“Gotta be a song left to sing
Everybody can’t have thought of everything
One little song that ain’t been sung
One little rag that ain’t been wrung out completely yet
Gotta little left

One little drop of fallin’ rain
One little chance to try again
One little bird that makes it every now and then
One little piece of endless sky
One little taste of cherry pie
One little week in paradise and I start thinkin’ again”

Gillian Welch

 
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it’s not the inability to string words
or make phrases that tighten as they go
nor, is it the passion that has gone
or been temporarily misplaced amidst “more pressing matters”

it’s the visions that have ceased
that have left me in a moldy void
i see too much before me
and not enough inside

the colors have dulled and faded
like the grunged aftermath
of a weekend lsd trip
highlighted by chain-smoked burning lungs

desperation’s too much of a choked remembrance
the scratch for life and the reaching for survival
have become another assumption
vaguely visible in the dark recesses

it’s like the check comes regularly
the work ain’t bad
the bosses like me
i’ve become status quo

what a shame that money can’t make a poem
that tangible success exposes my hypocrisy
how horrible to have killed one’s soul
for things

---

 
     Carter Monroe lives, works, and writes in the provinces. His novel, Journey, was published in January 2001. He participated in a conspiratorial effort with Robert Canipe and Tim Peeler entitled Writers on the Storm. Both of these books can be purchased at most major book chains as well as the traditional internet outlets. Recent poems and stories have appeared in Poems Niederngasse, Poethia, Third Lung Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Americana Poetry Consortium, Lost and Found Times, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

• Sitting in With the Sun review by Jim Chandler Thunder Reviews •
"Sitting in with the Sun" available at Rank Stranger Press

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