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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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213.
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Hang It, Dang It
Art is intentionally
Open to ambiguity
Like truth itself
Impossible to nail
On a per-particular wall
Without someone or something
Knocking it crooked
More than a little
Way off the mark.
(Previously published in The Short North Gazette, Jan 2002)
Laurence Overmire
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214.
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Hanging With The Devil
I hung out with the Devil on Manhattan's
Lower East Side
Had a toke of poverty
long, slow, heavenly inhale
The hobos burning dreams
'round a trash can full of fear
Anesthetizing homelessness
'neath a cold, dark scrapered sky
Pimps and whores were ticking business
like Wall Street whackers on the Stock Exchange
Longing Johns laid with riches seeded
in the backs of black-glassed shiny white limos
The tenements lurched in the chains of their indignity
shutters cracking in the wind
Babies crying, dogs barking
unheeded or unheard
And when I asked the Devil what tunes he'd like to hear
boom-boxing with the fumes of brake-dancing automobiles
He smiled in his ghoulish way
with a glint of fire in his eye and said
'Gospel.'
(Previously published in MiPo Magazine, Winter 2004)
Laurence Overmire
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215.
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Heads and Tails
Foolish humans we
must realize
(at our peril)
in the course of diminishing time
that
opposites are merely
different
unlike sides of the same
coin.
(Previously published in The Oracular Tree, Feb.2003; Poetry Soul to Soul, Jan.2005)
Laurence Overmire
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216.
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Hello. My Name is Paul.
Im a Parentsaholic.
Im addicted to dysfunction.
But Ive been sober now for six months.
Yes, thank you.
Thats how long its been since I last saw them.
Since the last perfectly horrible Christmas we spent together.
Dad went into a terrible vitriolic binge because the tree fell down
And the water seeped all over his stamp collection.
Mom burned the britches off the Gingerbread Men
And viciously ripped into my sister Sally for the next three days
For not properly setting the timer.
Me, well
I was having so much fun I started beating myself with a candy cane.
If we could have gotten the train to work, I probably would have tried electrocution.
But alas, that was not meant to be.
Anyway, Im glad Im here
And taking my first step with PA.
And I want to thank you right off the bat
For giving me
(something I never got at home)
Your support.
(Previously published in Stark Raving Sanity, May 2000, Issue 7; Sonata, Nov-Dec,2000)
Laurence Overmire
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