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| The Call |
|
Radames Ortiz |
| So like a wind sweeping across a desolate city Or the back-alleys of brick and rumble So like stones skipping water on a late evening in July The shadows fleeting shards of light So like old skeletons wrapped in scraps of cloth It is midnight and the past lifts its naked body Above fountains and untended gardens I call those lost in the gutter in the concrete fields Pieces of metal rotting the ground Pigeons cooing on belfries A chorus of slurred lyrics a convulsion of wings I call thunder and typhoons Tornadoes earthquakes storms Tidal waves Hurricanes I call the dead and the unborn The living who breathe sulfur into collapsed lungs Who haunt the sequin headstones Of the earth I call friends lovers enemies From a forest of skyscrapers and tenements From the ribcage of train tracks from the inside Of songs singing musty nighttrain On flat-bed bones I call mechanics bricklayers machinists Gardeners of asphalt soil architects of jubilant midnights Unfolding their velvet wings I call economists and mathematicians I call linguists and chemists Who dream in test-tubes petri dishes theorems Adorable women who love The flowers blooming beneath my nails The storms roaring at my feet The ocean waves bluing my lips That kiss the forehead of angels On bright mornings I call I call I call the cleaver That tears the seams of the flesh Unveiling the dusty skeletons of our night work I invoke my voice my name Until pigeons cooing on belfries fly At my bidding The shards of light become rainbows Beneath my feet The collapsed lungs fill up with my howl And shake the earth on my command And the dead crown me And the chorus of slurred lyrics Becomes my anthem The concrete fields--my kingdom The unborn adore me They listen to my voice that greets Them in the gutter in the untended gardens The forest of skyscrapers and tenements I declare revolt prophecy revelation The tornadoes yield to me The machinists dance toward the ocean The chemists drop their chalk and bless me The gardeners tend to the flowers of my heart And all this because part of me lives alone Like a stone at the bottom of a well Poem copyright © Radames Ortiz 2002. All rights reserved. |