Orpheus Ascending

painting by gregorio lazzarini

Orpheus Ascending

“The secret of reaping the greatest enjoyment

of life is to live dangerously.”--Friedrich Nietzsche

Chewed some mushrooms for my evening meal

before setting out to chronicle the city nocturnal,

both the skyscraper canyons 

and the furtive underbelly, 

where the wet cobblestones

still shone with piss and gin

under the mercury vapor zap,

close to the river and the park

where the orphic musicians, the homeless,

the thugs and bangers and tourists mixed

in the steaming pastiche of Old Town;

stopping briefly to listen to an old man

playing a silver lyre, its sweet & nasty notes

pushing me to my knees while still trying

to cognitively capture fragments of urban

charm within the misty mirrors of my mind;

the old man said his name was Carias,

said he was a Greek, a seer, 

a fugitive from fear, his fingers unafraid

to force the gathering throng into

a twitching sacrificial dance, chanting

and growling, weeping and laughing,

tearing at their attire, freeing

their bare breasts and butts

and archaic principles, lips smeared

with purple honey, frantically flinging

their limber naked limbs seductively

at the somber sparseness

of a starless cosmopolitan sky,

stomping their bare feet with a 

thunderous frenzy, a smitten fury--

I felt chained to the stones beneath me,

could hear them rattling and chiming,

transporting me to Anatolian steepness

with the sticky taste of figs on my tongue

as the primal tension ramped up,

as the sax, harmonica, African drums

and six string guitars began to harmonize

with the lyre, the music reaching out

into the magical night like electric rainbows 

penetrating the bottom of underground caves,

with joy smelling raw and fecund as we heard

the terrible sound of the sirens,

the bellowing of bull horns,

the banging of batons on riot shields:

“Cover up your gorgeous tits, Sister,” I yelled

just as the vengeful newcomers pushed their pilum

into the plexus of the reverie, creating 

unwilling victims within the purview of love,

where the unfettered lust creatures had reigned,

until I had to cover my ears 

as the screaming became unbearable, 

and love children became

the pursued;

and though I first doubted my eyes,

I think I saw that the front line

of the covey of cops were women,

raving Maenads, I tell you, tearing

our co-mingled joy to shreds,

with their hard clubs raining down

onto unprotected pates,

as the sound of that oak shattering bone

and brains haunts my dreams because

I did glance over my shoulder and

Eurydice did vanish for my folly;

mired in my foolishness I had hoped

that the lyre’s magnificent music

would have drown out the song

of the Sirens, and we would all

have escaped the corridors of Hades,

but no, hell no, for Carias was the first to fall,

his music, his poetry, his power

was ground into the pauper’s pavement,

his last words being barely audible:

“in care periculum facere.”

Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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