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Selected Poetry From 2006-2008

“The Hands Of Children”

Grasping just to hold,
naive hands renouncing the recondite
equation which forms a material existence—
embracing simply the form which confronts its attention.
Expectant of grand things in triviality,
“Promotion” speaking as loudly as the mouse to the Titan;
fatuous minds performing herculean exertion
to create mass from the vapors and filamentary
images which pass through a nonsensical cognition;
glories and wonders assumed in the personage of the dustmite,
absconding from an unexpected breeze,
scrutinized by the young, brilliant spheres—
sagely in intensity. (Innocence Power
and Youth Gravity
held centrifugal, the physical self, maturing,
opposite emotional progress,
learning to be restless.)
Living the life which thrives just to be,
needless of the Feast,
expecting no more prodigious repast
than that
the swollen bosom of its Giver;
nestled upon the fleshy
erection of its nectarous subsistence,
brazenly domineering the turgid source which rushes euphoric
warmth throughout its tremulous figure,
hungry for consolation:
lackadaisically forgetting to plunder the world’s vaults of its
pleasurable excitements
(emphatic “no’s” to Desire’s sway and the elicited mitigation
resulting from impropriety)—
“Darling,” “sweetheart,” and the Pap’s Ambrosia
its only indulgences.

Michael,
March 07.

“The Hog Head”

A great hog, stout and powerful in build, a body with impressively defined muscles, sharp and piercing through the skin—I hold in my left hand its marvelous head, purple with a lack of life and trimmed at the ragged, stone-cut edges with moist gore, dripping, newly gouged crimson falling mildly atop a mound of the humid forest’s dried foliage in eerie soundlessness; raised upward, the head extended an arm’s length without, a lusterless eye blankly stares, its opaque gaze compelling me to understand something beyond the instinctual impulses which drive my unevolved existence: I don’t question myself, I don’t look upon my bleeding spear or its hilt remorsefully—I am a savage; this is what I do: but what was this beast—so strong, fighting so courageously in such a state of incomprehensible fear—that I pursued? What did it really know, day in and day out acting and communicating with a cacophony of guttural grunts and snorts? Who am I to feel such a greater being? We have better developed faculties, our forms aren’t vile and grotesque in shape and contour, we are swift and make deft movements on only two legs, our people can make fire and hide-coverings; but how is it to live needless but for sustenance to keep our bodies and friction to keep our species? to be headless of the call to raise this head as my slaughter’s trophy? …But I am a savage; this is what I do: and now, supporting the kill upon my shoulder, I run back to the dwelling where, under the shadowy, cool protection of our den’s overhang, I’ll find the fire flickering and my own kind hungry.

July,
07.

“The Regrettable Tale. "

When the fourth of those amorous creatures, Lustful Lucidity, stepped on my toe,
I wept so copiously that I'm certain that anyone who my weeping was audible to, most infallibly, harked unto my piteous moans and was themselves driven to sympathetic tears.

But this is out of context;
to apprehend the entire meaning of this excerpt, my reader friend,
you must hear my lamentable tale from the beginning...

But--alas!--this would require,
firstly,
too much exertion on my part,
and, secondly, it would cause me too much metal anguish to recount this tragedy from its origins;
so—
regrettably, for the fact that pleasure would be derived in great quantities from the whole piece rather than its parts—
I must rely
entirely on
your
consummate
skills of
inference.

Michael,
January 07.

