for
Words that I promised her once
That I would make and afterwards
Seal with a kiss.
These are the words that I wrote
As if I were the old man in the subway
With a fishing rod and a dollar
Trying to save save save
Not money not time not green
But something not lost but stolen,
Telling yourself that the only reason
She can’t pick up
Is because she might have lost her arms.
Her eyes and dimples wait for the rhymes
And lyrics and song and harp
While the words amass along
The border of my trembling lips,
Marching in pink ant lines
Saying love like they do.

If I had read ahead
I would have known
That my words were sweet
And her steps would fall
In time with mine.
But don’t look back
Don’t look back.
May the Devil…
Don’t look back.





This being so Hades smiled
But just ever so slightly
As if it were nearly a smirk
Or even a confused frown
That wrought no disasters
No plagues nor fires nor recalls.
Just enough to where
The wallpaper comes undone
Around the edge or when
The glasses aren’t half empty
But just empty.