Oct. 22~ RICHARD LeDUE

Hello again, poetry lovers! Today SHINE welcomes back Richard LeDue with three new poems:  Bach Playing in the Background, Stealing Some Immortality, and my favorite, Words Like These. Thank you, Richard, for once again sharing your work with the SHINE international poetry community!

Bach Playing in the Background

A selfie staring back at me,
like a ghost I don’t believe in,
betrays the Bach playing in the background.

His keyboard concertos reek of fingertips
from a god or a godless universe
inspiring someone to create the divine,

while I look into my own eyes
and accept the light between dead stars
gives life to poems like this. 

Stealing Some Immortality

An ancient Greek poet
writing three thousand years ago
about a beautiful face
whose name is lost
in a sea of silence
that’s easily confused
with the most barren desert.

It’s enough to make a blank page
scream
at all the dead writers
who stole some immortality,
even if only with a few words
sneaking pass death
to hijack living voices.

Words Like These

These words are spilled whisky
on Saturday nights,
when Sundays have nothing
to do with god,
but are hangovers at 6 AM
crying like a newborn.

My hands shaking
from all the hours painted black
and the poems face down
in empty glasses.

Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, Another Another, was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2025.

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