“The Sons Of Adam And Daughters Of Eve”

The sons of Adam and daughters of Eve—
these are who I see as I look around me,
As I walk under peopled piers, early in day,
sand weighing down my step,
As I feel through the streets, slowly and
admiringly—for the ponderousness of
my brethrens’ eyes and hands and
movements makes me covetously
indolent,
As I sit with coffee, tasting not just the
beans that allow for my current
occupation,
But the oil from the fingerers of its
packagers’,
As I taste the sweat of the planters’ toil,
As I consume that which was a part of
them who comprise this enterprise,
That which is now forever a part of me;
As I taste traces of that which is of my
brothers,
As I taste traces of that which is of my
sisters—
As I taste Them who were of our beginning,
Them who were the foundation laid to
stabilize succeeding life, with that
indescribable gift of solidity—
With that greatness incomprehensible,
With that wonder unfathomable:
With the majesty of Oneness…
Of more than thought or metaphysics,
Of the very blood our Creation.
Michael,
February 07.

“The Writing Of A Hear Lost For Verse”

I

To write this: To be writing absolutely nothing but to feel so much.

II

(If poetry’s great power lies in its important position as the ultimate language of expression--if poetry’s greatness comes from the great essences within the great verse--then what magnificence does this meaningless, parenthesized non-verse possess?)

III

If what fills me could be shown better than with quick glimpses of hazy forms.

IV

Filling into and seeping out from every one of my pours, cascading on top of and pounding within my head, floating throughout the center and balancing on the edges of my consciousness--all of these beauteous images of my anonymous friends, constricting my breath with twelve-billion phantom hands’ pressure.

V

To be so shamefully incapable of poetic articulation; to be writing this nothingness to capture the everything of my current Muse-less state.

Michael,
June 07.

“There Is More: My Flesh”

It begins like this…
I have seen more with my heart, this heart, this undeniable, unattainable
refuter of logic,
I have felt more with my eyes, these eyes, these paltering, faltering
inciters of reason,
I have tasted more with my hands, these hands, these fragile, mighty
stirrers of strife and creators of harmony,
I have understood more with my mind, this mind, this concrete,
fantastical poacher of animalistic fate,
this trifling, sophisticated accepter of life,
this seasoned, fledgling granter of hope,
this debaser of feeling.

It opens like this…
I have witness no destruction from countless wars,
I have only been a vessel for that grand entity, Experience, to replete
with wisdom and knowledge,
I have understood the futility of the dying martyrs’ words, never
recorded, but so known,
I have wept alongside their cause and knelt with them to their God—
I have witnessed the Divine Hand crowning the scourged head with the
diadem of final victory,
I have cried with the beggars in the street, content in filth, wallowing in
despair,
I have viewed their lips whisper,
I have heard the swoop of their unheard prayer, as it was caught in the
celestial hands of deliverance,
I have felt the shake as the meek were trampled,
I have held their trembling bodies as they gaze upon the monuments
erected to honor kings,
I have wiped their tears with my course hand, drenched in the weeping
of unknowing sympathy—of unworthy sympathy,
I have bequeathed my fear upon the forlorn immigrants, they have
bestowed their strength upon me,
I have looked at my own face from a little girl’s eyes, dim with
awareness, unknowingly brilliant, wrenching hearts with
simplicity, slaying the senses with a child’s insight,
I have not been the body, but the very lap, which this little girl sits
upon, her indescribable sanctuary—
I have been heated in Life’s coldness by Innocence’s warmness,
I have felt the heavy legs of the runaway slaves, burning like heated
pikes, springless like Roman temples,
I have stayed by their sides as the Pharaoh commanded apprehension,
I have consoled their broken and weary bodies as they were taken from
freedom and placed in bondage--
I have seen them from Egypt to Canaan, I have rejoiced at liberation--
And mine will be the first pair of lips discerned to farewell-kiss the
cheek, as it receives Jerusalem-extrication and Mesopotamian exile.

