Another Unicorn Poem

Our latest unicorn poem comes from Jack Gourley, a retired security guard from Pittsburgh. Jack left school at age sixteen and never really learned to read or write until he was in his late forties. Since then he has discovered poetry and began writing his own poems in his early sixties. He says this poem is based on a photograph he saw in a magazine.

There seems to be an oblique reference to a popular song in one of the lines. Intertextuality of any kind is forbidden in Unicorn poetry. I will treat it as accidental.

Oh woman sleeping on the chair

You are beautiful beyond compare.

You are beautiful because

Your eyes are closed

Your breath is slow

Your head is low

Your body slack

Like when you were a baby

Long ago.

You are beautiful because you must sleep.

You beautiful because you must breathe.

You are beautiful because you must die.

You are beautiful becomes nobody looks exactly like you

Talks exactly like you

Thinks exactly like you.

You are beautiful because you have seen

Things nobody else has seen

Things nobody can ever see again.

You are beautiful because

In all of the long tale of humankind

You're in the world right now, the same as me.

You are beautiful because you dream

And every dreamer is beautiful like you.

You are beautiful because

I can never give you all I want to give you.

Being a woman makes you beautiful

A woman is stranger than a unicorn.

You are beautiful like a candle's flame
A small light dearer than a world of dark.

Oh woman sleeping in the chair

You are beautiful beyond compare...