I will die in Pittsburgh on a beautiful day, A day, I imagine, much like today. I will die in Pittsburgh. Don’t turn away – It will be a Monday, like today, in Spring. Yes, it will be Monday because This poem arrives on a Monday With its rhymes all awry And never so much as today Have I felt so alive. Michael Simms is dead. They beat him Because he was guilty and also, As you know, he was innocent. They held him in quarantine And beat him hard with questionnaires And with taxes. The witnesses Are the beautiful Mondays, The radiant Tuesdays, The Wednesdays that belong To someone else in another town. -- after César Vallejo
Copyright 2020 Michael Simms
I love this.
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Thanks, John!
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Love it! Especially it “arrived on Monday with its rhymes all awry.” If I hadn’t read Vallejo’s poem I’d find it disturbing.
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Thanks, Arlene! A balance in the poem between being lightly ironic and deeply disturbing?
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