If it could close, it would be like this…
Above me, in sky, in ground, in heaven, in hell, in life, in death, in
love, in hate, in intoxication, in sobriety, in body, in mind, is Life—
I have never tried to explain your ways, I have only sought for you to
understand mine:
You have clouds that float in a skyward sea, volume to fill with
countless elucidation,
You have hours comprised of meticulously thought out minutes and
days—ready to come, ready to go, all of another, all of your life,
You have a cold earth, weathered by myriad seasons, fortified by
myriad sunbeams, trodden by myriad feet (searching and finding—
having found everything with the simple concept of discovery):
I see not a ceiling, blue, dank, stagnate, immutable, of nothing, home
for the solved,
I see the residence of those impossibilities that cannot ever exist;
I hear not the ephemeral tick of the passing moments,
I see not Fall’s deciduous red, brown and yellow hue paint the ground,
Nor Winter rearrange Achelous’ molecular structure and leave him
frost-bitten,
Nor Spring, entering such barren and desolate territory, evoke life on
such a prodigious scale,
Nor Summer mindfully burdening the Anemoi’s breath with heat
enough to displease the frolicking children,
I see only one long duration, of distant beginning, now interminable
until that end which will not eclipse life, but start it anew;
I have a naturalistic Mother whose dense woods shelter me from the
elements of terror with loving solitude and warm isolation,
Whose streams wash sorrow from my brow,
Whose humming mountains’ song drowns mankind’s verbal
inclemencies,
Whose majesty is conferred by my heavenly Father,
Whose lurid beauty, sparkling in rivers, shining on mountaintops, can
attune the burn of fire with the charred remains of her garments,
To whom even embers once forth, exist, and go back—all one,
A Mother, my Mother, whose pap has sustained the myriad fish of the
sea, the myriad fowl of the air, and the myriad beasts of the land,
readily and tenderly,
A Mother who, like our Father, to be heard, one must not listen,
A Mother who, like her Father, to be seen, one must remove their
searching-eyes,
A Mother who, like our Creator, to be felt, one must drain palpability’s
cup,
A Mother who, like her Creator, to be comprehended, one must forgo
all claims to intellect and embrace ignorance—
This is my Mother,
Not cold,
Warm as the flesh I love,
The flesh under my hand,
The flesh on your bones,
My flesh.

Michael,
Unknown 07.

“To Dissolve”

To dissolve
and to be worth dissolving
speaks greatness of its own kind

and constructs the appropriate gravity
to level-out superfluity
and leave room for significance

but to drench icy terrain with an unnecessary dissolvent
though it seems a key action
speaks another kind of issue

in which our fervent attack and sophistic rigidity
have spoken only arbitrary acts of assumed importance
products of ruling and inculcated conventionality

Michael,
June 07.

"To the various Eras of history,"

Do you remember such bored and angry
denizens to occupy Earth’s spacious body?

Were the citizens of the middle, bronze or
golden age so discontented?

Is it since Genesis we’ve possessed our bitter
turpitudes?

It’s stark and grim and my disillusionment
brings me closer to all the thumping breasts;

Hearts pine for some comfort, for some
solace:

In our journey to be closer, we drift farther
apart, Partisan Institutions:

My hostility and malice illustrates my longing
for closeness, World:

We drive us farther apart, Fellowkind.

There’s a city of blaring sounds and blinding lights outside our door, there’re constructions which defy the sky’s voluminous breadth, and I pace the empty streets;

I see a figure approach, huddled from the biting cold, and as our distance recedes he raises his head only to calculate how to most efficiently avoid contact with my person;

As I see his furtive glance, I design and execute the most effective plan in which I may divert my eyes, pretending we don’t share this small strip of land we’re traversing and that this is a moment below human consequence, leaving each other unmolested by the others presence…

I’m old and my views are bleak and my hands are clenched and my feelings are cold and my heart is closed and eyes are glazed and mind is numb and my verse is trite and my pain is trite and pain is trite and emotions are reduced to analytical categories and making categories is a sport

And it all wasn’t the way it is but it is the way it is because we’re tired and weary and sick of change and have settled down into horrible complacency

Michael,
August 07.

