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The poetic word is potent.
Like one hundred and seven proof
bourbon,
it makes me drunk.
Plenty of pages of prose
are distilled in
a single
stanza.
It is irresistible as
I swirl it in my mouth.
Sniff it.
Taste it.
Breathe it in.
I hold it up to the light
to peer into its soul.
With voracious appetite,
I invert its glass until
the
last
drip
slides
slowly
south
onto my silver
tongue.
"A poem is magnificent or it is nothing."
- Wallace Stevens
The Poet says, “weeping,
may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.”

I look and see, their weeping.
Listening, I hear their cries.
I offer them hope after their storm,

'It is not for nought, this weeping.
And though it tarries beyond this night,
eternal joy comes with the mourning.'
“For his anger is but for a moment,
 and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night,
 but joy comes with the morning.”
- Psalm 30:5
With force my finger,
launches hardened type, pressing
ink into paper.

Pico font pleases
my wistful eye, but the "THWAK"
I hear is better.

With ink smudges and
type mistakes I'm reminded
that my life is real.
If you chance find this poem,
please do not attempt reply.
Just fold it back into its shape
and toss it toward the sky.

I launched it late last night,
out the window in my room,
a sort of self-made prison space
above my future tomb.

Thirty years I’ve toiled
on this edifice of gold.
Performing tasks I scarce enjoy,
a slab of me I sold.

Just a wishful poet,
when you cut me to my core.
Perhaps, some day, I’ll muster strength
and become someone more.

This airplane sent aloft,
out on the chill night air,
it is a verse from Morpheus,
a hope, a dream, my prayer.
She lived her life with an immature desire.
Dancing and singing, her face lit a room.
But like a firecracker before that boom,
many often held their breath while by her.

I remember once, while near her line of fire,
I blushed, a boy of five, from her strong fume.
Her lips spewing forth in an obscene plume,
while she alone would not hear her deafening ire.

Then I’d relay the circumspect reply,
from a confused face speaking through this child,
as my mother lit a fresh cigarette.

Rewinding the tape with her careful eye,
she watched me imitate the words she’d riled,
never showing me any sign of regret.
My mother began losing her hearing as a teenager and was completely deaf soon after my first cries. From a very young age I served as her interpreter by her familiarity in reading my lips, by my finger spelling, or by some limited sign language that we knew.

— The End —