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Year End Close-out


by Gary Hardaway


Weekends

The drinking starts at noon, or thereabouts,
continues steadily until the sun
is half past set. It's not a party. It's
a habit which the body now expects
and no one wants to disappoint the flesh.


Also Sprach Zarathustra

Strauss does all the stirring at the start.
The rest is all murk and meander
going on for half an hour
until the instruments tire
and look for something better to play.


Last Poem n+1

I've lost the voice it took so long to find.
The silence comes, not like laryngitis,
but as  deafness to the music of
the world, an inattention to the sounds

of life experienced in wondering awe.
I've lost the frequencies that whispered once
a language I could understand between
the world's cacophonies and mundane whines.

What was a calling has devolved to noises,
ugly and banal. I'll only stand
and wait and hope to hear again the songs
of seraphim and demons, arguing.
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