***
Could I but show you how a word can grow
into a thorn that lodges deep within
the softest places of the hardest men,
you wouldn't be so quick to let one go.
In silences, defenseless and alone,
security and self-esteem descend;
ambitions cease and aspirations bend
in victims of a fatal verbal blow.
If I could show you how a word can rise —
bring laughter, bring excitement, bring rapport,
bring nations out of poverty and war —
perhaps your speech would seek a different guise.
What problems of this world could be deterred
if we revered the value of a word?
***
Corey Harvard from Mobile, Alabama, (B.A. English & Philosophy, University of South Alabama, 2012), is a young American musician, pianist, vocalist and poet. He began writing verse at age 10 and music at age 12 when his parents bought him a keyboard. He went on to win his 8th grade talent show by performing an original song. Since then, he has published poetry and prose in journals including Tales of the Talisman, Pirene’s Fountain and Sense Magazine, and he has also been featured in Alabama’s prestigious Literary Mobile, an anthology of established (historical and contemporary) southern writers. He has served as associate editor of Sonnetto Poesia and Editor-in-Chief of Oracle Fine Arts Review. In 2009, he was a Pushcart Prize nominee.
***
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