Three Poems by Richard LeDue

Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash

Mad Love

Their silence should surrender 
to saying anything
after two hours of anger so quiet
it burns like faulty wires inside a wall
waiting for fire, but they're mad enough
to make love to silence with the lights off,
illuminating their shared defeat, 
while also trying to forget all the years
gone as smoke, 
desperate to touch the sky.

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Fevered Dream

Earthworms singing love songs to dirt,
turning a fresh grave into a wrong turn,
where prepaid means nothing afterwards
as weeping is washed away by stoicism,
and death coughs among the faded pews
that haunted your childhood,
only for sweat to remind you
it's a dream overdressed as a vision
on the hottest day of your life 
disguised as a fever, until it breaks
without making any noise,
like that farewell you never said,
yet still mouth to empty rooms whenever
you're absolutely sure you're alone.

---

Another Average Poem

Great poems murky as frog ponds,
where lily pads aspire to be roses
and tadpoles idolize Leonard Cohen.

Great poems inviting like an open window
with a view worth a million dollars,
yet only paid five cents a word,

while my poems never learned to swim,
nor ever had wings
anyone would want to clip.

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Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He has been published both online and in print. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest book, “Sometimes, It Isn't Much,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in February 2024.