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a halo of blood frames her head her outstretched hands clutching roses - their red petals hemorrhaging at her sandaled feet- black husks- withered to be swept away with unanswered prayers and offerings of burnt out votive candles to empty benedictions
the danger in reading
words in darkness alone
succumbing to social media voices constant texting labeling you, believing - multi windowed messages in your darkened room door locked - safe - alone - no one aware they will all profess disbelief you showed no outward signs just a lingering love of dead poets and their dead words.
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polluted the serpentine river coils its path kissing the mold covered rocks weathered and torn by night's wicked waves gulls gibber mournful a garbaged sigh beneath the arch of whispering lies where words of love intently die established patterns etched in lace brown and rotted hung in rooms, lighted by TV sets shining the cruel light that man cannot live by while practicing joy of hair oil and grease between the late movie that offers no peace and stale crumpled linen of his unmade bed where day break shall find him still lonely still dead.
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. An internationaly award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,The Wild Word,The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal,Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street .
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