| Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci USA FOR MY WIFE SHARON when you said "Hello, I love you," I saw the red sky divide and roses fall like velvet rain upon my head, petaled flowers stacking one atop the other till they made me tall and proud, and passersby said, "Hey, that man smells good! He must be glad to be alive." I tipped my hat. © Copyright 2000 by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci FULL CIRCLE Are you sure this is the way it ends? at the beginning again where it all began? Why did I never notice my steps turned, as if of their own mind, towards the familiar? That all life revolves around itself, and we move in this circle as we live our days? Are you sure this is the way it all ends? at the starting gate once more where we took our first breath? Why was I afraid I'd lose my way, go so far I'd find myself-- Who I Am-- too late? If only I had taken lessons from the flowers that from seeds grow to their perfection and in season die and go to seeds again! All life in cycles moving in their time. Are you sure this is the way it ends? at this moment, in this place, a new beginning? © Copyright 2000 by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci WHY SO GRIM? His wife thought him a bit too morbid. All his clothes, even pajamas, basic black, and no matter what the conversation, he had the knack of reshaping it like clay into something Edgar Alan Poe-ishly macabre. Exasperated, she asked, "Why so grim? Some see a glass half-full; some half-empty, but you, husband mine, you see a dark potion brewed in Verona for star-crossed lovers or a golden goblet of wine spiked with poison to bring down a king. Why can't you see life's brighter side? Wake up and smell garden roses, not cemetery gardenias with bruised petals, broken stems, poking from a funereal heap of green styrofoam and red ribboned messages from the living!" His wife thought him a bit too morbid but that should've come as no surprise. In courting he rarely laughed. His eyes never twinkled. Saturdays he'd take her on walks through graveyards where he would point out stones and jot down names and dates into what he called his Notebook of the Dead. "What do you suppose killed that one?" he asked her once. Then turning, said, "Look at those two. They died within days of each other. How romantic true love is!" Oh, she knew all right. What about those nights thunder boomed and lightening streaked across the yard, the two of them sat on opposite ends of her living room sofa: she cried and screamed; he raised his head from the obituaries and beamed with delight. As a kid each year on Halloween he'd powder his face, makeshift fangs from a popsicle stick, dab some red magic marker blood, then prowl the streets, racing against the coming of the dawn. His wife thought him a bit too morbid the way he squinted dark eyes into crowsfeet as if out there were some specter only he could see. "Enjoy life!" she'd tell him. "Live for the moment. Could you try at least to loosen up and smile?" Still, despite it all, despite dark dismal days, she remained true, took no trains out of town, kept her vows to this morbid man who loved death more than he had ever loved her. When at last he died, she had him laid out in a green flannel shirt, blue jeans, a purple cap. Around his coffin shaped like a yellow submarine laughing mourners danced and sang old Beatle songs. © Copyright 2000 by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci THE WORDS WOULDN'T COME it was the tin-foiled look you gave, a razoring upper lip, a silent, deadly mouthing sharp enough to slice a lover's heart. Worse still, your final word staggered mutely on the redness of your mouth: a cross word puzzling my memory, poisoning it forever. I tried to answer your "goodbye" with something to say, an antidote to save me, some words that wouldn't leave me speechless, words to resurrect everything dying, words that wouldn't come. But a hint of your smile distracted me long enough for you to slash yourself free. © Copyright 1999 by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci. THE SIREN SONG the anvil on my chest is a heavy reminder that I will die someday but for now I ignore the blacksmith's hammer pounding the hot orange spike pretend instead the beats are steps to the siren song I must dance on the way to a coda of silence © Copyright 2000by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci TO OSIP MANDELSTAM Murdered in Warsaw: 1938 You laid your life on the bloody lines Of a scribbled notebook when you could have swaggered like a poet concealing truth behind the lapel of metaphors and similes. One day your life slipped out of hiding. Far from Stalin's wrath the safe poem inside your head champed at the bit until you set it free. What could your life be worth once he read about his thick sausage fingers, his moustache of insects tickling an upper lip? Comrade, is this how brave men throw their lives away? © Copyright 2000 by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci. All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. |