Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Midnight of the Amateur Poets

All words fall from us now.
Any purpose we had means nothing.

We bide our time
and bite out tongues,
and wring our hands in silence.

We wait for something to strike us.

The frustration tolls like heavy bells,
the boom boom boom of our ears' drums;
The salvation we seek is a trilling melody
from a silver flute.

Midnight is approaching,
and we stand, sit,
bury our faces into our knees.

We can hear something, but
it is mundane, normal, hushed:
the passing of a car, the couplet barking of a dog,
the brief loading and unloading of a garbage truck.

Then, after hours that fall away in minutes,
midnight has passed. And the schoolhouse is calling.

We stand as scarecrows, melt into the dawn
and harvest the fruits of our suffering:

Amateur, easily outdone poetry.

And we prepare, as starved workhorses, for the day's labor.

Again and again.

Again and again.

That said labor is something
that never ends.

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