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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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297.
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Look Twice
What do you allow to enter your life
And what do you refuse to admit?
These are the choices that make you
Complete or incomplete being
That you are
The response ability
Is all yours
Call it fate
Call it chance
Call it God
The calling is inevitably
On some level conscious
Call it what you will
It must be called into account
In any assessment of who you are.
(Previously published in Quill and Ink Press, Vol 1 Issue 1, Oct 2003)
Laurence Overmire
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298.
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Lost Child
The child rocks back and forth
Shivering in the bleak night of a third-world winter
A blanket full of holes
Maggots crawling in the bedsheets
Her bony limbs contorted round her breast
Scant defenders against the onslaught of the wind.
You will not hear her crying
You will not see her tears
Half a world away is easy to ignore
But the heart knows
What governments and egos and wallets must deny.
The snow falls with the relentlessness of Time
Claiming the lives of the helpless and abandoned
But the death of an innocent
Cannot be easily buried in the conscience of Man
Choices must be made
But who has the courage to touch the suffering?
(Previously published in The Oracular Tree, June 2000; Twins, Issue 12,2001)
Laurence Overmire
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299.
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Lost Masterpiece
Michelangelo
Was born black in 20th century America.
He was a shoeshine boy and a waiter
A garbage man and a handyman
A store clerk and a construction worker.
In fact, he spent so much time surviving
He barely had time for his art.
He died when he was 50.
And no one ever heard of him again.
(Previously published in The Inditer, March 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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300.
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Man Called Thunder
Bold Warrior
Of the Setting Sun
Stands on the Rock of Imprisoned Time
The stony features of his darkened face
Ask no pity
Claim no piety
But iron eyes remember:
Burning lodges on a blood-red river
Broken arrow on Sacred Earth despoiled
A riderless pony gallops into blackness
And is seen no more
For screaming children
Slaughtered wives
The Eagle cries for Justice
And there is none
In a heartless land
But shallow men
Dig shallow graves
And in the gleaming of Long Awaited Moon
Lone Palomino return from Midnight Pasture
And the Fallen Ride Again.
(First electronically published in This Hard Wind, by EWGPresents, Vol.4, No.5, May '00)
Laurence Overmire
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