William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Nine Lives or One

I’ve known a few cool cats, but most have been loaves of bread, purrers and posers, a few owls among them, nightstalkers, softwalkers, streetlight ramblers, and poets like Kerouac, nine lives or one, not knowing which they’re on, fenceposts, railcars, food dishes, wine bottles, tambourines, or bongo drums — like, meow, man, and they still carry on. . [ 1759 ]

Continue Reading →

What Made Me Think

If happiness and joy could be summoned with effort, just think how happy and joyful we would be; still we try, and are undone by trying; what made me think of this? a cloudy, misty dawn; my heart beating; the universe rolling on . . [ 1758 ]

Continue Reading →

Garden Song

I found myself at shovel’s depth, sweet loam above and more below than I could imagine; first my knees, then my hands — I’d never felt such welcome; my face, my breath — I no longer cared to stand, let my limbs sink in as a favorite story might begin; and when I reached the end, I awoke to death, and pulled the shovel out again. . [ 1757 ]

Continue Reading →

Good Music

There’s an art to losing your way: never lose it just to say you forgot to live, or give, today; and don’t confuse it, pray, with child’s play; let it be good music when you’re old and gray. . [ 1756 ]

Continue Reading →

A Tale of Two Sittings

He had a funny chair, and that was all he knew, that when he sat in it, his feet turned slowly blue, and his brain, for want of oxygen, could not undo his grim despair — it was strange, but it was true, that he grew old and mad in it, until, at last, he never moved from there. . [ 1755 ]

Continue Reading →

Sour Honey

As sure is pure is sour honey. As fine as grape is wine. As must is dust is dust as fine. As ash as flash is light to pass. As red as rose and ink is pose. As rain above is love below. As if as all one needs to know. As mine and yours as time. . * D’aussi sure qu’est la pureté l’est au miel citronné. Comme l’est […]

Continue Reading →

A Splash and a Wish

No one taught my father to swim. He jumped into the ditch and started paddling. A depression, a lifetime, a war, a family later, he climbed out of the water and waved from the bank on the other side. He waved and he waved, and faded to shade, in the flesh with the fish, a splash and a wish, a breeze, the sky, a door. And then we couldn’t see […]

Continue Reading →