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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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69.
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Cruel and Unusual
The prisoner stood in his jailbird skivvies, guilty as charged,
waiting for the judge to rule. Oh please, your honor,
he pleaded with the magistrate, I know the foul crime
that I have committed deserves the severest penalty the law can provide,
but I am filled with deepest remorse. I have lived long and certainly
not well, but please, oh please, if there be any shred of mercy in your heart,
I beg you, do not send me back to when I was sixteen
in high schoolwith pimples and big feet.
(Previously published in Poetic Dreamer, Aug.2000)
Laurence Overmire
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70.
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Deuces Wild
It was all or nothing.
All the cards were on the table.
No aces up the sleeve.
Fate sat patient in the corner
Sipping an ice cold draft of beer
And the one-eyed dealer
Cocked his wrist and fired
A single lifetime from the deck.
It landed square in front of him.
Deuces wild.
And the only question was
Would he hold or fold?
(Previously published in The Horsethief's Journal, Issue 6, Dec 1999)
Laurence Overmire
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71.
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Doing Laundry
To be a serious poet
Is to continually face
The battering hand of rejection
No value placed on
Words and guts spilled
In ceremony
Onlookers indifferent to the slaughter
Toothpicks fingered between molar and gum
A burp to signal satisfaction
In dark rooms, feet propped up
Life sinks into the crevices between
Cushions
Voices from nowhere tumbling through a
Rinse cycle, drowning out
The silence.
(Previously published in Illogical Muse, Summer Issue 2007)
Laurence Overmire
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72.
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Don't Interfere
The poem is its own master
I obey
Commands I barely understand
Preparing the way
For some deeper revelation:
A -drop- of water
That feeds the root of the tree.
(Previously published in Boloji, Apr 2003)
Laurence Overmire
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