Bio
Middle-aged and mildly neurotic, Laurice has been re-arranging words since 1994, after attending art school in a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to ward off a mid-life crisis. She's earned money from at least six poems and several competitions, and has managed her emotional life without illegal self-medication, despite a brief stint as a life model. Early retirement enabled her to rise from committee member of the New Zealand Poetry Society to National Coordinator in charge of everything. Election to President occurred when no-one else wanted the job. Four adult children are proud of her achievements, her husband merely bemused.
Laurice Gilbert
Emo Concerto
She thinks she knows where she's going.
Lacking charm, she masks herself in lament -
playing with the truth, dancing with knowing,
hiding behind an orchestrated discontent.
As she sings her life in a minor key,
denying the harmonics of happiness,
"unrequited love" and "lost opportunity"
swell her heart with fruitlessness.
In the vivid moonlight of self-delusion
wingbeats of homeless birds provide a rhythm:
relentless in her air of disillusion
she conducts life as empty as a silent hymn.