Orfeo

To my friends Each hair is a poem I gave my son Each hair is my allowance from the universe Each hair is a sunspot on someone's broken heart The secrets that emerge from the psyche have no floor They will get off on any floor when you least expect them to They wear shadows that look like my mother She could stop God but could not make it snow She said the weather was a work of art Like the last streak of wonder In Medea's heart You don't have to watch human Sacrifice on television Shut your window Lock the door Wait for yourself In the corner In the night In the little house That holds your tears There is no piano Just your green velvet And the years you spent in Russia As a little box in your mother's womb With all her curses and her dreams of men When I write poetry I hear voices: KennethKoch rubbing his forehead DavidShapiro swatting words FrankOHara blowing his noise PhilipBryant smiling upon me Neruda drinking red wine Lorca hailing a cab in New York Vallejo walking in Paris RonPadgett calming the world TedBerrigan dignifying wise-guy poetry JoeCeravolo on the radio with Melanoma in the milky sky Are you asleep? No Chopin is asleep on our new sofa He is wasting his life away His health looks like a dirty window His heart has a broken leg His breathing will go to the grave with him I'm not one to part I'm not one to hide my feelings I'm the end of the corridor in your hands This is a song of war Because love is music And its ferocious notes Are oars that pull us apart Death is incredible It is man made We change the names of the dead When we bury them In time they look back at us And see us The living Like old doors in the wind In the beginning there were small islands Floating on poetry These islands belonged to Joe Ceravolo Joe's words are the body parts of poetry Like the little children of the fireflies Who set songs on fire when we cry There is work to do on top of the forest There are too many words on top of the forest They are obscuring our conversation If the trees aren't pruned our words will never reach Their destination: The telephones that hate love And protect the dead from living Will my daughter dress like Venus Wrapped in exaggerated hopes? Will the pill invent love for her? Will her life take place on a Mental and spiritual planet? Yes No My daughter is a seed full of steam Leaving me behind like a bad marriage Helen Helen My Helen of Troy Once I placed a kiss on a spider's web Because there is no evil in nature The spider laughed Now the kiss is as free as an insect And the better part of our love My other marriages were like the four seasons That come and go They have left me small stones That spend their nights on the balcony of life Watching Pathos and Comedy celebrate their wedding Tonight I will write poetry I will pile the world on my pillow Like a paramilitary sous chef Toss an avalanche of flowers With sunlight and olive oil. (David Shapiro) 4.25.94