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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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545.
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Xenia, Ohio (Tornado, Apr.4,1974)
Heard it on the news, several hours distance
The tornado touched down.
Blew away the pond in the park.
The ducks were gone.
Threw a bus on the school.
Kids screaming inside.
The neighborhood leveled
Like the swing of a scythe.
Nothing was what it was.
Everything was rubble.
My childhood too was
Blown away.
The places I knew were
No more.
No where to go back to
The path that led from there to here.
Time has a way, twistered minutes wrapped
Around a telephone pole
The line is cut, with no way or why or how
To call home or even
Get help.
Note: Xenia, Ohio, a small town near Dayton and the boyhood home of the poet, made national headlines when it was devastated by a tornado on April 4,1974.
(Previously published in Three Smiles, Dec.2000)
Laurence Overmire
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546.
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Ye Gods!
I'd like to see the really bad poetry
of Keats and Shelley and Byron
of Yeats and Eliot and heady Mr. Joyce
the stuff that never got published
the stuff that makes the editors cringe
and wish they'd taken more courses in
accounting.
Then, maybe, with all that use-less
muse-less muck to behold
the rest of us, put-upon poor writers we
might not have so much of an
inferiority complex.
(Previously published in ZZZ Zyne, XXXI, April 2001)
Laurence Overmire
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547.
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Zen and the Art of Doodling
If I take the time
To sit and write
Something comes out
Surprisingly, of value
Perhaps too
If I take the time
To sit and live
Something will come out
Inevitably, of value.
(Previously published in The Short North Gazette, Spring 2002)
Laurence Overmire
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548.
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Zip-Locked
Denial
is the plastic I wrap around my heart
to protect it from freezer-burn.
(Previously published in Thorny Locust, Vol.7, No.3/4)
Laurence Overmire
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