It's what you pretend to do.
Sit in the whirling bath of life
like a clay statue
then at some later time take a sharp instrument
to the clay tablet
the gods have made of your voice
and jump down with it
and talk to somebody, anybody.
See if anyone hears something you say. See if
someone laughs somewhere near where you laugh
as if it's ok
that you
you know...

Donald Lev
Donald Lev has been editing/publishing the newsprint literary review Home Planet News since he and his late wife Enid Dame founded it in 1979. His poetry first saw print in 1958 and his most recent collection is a chapbook from Presa Press entitled Only Wings - Twenty Poems of Devotion (2010).