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Great Poets

Jacob Ian DeCoursey
Oct 1, 2024
1 min read

1. Great poets keep soft palms.


There’s no poetry

in working your hands

until the skin calluses


to wood and you

can sharpen your fingers

to pencil points.


2. Great poets are professors,


accredited by

universities

even ears deafened


by construction sites

or screaming engines

have heard about.


3. Great poets are clean,


their criminal records

only love-robbed hearts

defined in blots of text.


4. Great poets escape,


beautifying the gutters

and long workdays

that shorten years,


the droll mouths, taste

of blackened lungs,

the thorns and teeth of night,


all in abstract metaphor

from a comfortable chair

facing a small garden.



By Jacob Ian DeCoursey

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