“No More Love Poems”

“No more love poems,” he said.
Maybe he is right, I thought to myself.
Maybe the thing to do is to write
Of something more suitable, like a day
In a life of a student at Southern...
I don’t really know.
“No more love poems.”
No more love perhaps.  That’s more like it.
And the rain keeps on pouring inside my head.
I think of the students and the teachers dead.
“No more love poems.”
I’ll get arrested for bothering freshman girls
Young and untested by trials of time.
“No more love poems” is all I know.
Please give me a dime to make one call--
The only call that I’m allowed--
To scream on the telephone clear and loud:
NO MORE LOVE POEMS!!!
Oh what a shame! Not to be able to play a game
With words, with her hair, with her eyes, with her smile...
“No more love poems.”
Don’t act like a child.
Write something serious, something important,
Something significant and intellectual.
My face is contorted, I want to scream out:
“Oh go to hell!”
I love like a child and I don’t need a mission,
I don’t need a critic’s or my parents’ permission
To say that I love her
In the rain, in the sun,
In the snow, in the mountains,
Just to have fun,
And it doesn’t matter if my love is returned,
My heart is still broken, my fingers are burned...
“No more love poems.”
So what, my friend, so what!
To scream in the dark if it hurts me a lot--
I’ll do it again and again and again...
For love is a part of being a man
And a woman,
And when I’m old and retired a wise,
Perhaps I’ll listen to someone’s advice.
“No more love poems.”  No more, no more,
No more jumping on the living room floor,
No more crying in the midst of the night,
No more hopes, no more fights.
But while I’m young and still able to yell,
My heart keeps on ringing its amorous bell.
“No more love poems.”  Well, good for you!
But to me, without love life is simply not true.

 
                                 September 20, 1989
                              --Alexander Shaumyan