Texts: an orgy of similes

with Daniel

I believe the world is like a maze

When you make a wrong turn

It's like making a mistake in a maze

Cars make a lot of mistakes

Angels ride along with their little xylophones

God stays where he is

Cars can get bumped into leaves

Angels sleep for the whole day

God stays where he is

The moon hates to go in front of the sun

The sun hates to go in front of the moon

I don't like to get lost in the maze you have to walk in

Angels like to get lost in God - God is never lost

I like to get lost in my house

Copyright ©: David Shapiro

(New and Selected Poems - Burning Interiors, p. 237)

Henry Hudson turned to me and said:
Be expressionless and strong as me,
Be grim and green, stout as Cortez,
Double lock yourself within
Like a warning wife, and be divorced
From nothing, at last be a statue
Of a self, and threaten at night like a landing,
Turn to your river, like a monist on a raft,
And always found your river on a fault,
Be blind and copper, a mania on a column,
Obscured, finally, by a single cloud of brick.
I love you, that is why I do not talk
About your humorous desire to appease.
Rather complain, like a man, that there is no river.

Copyright ©: David Shapiro