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December 2005, #12                              
 
 
Poetry______________________________________________                                 
Fred Moramarco                                                  
   
 
         

My Masterpiece

I sat down today to begin work on my masterpiece.
I opened the file named “mymasterpiece.doc”
and there was nothing in it, empty as a beached seashell.
So I went to work immediately to begin crafting the poem
that I’ll bequeath to posterity as my most important work.
First of all, it needs to be generous, compassionate, embracing.
It needs the clarity of Buddha, the suffering of Christ,
the wisdom of Confucius, the surety of Mohammed,
the authority of Moses, and the weaknesses of Bill Clinton.
It needs to represent and express humanity
with all of its extraordinary contradictions.
I want it to be Whitmanic in scope, Dostoevskian in depth,
Tolstoian in empathy, Faulknerian in complexity,
Joycean in originality, Jamesian in subtlety.
But my masterpiece should also be as lucid as Ray Carver,
as raunchy as Henry Miller, as angry as Celine,
as epigrammatic as Emily Dickinson, as eternal as Homer.
Then again, it should not be literary at all
It should dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee,
It should be very much like Mohammed Ali.
I’d like that it contorted be, like one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
but not so twisted and complex that no one understands it.
A poem of charity and of hope,
with couplets like those of Alex Pope.
A little homespun wisdom from Robert Frost
from trees and brooks and far off stars.
But all these mentors make me nervous;
my masterpiece needs to be absolutely original:
mine and mine only, recognizable as Marilyn Monroe,
standing over a subway grate, her skirt lifted by the breeze.
How to begin such a daunting task?
Aha! the first line just came to me:
“I sat down today to begin work on my masterpiece.”

                                                                   ©F.Moramarco                 

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