2017
Canvas 1,038
[ 154 ]
Drawings
The Waiters (Long Live the Revolution)
If there’s a connection between this simple new drawing and the old poem that follows, I don’t know what it is. But seeing it — seeing him — I thought I recognized a denizen of the old street-side cafés, an unknown, unsung member of the Lost Generation. The poem, of course, is utter foolishness, as all poems are that are purposely funny but true, and some days, like today, truer […]
This is another of my favorites from Primitive, although it would be hard to explain why.
Is it, perhaps, because the shoulder of one is the mouth of the other? Possibly.
But then there are the eyes, which, for half a day yesterday,
Followed me around the room. “My card, sir.”
Almost Einstein
2010
#2 Pencil on Index Card
Almost Einstein
[ 120 ]
Almost Einstein
Imagine a hard-working composer paging through his music,
relieved and thinking he is done, coming upon this in his score.
“Dear Lord. What am I writing for?”
“The high notes and low notes, of course.”
“And which, pray tell, are you?”
“We? We are the many. We are the few. We are you.”
Music Lesson
2010
#2 Pencil on 4 x 6 Index Card
Music Lesson
[ 119 ]
Music Lesson
The Second Act
According to my notes, this poem was written long ago after I awoke one morning from a troubling dream I couldn’t quite remember, and with a terrible sinus headache. If the dream was the first act, the poem is the second, and reading it is the third. Or maybe writing the poem was the second act, and the poem is the third, making reading the fourth — unless the poem […]
2014
Canvas 423
[ 111 ]
Canvas 423
Fall
For each of the twelve hundred pages in my first website, I’m Telling You All I Know (2001-2011), I made a little drawing, occasionally in ink, but almost always with a school pencil, after which I scanned it into the computer and added it manually to the HTML page. Then I uploaded the page to the host server. Without exception, the drawing was done after the writing. The pages were […]
Nightfall
Done in 2009, Nightfall is also part of Primitive, a glossy volume released the following year. [ 105 ]
September Poems
The ancient texts of solemn trees. Bird tracks at my feet. Late-night lights in the widow’s house. Lichens on headstones. Thrice-woven wool. Galaxies that resemble scattered straw. Notebooks filled. A wealth of steam. The luck of rice. dew in the dust on the old man’s mailbox he reads his letters twice [ 104 ]
William Michaelian 