Chris G. Vaillancourt

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Living

The streets are so full of liars
one dare not risk truth as often as
when alone.

Instead, in muted silence,
one evaporates oneself
into hollow metaphors. The seeping
words are a mockery of
praise and resentment.

One speaks them, but
one does not let their vowels
translate into emotional
declarations.

Yesterday a single thread
was strung from one deception
to another.

Uncrowned heads mumbling
their prayers into
faithless gestures that pleased
but did not appease
their individual perceptions
of God.

I was a glance that was not
thought of in advance. A second
that was swallowed and then
spit out; a forgotten shape
that had outlived its welcome.

Friends' salutations are guarded.
They do not know when to wave and
cheer in unbridled passion. They do
not know when to hold back
their warmth and replace it with
silent indifference.

We are all living
and
dying in the same
mindless manner.

We are all liars.
This sustains us and
comforts us in our
collective coffin.


Bio:
Over 200 of my poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Japan and Australia, and the U.K, including: Real Angry Poets, Quills, Unfeigned Coffee Fiend, Detour Memphis, Why Vandalism?!, Plum Ruby Review, Vox Poetica, Outcry, The Hudson Review, Whisper, Poetry Space, Dangling Verbs, Writers Forum, Poesie, Cafe Del Soul, South Jersey Underground-Issue 6, Protest Poems, Poetry Stop, P&W, elffin&elffa, and many others. I have had a series of chapbooks published in the 1980's by 4 Winds Press, such titles as "Doors and Windows", "Dancing in the Eighties" and "Slow Burn". I have had two poetry books published, the first "Teardrop of Coloured Soul" in 2005 and my latest one to be released in Jan. of 2010 entitled "I Walk Naked into a Cloud".



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