Orpheus Breaks-Up the Band

Published in No Tell Motel

My minders take me for rides. The guitarist
gets tight with dramatists. My face resembles
a collage of torn photographs. Each day
I wake to new moon-faced girls, laid out
like pizza boxes on my hotel rooms floor.
The bass player wants to switch to sitar
she wants us to board the ragatn train.
What is it they teach you at Songwriting School:
say autumn not fall. The drummer majors
in punch-ups with the paparazzi. He swags
all night in maenad clubs. Tell dont show.
My management teams makoing deals.
Theyve signed me to sigh out for cell phones,
gyros and Chinese cigarettes (shh, they say
no one will hear those adverts here). Have you read
what the kids are typing in the blogosphere?
They act as if I bit Eury on the ass.
Like I hired Aristaeus to mug her?
Like I placed my snake in the woods, just so?
Please. One minute my beautiful wife
was gathering flowers (as the poets do
not as they say) the next minute shes dead.
The fanatics once were on my side
what went wrong? Didnt they understand
the refrain in Youre the Iliad
in My Odyssey? Here, let me sing:

When youre in hell
Im in bliss
which is Hell
in old Thrace

Nice, huh? And I meant every word, too. Sure
we had our ups and downs. But in the end
Eurydice was the only one who believed
that I was a true artist. She didnt laugh
when I said I wanted to write librettos.
So, Im going to the underworld
to bring her back. Dont snicker, no
there are ways, if you have meansif you know
the right hands to grease. Plusand dont read me
wrongI think this might make a nice song
maybe a Broadway show? But first, I need
to see a deathly man about a ferry!
Always subvert the ordinary
with adverbs and exclamation points.