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2 poems by Donald Illich

Business Life
                              
                              My haircut is a brand new business.
                              Outside the barbershop window
                              onlookers hope to catch
                              the black strands of Samson
                              retiring into business life.
                              No more collapsing columns
                              of poetry, attracting women
                              and lions who come with
                              scissors and fangs to eat me.
                              No more boss' bad looks
                              or rotting sonnets in the slush
                              piles.  My cubicle hates hippies.
                              We drink plastic from plastic cups.

 

       Unflinching Light

                                                 Notice how the light does funny things
                                                 when you jiggle your perspective
                                                 from man clinging to a jet engine
                                                 to an admiral sinking in a boat.
                                                 The sharks are beautiful.  How do
                                                 fins and fangs thrive in the wild,
                                                 spraying blood from their jaws
                                                 like blossoms.  Their circling dance,
                                                 with you about to fall in the middle,
                                                 hypnotizes, unlike the sheer
                                                 terror you feel on a flexing wing,
                                                 which the mother bird knows will
                                                 break up long before a return to
                                                 the nest is possible.  The light
                                                 on both is unflinching, won't turn
                                                 away from how you were pumped
                                                 out of blood, permanently hollowed.


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