ORPHEUS RESTORED. PART TWO.
 
To write this poem I had to get drunk
and also high
because it was so scary
and I need­ed to take leave of my senses
a lit­tle and also I had some ice tea. 

I am prob­a­bly ignor­ing some red flags
as I’m being sucked into the black hole
of lov­ing you. You taught me
about forms and bod­ies. To think
of these things 

made me want to write poems.
And to write poems
was all that I wanted. 

__________________________________________

A form can be arbitrary
it is a frame on the thought
I want­ed to watch all my favorite movies
again with him
and I want­ed him 

to read all my favorite books
so we would speak the same language
but most­ly I want­ed him
with my body when he entered me
all my mus­cles went limp 

Rec­ol­lect­ing it now in tranquility
Reflect­ing on it
in the afterlife 

__________________________________________

You know more about music than I do
which isn’t say­ing much if you know me
Do you know me by now
Do I know you
Impos­si­ble motels 

Wash over us like the ocean
Arbi­trar­i­ly occu­py­ing our beaches
Where in the dark we build
A fire no water could ever quench.
And at times the form makes the words 

and at times the words sim­ply fill
out the frame, you asked me why 

__________________________________________

the I in the poem was low­er­case and I said”
and when I come home to a dream come true
I cry and think of nam­ing a drink after you
or invent­ing one in your honor
because every mem­o­ry is a sign of attention 

and the moon is an ele­ment of the sky
and poet­ry is in the words and not the sense
mak­ing or rule-teaching
but in the seams like lint
from a life ded­i­cat­ed to beauty 

I thought of the Brown­ings and how
we should read them 

__________________________________________

When we’re apart my feel­ings for you are terrible
Every detail haunts me
your teeth haunt me
the per­fect line of them
I want you inside me I want you inside me 

A feel­ing fierce and insistent
Metaphors from nature
imi­tate with vary­ing degrees of success.
I want to send you radish seeds
Because you like them not because 

I think you will plant them
but because it’s some­thing I can do 

__________________________________________

And the words tum­ble out with the emotions
and the things that are most impor­tant to me
like a Mex­i­can mirror
go unre­marked on why do I resist people
and why can’t I write more like Baudelaire 

and now that so many young poets
are writ­ing about their lives should I stop
try­ing to make my
life more like a poem or even into a poem
(not shy­ing away from the young men 

and their con­ver­sa­tion and
invin­ci­ble teeth) 

__________________________________________

Because I’m mak­ing this for you
out of a tan­gle of mescal and con­crete urns
out­side a house filled with light
and mem­o­ries insub­stan­tial as fireflies
the uni­corn in the corner 

aban­doned and beau­ti­ful like you asleep
dream­ing of poems, feel­ings and beauty
Do you feel it or does the poem feel you
What the young peo­ple are look­ing for now
Is that what you do 

If I show you my body
Can you show me your heart 

__________________________________________

The sound of a cat sip­ping water
is like a Bas­ket drinking
I know you will know what this means
and every­one read­ing this will too
You said “I like you” that’s how I knew 

And now I feel attached to you
Like a real person
A detailed real per­son like real peo­ple are
and my feel­ings for you are not
poet­ry but what is required to make it 

if it is a love poem
we talked about them remember 

__________________________________________

Real peo­ple in poems
are sel­dom reli­able, it’s obvi­ous that poetry
isn’t real in the way that peo­ple are real,
and these emo­tions just happened
we didn’t ask for them 

but poems are real in a way that endures
where­as life and feel­ings evaporate
like a dream on the wind
I am drunk when we go to the dog park
but hap­pi­er than I have been all day 

Fire is warmer than water
but water is nec­es­sary for life 

__________________________________________

I call him home, the poems were for you
You must send me a pic of your linen suit
I rec­om­mend Ten­der Is the Night
to you The Hap­pi­ness Experiment
some­one once told me my emotions 

show on my face and you
are the most pow­er­ful pronoun
I melt into an idea
let there be no more rules
except the ones we invent for ourselves 

steep angles and sticky gloves
for 88 hours we talked 

__________________________________________

of Paris and Cleve­land, of Creeley,
Zukof­sky, we found out what we knew
I liked you because you knew of rhythms
and bod­ies, you liked me because
I was sexy, and knew a lot of things. 

What a world we live in, so bro­ken, so old.
A world only acci­den­tal­ly with poetry.
Out of our rage we built a city.
A city like the ruins near Ostia
which I saw once, before I was married. 

My feel­ings take me
Every­one knows them 

__________________________________________

Because for so long per­son­al­i­ty was suppressed
and emo­tions were wrapped in sev­er­al lay­ers of theory
Now every­one wants them
They’re like an irre­sistible milkshake
to a veg­an don’t get me wrong I like vegans 

like clean sheets and marigolds
bod­ies and sounds make a world
I give in a verse
what I’ve made in my heart
of day­dreams plant­ed by you 

Here we are in a New Eng­land farmhouse
at Christ­mas time 

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Tina Brown Celona is com­plet­ing a Ph.D. in poet­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver. Her first book The Real Moon of Poet­ry and Oth­er Poems won the Alber­ta (now the Moth­er­well) Prize and was pub­lished by Fence Books in 2002. A sec­ond col­lec­tion, Snip Snip!, was pub­lished by Fence in 2006. Celona’s poems have recent­ly appeared in Harp & Altar, Sink Review, Salt­grass, Action Yes, Octo­pus, and Col­orado Review. She has degrees in lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa and Brown Uni­ver­si­ty and lives in Den­ver, CO. New poems are
                                            forth­com­ing in Typo and Every­day Genius.