“Unknown”

Let me ask you something:
What is it about the unknown that scars us so?
Shouldn’t the unknown thrill us,
elate us with its spacious housing of
possibilities yet to be realized?
The unknown isn’t indecision,
the unknown is decisions yet to be employed.
Fear the unknown?
I say embrace the unknown:
Close your eyes, extend your arms,
forgo inquiry
as you cerate into the vibrating images that crowd
the distant planes;
catch and set straight those
stars scintillating before this present consciousness,
enveloped in this prognosticating mist,
enshrouded in the workings of a distant projection
following a contemporary itinerary,
passing orders for future enterprises
with the powers granted from recent consolidation.
I say spread your legs
and think of consequences when they arrive:
For now
I’ll enjoy this swollen deity stuffed in these places of my
calculation or indiscrimination;
and you recline to facilitate the flow,
as your glistening void swallows this disease which germinates
only when it itself believes it’s time for,
and destines the proper location for,
cultivation.

Michael,
March 07.

“Us”

What is humanity but the inadvertencies of the synergistic organizations of autonomous personages? Who am I but my own sovereign nation, entertaining reveries of a loving solidarity for all the disparate universe--cursing those makeshift gathering of emotions upon that plethora of contrived human feeling--adamantly embracing those divine conceptions of a transcendent understanding? Who are you but an entity who claims his own sovereignty, chiseling our inscrutable nature with the utensils of a metaphysical design--placing trust in that only concrete solace, logic--interpreting the universal cohesiveness as the mechanical workings of that unerring mechanism, physics? Who are we but two souls choosing different paths in our autonomy--polarizing not the majesty of discovery with different means of exploration, searching for the same thing: both hoping to locate that evasive marvel, Truth.

Michael,
December 06.

“Vagrant”

Alcohol soaked breath, putrid with age,
would overpower the fragrant mouth,
ripe with youth, fresh with virtue:
but this doesn’t create impossibilities.

Could the searching eyes of this vagrant,
glazed with infection and wondering in dementia,
hold on long enough to a pretty wanderer—
absconding,
supple feet treading marketplace stones—
whose arms are laden with fruit and poultry for the Sunday feast?
Could they hold on long enough for the recognition of aesthetic
stimulation—
could he even begin to conceive of sexual fulfillment?

His head sheds flakes,
delicately falling on the bed,
cold with the morning dew,
blank with the coming day’s inevitability,
white as snow, gross as the disease below:
She’d turn to him in pity and say,
“I have a few cents”;
And he’d hear it and cry inside.

Young, sympathetic, inexperienced in hardships, she’d care—
she does care: see how she averts her eyes?

Joints nearly locked from having to toil through innumerable
nights cold,
and mind void from senseless days lonely:
days half there—covered in a pestilential mist.
Hands couldn’t feel to please.
But could desire contain enough velocity to shake a helpless sludge
into a turgid mold?

If she pitied him enough
(nothing vulgar here; true, honest, maidenly sympathy)
would she help him
–silently, genuinely, with no self-aggrandizing motion—
navigate his way,
long expired and way off track, into her personage?
Just like how the sun sets on his scarred forehead—
with such little care for the fetid thing it rests upon.

Would the bumps—
vestiges of profligate behavior, the reckless and prodigal
days of yore—
impede entrance?
No matter the prodigiously sympathetic load,
would the vagueness and disease just be too much,
even for his maiden’s gentle guidance?
What if?
What if miracles occurred?
Would his seed,
that powerful continuation,
moist and divine and of pedigree,
even be perceptible to the vagrant’s already dimming eyes
(his final triumph in a down-trodden existence)?

Would the bumps burst?
Would the pus, defeated blood-cells, lamenting the futility of their
plight, drown his struggling seed in a purulent flood;
and pry from this vagrant soul—
half submerged in the waters of idiocy,
half a lunatic substance, half a sane mirage,
full-blooded in honor
—his last traces of dignity.

Michael,
January 07.

