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Outside the great thundering cathedrals of concrete and tarmac,
the jets graze on taxiways.
They linger, spent by the silence of the stratosphere,
In their stillness exists the threat of great shearing violence.
There is a shuddering fear of dark men
who know how to pass without breathing,
who yearn for the graveyard’s promise of the everlasting,
who know how to lay down a life.
The rip of metal still echoes in the thinnest air,
the backwater of the dead.
Breaking through low clouds, over the tops of grain elevators,
the redeye’s engines whine, wings vibrate, wheels lock.
It is a savage plunge with all the horror and loneliness
of the leap from a bridge, a man lost,
dragged at the last from the edge by a long armed cop.
The wheels touch, the screaming fades, and I am home.
Outside a young man with a mangled hand hails taxis
for arriving passengers.
He smiles with the malevolence of breathless youth.
Ron, simply exquisitly outstanding poetry. Your writing is some of the best poetry I have seen on these sites. When I asked earlier on you said you had just recently tapped into your past and that is where these poems come from. I know that feeling, but do you ever wonder about it, how strange it seems, as if it were some one else writing them–not literally, but figuratively? Best >KB
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I wonder about the strangeness of writing, inspiration and where it all comes from. I wish I understood the genesis/process better than I do.
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That makes two of us. Sometimes I frighten myself. Smiles…>KB
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Stunning portrait… you write with the eye of a director eliciting visceral content from your characters..the concrete cathedrals, the hard tarmac, the silently circling and descending screaming birds… Whew, Ron!
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