Poetry
Prize
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Practice makes him perfect
In the world-worn eyes of others
In the dead men he resurrects
In the envy of his young brothers
He works too hard to be beaten
By the whim of a beautiful day
Like so many sweets uneaten
Never to indulge in poison-play
His hands are exquisite and sage
Stretching from cobras coiled
Spinning the silk of a lost golden age
Made finer by the hours he has toiled
In dingy rooms past sunset
As MoTown rules the charts
The keys flying like magic carpets
Spinning towards a distant heart
His bows are that of an ascetic
Seventeenth-century monk, he knows
Practice makes him perfect, antiseptic
Removed from the germs of times grown
Callous and coarse, foolish beyond years
He no longer sees what you see
His eyes are blind to love and tears.