Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Lyrical Power Ballads: Installment the First

Okay so maybe the title is a bit overblown. A Lyrical Power Ballad is what would happen if any of these bands wrote a song with lyrics by William Wordsworth. I don't think that anything I write could truly be considered a lyrical power ballad, but I'm appropriating the term anyway because it just sounds cooler than plain old "poems." This is one I wrote while working in a congressional office in D.C.. I've tinkered with it a bit from time to time.

Seeric Gifts

Listen!
to the words of one who sees:

He sits on a grate at Farragut North.
Metro steam rises round his head,
wraps him as a mantle,
mingles in his grizzled beard and hatted matted mop of hair.
A palsied hand extends a plastic disk,
wordlessly petitioning for spare coins.
Encircled in rags he does not speak,
but searches with his flashing eyes.

Meanwhile a man with an armful of shirts
(cotton shirts in white and blue) passes by and notices him not—
because he is struggling, pushing with his smooth, scented chin
to get the folds of starched cotton out of his eyes.

So that's it. I'm open to feedback.

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