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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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61.
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Arrivals and Departures
Damn, the coffee tasted good
Sitting in the airport
So relaxed, slow breath in, breathe out
Steady, quiet rhythm
Some kind of resignation had morphined its way
Into my face and arms and legs
All the stress, the headache
Gone.
I didn't know what was to come
And in that moment I didn't really care
Nothing seemed to matter except the soothing warmth
...of that coffee
Cupped in my hands like some reverent libation
To the gods.
The cold, gray Minneapolis sky should have portended
The days ahead
I wouldn't believe it, not then
When coffee tastedοΏ½and smelledοΏ½so good
How could we be so trifling in our affairs
To let the best of life slip away
...so easily
No. Not now.
But I was wrong.
The plane pulled up to the gate
People laughing, smiling, hugging their loved ones
But as she came toward me
The look in her eyes
I knew.
(Previously published in Some Words: A Place For Poetry, Feb 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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62.
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Artful Dodger
Motifs in my life
Recur in my art
Like some persistent beggar
Demanding some final
Restitution
For the travesties he's
Endured.
(Previously published in Psychopoetica, No.45, Spring 2000; The Poet's Porch, Jan.2001)
Laurence Overmire
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63.
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Artist with Shovel
We're trying to come to terms with this thing called
'Life'
That's what artists do
Trying to dig beauty out of the
Pain
To create something lasting
Something that speaks beyond
Generations
Something extraordinary
To mock the crude incivility of the grave.
(First electronically published in This Hard Wind, by EWGPresents, Vol.4, No.5, May 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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64.
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Asleep at the Switch
There were bombs exploding in Iraq
Babies turning blue in the immovable quash of rubble
A government twisting truths into the most
Outrageous kinds of lies
The end-game justifying the means
But no one would believe
The long years of children left behind a hoax
Come to fruition, dusty books that no one
Reads, impossible to distinguish the text from the
Con
Old words make sweet bonfires
The world spinning in a drunken haze
All a blur of light and sound and colorized
Image
The patient on his etherized table his
Hamburger heart pumping beer and blue-eyed
Bimbos into the vain artery of his
American unconscious
O, we may wonder, and O
We may die
Sleep the good sleep
Someday maybe
Someone will wake up, alone to find
And ask the inevitable question
A hundred years too late
Why?
Why didnt anyone try to stop
The madness?
(Previously published in The Hold, Oct. '04)
Laurence Overmire
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