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Poetry
Harry Calhoun



Quietly It Passes, Quietly You Pass



Before the Internet there was the world.
I sat there, too, refused to participate
in mindless chat, kept my head up
and my eyes lowered. Always on the road
and avoiding contact. But watching,
the spinning of the wheels, the circling
of the orbs, outer space and inner vacuum.

I sat here, I guess, till I grew strange,
like Sexton's little girl
ritually buried with her dead father.
Just watched, and unlike most folk,
who watch and talk together,
I just kept things cubbyholed. Some might call it a hobby,
although people say I'm funny, I have no hobbies.

But I've got this collection and
it's a dilemma. I was frightened when my ex-wife,
the painter, faced me with the reality
that when an artist sells a painting, it's gone,
your work belongs
to someone else. So do I sit on this egg,
not knowing if I have the biology to hatch it?

Or pass it off to someone who'll break it,
fry it, smack the shell on a Lexus
at Halloween? Mostly I'll just sit.
Listening in meetings, in bars,
to the breeze flowing past solitude through my window,
with that vacant glaze over my eyes suggesting
that I know nothing, am spacing out,

when I'm watching,
feeding, the vampire
you've invited in,
and my foot
in the door
is yours

in the grave.



Death in the Headlines



More people today.
More often the religion slips
and propelling us to grasp it

the spine lurches
out of place
with no God as backbone

we mistake ourselves
for our sudden loss.
Some men kill because of this

The loss justifies
that they can
and they will

while in sad Tibet
the most fragile bowl falls

and no-one breaks
meditation to catch it

whatever breaks, wait;
perfect curvature, shattered pieces

will come around
again



No Title



Listening to music I am the rock star
sealed and delivered by the headphones

reading I am the intellectual
and between the lines

I am the poet
constantly interpreting

and I am the sleeper
as if death isn't enough

and the avoider
running from all this

but when I look
in the constantly changing mirror

I know
I am vegetable and death and skin

boiled
and distilled beyond skull

I am
the face I had before I was born

I grace it with a title for here
for I do not

know better



Enlightenment



I click on the light
in the bathroom,
then snap it off when I see
that it adds nothing
to the soft sunlight streaming in.

I pray to be this wise
in speech.
To banish artificiality
and speak only
when it improves

on silence.



Harry Calhoun
804 West Morgan Street, #N3B
Raleigh, NC 27603


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