“We Bliss Going From The To Now Place”

The wind makes a nocturnal pilgrimage to the place of our serene repose
        from the darkest of hours time the moments in the sky
And across the vast regions of the western skyline
        to the north straight direction over the horizon

From this serene bastion of inexhaustible love,
        darkness’ fortifying pale moon we gaze in strong sanctum
And pilgrim winds, inviolable rests, bastions of love, and witnesses of lunar strength,
        all under pillars holding strong fears still for roofs of Us live

After the felicity that instills us with perseverance to triumph over the deep crags’ rigor,
        we see silver lining good time upon moments afraid
Before, however, my trembling frame is consoled by your hands’ tender touch
        while my resting lips supple kiss cheeks saddening in craggy abyss

Your blue skirt--the shroud sanctifying legs that I fancy as beautifully sculpted marble--
        I caressing happy skin under hands of my caring fabric beneath
Until our wrestling forms, silhouetted by the moonlight, coalesce into one loving contour
         and heat feels we of close bodies in making love

Tranquilly the wind rustles bushes adjacent to our embrace,
        and make good sounds to content ears of loving me in you
While fragrances of new blossoms inadvertently orchestrate a euphony of humming bees;
        but oblivion to we holding children sounds nothing

Michael,
November 06.

“What Is Philosophy?”

I
What is philosophy?
Who are the men that are of it?
Truth?
Goodness?
We’ll apprehend them.

II
A calypso singer in murky waters will
   smudge our intellects with their filthy
   hands, but they’ll serenade our ears
   with the euphonies they breath—
Breath composed of melodious cadences
(Dropping down…Rising up…Turning
    unexpectedly…Turning so
    eloquently…So beautifully arranged)
    for frivolous diversion, or for
    sinister dominion?

III
Fighters of one—the same—sport, destine
   to slay one another—
Fighters for change, or privilege?

IV
What will we do, our Cleanser?
We come to you as sinners,
Can you save us from our transgressions?
For our sins our against the Mind:
The unforgivable sin of cognitive
   blasphemy.

V
Our faith in Truth amounts to a mustered
    seed,
Can’t we cast our mountainous
    individualism into the sea?
Can’t we trust in the direction you guide
    us, O fantastic Saint of Intellect?
Your Words are tantamount to Life:
How many ways can we display our
    devotion with chauvinism?

VI
Houses, abodes, shelters, safety from
   nature’s inclemencies,
Let us enter your doors and fall into your
   constructed oblivion!

VII
Us mermaids who swim through this
   oceanic density,
How far will we carry ourselves for you,
   our Fisher of Minds?

VIII
Wise Sphinx,
Consummate our relationship with your
   consummate Egyptian bondage!
Pharaoh,
Fetter flailing hands, bind kicking feet,
   confined restless movements!
King,
Build us up to affect some notice of
   destruction!
O Monarch of Delusion,
Give us earldom, make us barons, we long
   to ascend society as dukes—give
   us the power to feel loss!

IX
Thorn Bush,
We’ll embrace your barbwire body with a
   sanguine out-look!
Pine Tree,
We’ll grant you our cheek, for your
   cactus-kisses, readily!
Hemlock,
We’ll love you long after you
Poison us!

X
Such are you, Philosophy:
Wormwood to the
Waters of Wisdom!

Such are you, Philosopher:
Beast of established
Truth, leading astray the
True of intention!

Such are you, Followers:
Beguilers of yourselves!

Michael,
January 07.

“Why does it mean so much?”

Why does it mean so much?
These nebulous attachments
to importance's mobile body
(searching and striving)—
dragging it down;
the time that measures
only to conflict with the results;
trotting forward, harboring filamentary
anxieties,
woven together forming justified impediments;
glaze and mist,
and dispelling agents ignored—
squinting-gaze to see through the veil;
tribulation and trial—
pulsating and surging,
combated with resignation:
So insignificant,
yet sight is lost.

Michael,
February 07.

Posted by Malteseblack on 2008-05-02 20:51:48 | Rating: