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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

YOU CAN'T SWAT FLIES WITH A MONITOR

by John D Wilson


I love the smell of newsprint in the morning.
Picking up the paper from the sidewalk
Scanning the front page for the state of the world
This is how my day begins.

Now, add the smell of the coffee and my leather chair.
The crinkling sound my newspaper makes is the overture
To the symphony in which I will now revel.
The crescendo of the headlines, the tinkling of the comic page
Movement after movement of news and information
The mad cacophony of the opinion section
The infuriating melodies provided by the letters to the editors
Those same editors carefully considered thoughts
And, finally the obituaries
Where, thankfully, my name does not appear

Now my curiosity is sated, my fingers are covered in ink.
I thank Herr Gutenberg for his marvelous invention
And all that it has provided me.


John D Wilson, Long Beach Ca,  Novice, Retired Government employee and political organizer.

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