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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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209.
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Gunslingers and Mudslingers
The artist and the critic
Sundown showdown
At the OK Corral
The artist walks in the open street
Bravely, in the line of fire
Talent holstered on the hip
The critic, black hat and spurs
Hides in shadows, behind dark edifices
A double-barreled shotgun carefully aimed
The townsfolk look on
Wavering interest, fleeting expectation
Getting haircuts, buying shoes
The artist and the critic
One to live and one to die
Eat the dust sweet humble pie
As the sun sinks low
The duel is fated to a finish
The artist draws, the critic fires
Through the smoke, on bended knee
Maimed and bleeding, a paintbrush flies
Sticks the critic between the eyes
The bodies will not stay there long
Someone will pay the undertakers fee
An unmarked grave without a view
Such is the way of the wild Old West
Lawman and outlaw, artist and critic
Wise man and fool
Boot Hill always wins.
(Previously published in Zinos, July 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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210.
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Gypsy Heart
Place to place, always
Looking, city country farm
Or field, some small patch of
Ground to call home for a
Time, people passing in and out
Faces of a dream, disappearing
The sigh and moan of found and lost
Taking and giving bits and pieces of
Themselves, each memory a
Locket, worn close to the breast
Belonging nowhere and everywhere
A new road always beckoning
The future always unknown, always
Re-creating itself.
(Previously published in Autumn Leaves, May 2003)
Laurence Overmire
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211.
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Gyroscope
To get to the truth
You must transcend words
You must transcend
Consciousness itself
Allow what is underneath
That great unknowable Hidden
To take what voice it will
And make the world
Spin on the fulcrum of its axis
The riddle burning in the center of
Its hot, molten
Core.
(Previously published in A Little Poetry, Summer Fall 2007 issue)
Laurence Overmire
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212.
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Hamlet at Wittenberg
Arrant knave that I am
What should such fellows as I do
Crawling beneath heaven and earth
Unable to pen the verse
The quivering pedant demands
Strict to the form, alas
Poor Yorick, they do not know him.
How stand I then
My truth beholden to the mirror
Which at the first and now
Was and is
To hold as twere, nature accountable.
Am I man or beast
The chief good and market of my time
But to sleep and feed?
No more.
Let me not think ont.
Here be the stops.
Though I may be fretted
I will not be played upon.
Should all occasions inform against me
The rest shall not be silence.
(Previously published in Some Words: A Place for Poetry, Aug 2004)
Laurence Overmire
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