One Hundred
There was a door because I opened it.
It was the muse. It had a human face.
It had to have to make the three parts fit.
The Cosmos Poems was fire that filled the space
With fire in Life on Earth. The sky
Became a blue lake I was bathing in,
But it was fire. The sun was burning. Fly
Me to the bottom where I’ve been. I’ve been
Completing Area Code 212.
I’ve been in heaven in Manhattan on
The bottom. Hell is what to live can do.
One day I went downtown but it was gone.
The World Trade Center towers still return
In dreams and fall again and fall again
And rise again and people scream and burn
And jump to certain death again and then
They rise back to the hundredth floor and turn
Their cell phones on and call to say goodbye.
The firemen coming up the stairs will burn
Their way to heaven. Everyone will die
And perish, die and live. The people on
The top floors use their cell phones to call out.
Death follows birth as sunrise follows dawn.
High pressure sends a sky-high waterspout
Fire balances on top of. It begins,
The universe begins and death begins,
And every living being burns and thins
Down to a flame that burns away and grins.
I heard them singing and set fire to it.
I hear their screams. Their corpses run in place.
They burst in flames to make the three parts fit.
My trilogy is fire that fills the space.
The muse now raised the laurel crown above
My corpse, and, praising me with what was fire
To hear, which I breathed in, which burned like love,
Now set ablaze the funerary pyre.
Dead white males greeted the arrival of
My ghost by praising me with what was fire
To hear, which I breathed in, which burned like love.
I wore the crown of laurel they require.
Beneath a crown of laurel lived a liar.
White man speak with forked tongue with his lyre.
They scream like gulls, beseeching. They scream higher
And dive down, crying, corpses on a pyre,
And rise back the hundredth floor and turn
Their cell phones on. We call to say goodbye.
We firemen-coming-up-the-stairs will burn
Our way to heaven. Everyone will die.
You fling yourself into the arms of art.
You drool to sleep on consolation’s shoulder.
A living donor offers you a heart.
The muse does. Yours got broken getting older.
The UFO that offers you the heart
Replacement is returning from out there,
Deep space, but beaming brain waves saying, Start
Down there, unsheathe the sword inside the ploughshare,
And cut the kindness from your chest, and stick
The Cosmos Poems in the cavity.
A hummingbird of flame sips from a wick.
My tinder drinks the lightning striking me.
Exploding fireballs vaporize the gore.
The runners-on-you-mark can’t live this way.
The have to make the deal so they ignore
Their death and now the flames have come to stay.
They open windows. Now they brave begin
To lead the others to the stairs to die.
The money is the cosmic insulin
The partners in the firms must make. I fly
The UFO that offers you the hear
Replacement that’s arriving from out there,
Its home, while down here the red mist is art
Exploding on the sidewalk from the air.
And some jump holding hands, but most alone,
But some jump holding hands with my warm hand.
They wait inside their offices. They phone
This poem. They stay and while they do they stand.
When I consider how my days are spent,
I’d have to say I spend a lot of time
Not being dead. I know what Garbo meant.
My life is life emerging from the slime
And writing poems. Virgil took my hand.
We started up the steep path to the crest.
He turned to warn me. Did I understand
I would be meeting Dante? I confessed
I hated cold. To flee the urban light
Pollution in the night sky and see stars
Meant getting to a crest of freezing blight
And human nature inhumane as Mars,
And things far stranger that I can’t describe.
I greeted Dante. Maestro! Dawn neared. I
Was looking in the mirror at a tribe
In tribal costumes worshipping the sky.
It made no sense on Easter morning to
Parade in feathers down Fifth Avenue,
Except the natives worship what is true,
And firemen in white gloves passed in review.
The Jewish boy had done it once again.
Wood water tanks on top of downtown flamed.
The Resurrection has returned dead men
And women to the New York sky untamed.
- Frederick Seidel, 2002
