A Deaf Refrain (+1)

How do you play a melody

deep inside the words

to sing each letter off the page

and free them like a bird

 

How do you write the lyrics

to a mute and silent song

that lives inside the spaces

where true music’s never gone

 

How do you play a rhapsody

of couplets in your mind

releasing subject-verbs to be

forever to unwind

 

How do you pen a chorus heard

with what the verse has shown

and give each note a deaf refrain

—within a single poem

 

(The New Room: May, 2022)

 

 

Goodbye

 

Staring defiant

into the blind eye of fate

the winds of circumstance

early not late

 

Staring back angry

its other eye blinked

as clouds blew misfortune

too close to the brink

 

I reached for my inkwell

I dipped in my pen

my final last script

to enoble the end

 

With one word I started

whose epistle came fast

to carry me onward

—goodbye was my last

 

(The New Room: May, 2022)