Judy Ireland            (LD)
Eternal Graffiti
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"Poetry is the eternal graffiti written on the heart of everyone." --                Lawrence Ferlinghetti


The heartless have dollar bills and cars with shiny rims mid-rib & to the left of center,
unlike lovers whose breastbones bristle with songs of songs, growing daily 


five-o’clock poetry shadow.  The lovers feel the spray-paint bursts like breezes,
rioting primary colors deepening as they dry into fattened words and gaudy flowers,


names of beloved cities, old schools, letters scrunched and styled, given highlights, 
shadows, significance.  The heartless fork over their inner trash bins, sorting 


and grooming their useless crash of lung-squeezing junk, paying for stuff
no one wants.  The lovers feel their inner bumper cars racing and the laughter --


their diaphragms riding waves of laughter.  They memorized their poems before they 
were born, and know them by heart.  The heartless stay in their tiny rooms, 


reading papers, watching their stocks balloon, no verse to hang a hat on, no song
to prop open a door, just a TV and a chair, a bowl on a side table with no fruit.
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