William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Archive for August 2021

Front Row Blues

If I were a songwriter, I’d make it a good one. I’d make it a hit in the fast food parade. People would pay me, then they would slay me, all while they sit — in the fast food parade. August 22, 2021 . Front Row Blues Fences and flags, rich men and thugs, pickups and guns — see them all at the fast food parade. Pay to get in, […]

Continue Reading →

Shall I Tell You of My Former Life?

Slow verse, dry stones, the river shows her age. Kind nurse, soft tones, her smile full of maple leaves. August 20, 2021 . Shall I Tell You of My Former Life? Shall I tell you of my former life? It happens in the strangest way, today, not yesterday, before tomorrow begins, and where my new life ends, over, and yet over, again. Like smoke, it rides the wind, and as […]

Continue Reading →

Chairs

This morning, after watering the various plants and flowers, which are now taking on their fall tones, I continued my early morning celebration by soaping myself in cool water and rinsing with cold. It was a bit like bathing in a river and then standing under a waterfall. The shower space is small, but there is a skylight in the bathroom. Only in the dark days of winter do I […]

Continue Reading →

Whatever It Is

Jimsonweed, a single plant with one open flower. The ferry, closed, because of low water. Whatever it is — does it really need to be said? Does it need to be thought? Does it need to be done? August 16, 2021 . [ 1202 ]

Continue Reading →

You Are Here

Pen and claw — old friends scratching out their autobiographies. August 15, 2021 . You Are Here As intimate as you are with yourself as imagined by others, imagine imagining yourself as you are, when imagination itself imagines changing course — that is, imagine a river, imagining an ocean, imagining an imagined star — as intimate, as you imagine, you are. Somewhere, there is a familiar old coat on a […]

Continue Reading →