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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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53.
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Ahead Of His Time
The artist born ahead of his time
Will see no reward, no glory, no fame
Alone with his demons
He wrestles to the death.
Van Gogh was
One
They said a madman a lunatic no doubt
Only brother Theo could glimpse
Who he was
And brother love pulled
Spirit through fire
With paint, brushes a kind word and a coin or two
Young Vincent held on
Compelled
To see the dying of the world
Sweating in the fields hot burning sun hour upon hour
Sunflowers explode
Lifes mad beauty
The trees are alive and stars shake the heavens
Awake
Sleeping fools
Put out your eyes and see!
Cut off your ears and hear!
In a tiny room
Alone
Poor, dirty wretch
Light slips through the door
Unnoticed
All that love
Rejected
All that blood poured out
On canvas.
The artist born ahead of his time
Must die ahead of his time too.
Starry, starry wonderful night
Life and death are the stuff of dreams
It is painted cross the sky
Light years ago
A star burned out
Far, far away
And only now
After millions of years
And millions of miles
That dying light
Finally
Reaches our eyes.
(Previously published in ArtsFusion, Dec 99 - Jan 00, Issue 17)
Laurence Overmire
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54.
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Alaskan Farewell
The mountains stand there still.
Towering giants in rocky armor
Royal sentinels of the Alaskan Guard.
Thick green their tunics of birch and pine
Sheer white their helmets of sun-beaming snow
And icy sabers in crystal scabbards
Hang from earthen belts of blackened sod.
There in the dusk of violet shadow
The piercing eye can see
The deepening crevices of countless centuries
Etched in those imperious faces
Of glacier-hewn stone.
But my time is gone
Turned to dust in the arctic wind
And no more
My eyes behold imperial splendor
No more my heart sing in the stinging cold
Free from the smoke of city steel.
Yes I did sing
Once.
My winged spirit sailed oer those rocky crags
And flew unbounded toward the low-lying sun.
Full in the face of the golden moon
My heart cried exultantly in the blue-diamond night
To hear the silence of a time-stopped river
Frozen in starlight on the ground below.
Yet a memory lives
When reality dies
And there in the darkness of a Brooklyn street
I will remember
And sing again
For the mountains stand there still.
(Previously published in Shadyvale Magazine, Fall 1999)
Laurence Overmire
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55.
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All American Way
Paint a picture of me in red white
And blue, a bible in my hand
Standing on bright green grass
Blue sky above
And give me a smile without
The stain of coffee and tobacco
Then
Unveil me on television in a
Shower of balloons and
Watch the dollars come
Pouring in.
(Previously published in ZZZ Zyne, XXIX, November 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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56.
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All The World
Shakespeare took poetry to the stage
And left her there
Singing songs
In the fire of footlight candles
The stars, in the open air overhead
Danced
To be immortalized in words
With Kings and Queens
Vagabonds and fools
Stories to bard the ancient tongue
Now she bows to the curtain of another age
The taunts and jeers of a coarser crowd
The wisp of her hand still drawn upon the air
in graciousness
Her gown retreating to the shadows of the wings
The stillness lingers in an empty house
When all have left, the play is done
But in the darkness, a presence
The corner by the window
The starlight peering in
Listening
A dream held in wait
Till she return.
(Previously published in American Muse, Summer 2001, Issue 3)
Laurence Overmire
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