Re: Opera Positions / Will Dockery (revised)

Will Dockery wrote:

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Opera Positions

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This is a moving studio
motion
you're independent.

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I'm holed up with Search Boy again
sniffing the heroine.

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From the room
where Bodeen is sleeping
to a hundred year old
building downtown
a mathematical structure.

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Jack Burlington
in his land of crack head hos
his holy mass.

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Touches of exile
in this squalid box
brandishing broadsword.

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Locked away
at the edge of the world
sealed on a cliff.

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Tomorrow always closing in
shut down future.

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Opera positions
in the front seat
formalities
forward.

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Doc Pendleton
running on empty
pacing
placing
fleeing
accelerating,
vacant broadcast.

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Seeing what it's like
to be old again
aged vision
youth drugs played out.

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A date with an empathetic expanse
like the portrait of Dorian Gray.

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Silhouette shadow lady
your tender river hands.

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He remembered the harmonicas of Ed Grey
The years of this separation.

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I feel green like Jack Midnight
The freedom
the crushing loneliness of freedom.

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Tomorrow closing in again
never get blessed with a memory lapse.

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Opera positions
in the front seat
we've lost the passion.

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Studio house with no lights
concubine by candle light.

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Stacks of art books
and furniture
sex sleep.

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Having a bad day in a bad year
mischief in the neighborhood
generation of the Hood.

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Sinister figures in the paintings
she's devious
her nose is covered.

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Sinister friends breaking and entering
lap dance pirouette.

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This school
is destroying my poetry
and the cranking power
of this honky-tonk.

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Or is it just boxing it in
with discipline
feeling like a punch drunk lumberjack.

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I'm not doing words of some rich soap opera
some blue velvet candy box
I'm right here in the streets.

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-Will Dockery (1997)

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From the Shadowville Mythos poetry blog:
https://shadowville-mythos.blogspot.com/2023/09/opera-positions.html

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Again on 6th read, a fantastic poem...