Fool me. I am more than willing. Think me a fool. I am. Be the smart one, the intelligent one, the one who knows. Hold the clear advantage. Then, with your startling brilliance, use me to advance yourself, and manipulate me to accomplish your lofty aims and goals. When you are done, cast me aside, the dry husk of your ambition. How cold, your gravestone. How bitter and lonely, your […]
From a note written April 15, 2009: The other evening, while eating leftovers, I told my son that we should get rid of his cat and have a pet tarantula instead. I said we could keep it in a terrarium, and in the terrarium we could create a desert scene with dry sand and a narrow highway running through it — in honor of Bob Dylan, Highway 61. Somewhere along […]
It might be said that those who laugh at beginners are afraid to begin themselves. But this fear is also a beginning. It might be said that those who rush to lavish praise on masters of their respective callings and crafts, are not aware that these same masters understand that in the face of so much beauty and immensity they are beginners still, and feel this is natural. It might […]
Canvas 1,230 — February 28, 2019
Winterwood
From the bare lilac,
the hummingbird
eyes the crocus;
that’s what I know.
Poems, Slightly Used, February 23, 2010
[ 303 ]
It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s old, it’s heavy, it’s made of wood. It’s simple, it’s worn, it’s scarred, but it still shines when the light is upon it. She bought it many years ago from a retired school teacher eight miles away in the next town. In the Thirties, before the Second World War, she and one of her girlfriends walked to that town from our town along the railroad […]
Canvas 360 — February 17, 2014
Poem
Light
is
my
prayer.
Poems, Slightly Used, March 9, 2011
[ 291 ]
What are the great questions? And if I were asked them one by one, what would be my answer? Life, death, God, love, philosophy, religion, good, evil, war — would it merely be a recycled version of what others have said, a hearsay ego-bath arrived at second-hand, or would I offer something entirely new and of the moment, a revelation of an exploration without expectation, ever free in flight with […]
Canvas 358 — February 11, 2011
Starry Night
Dear old face,
lined deep to harbor cookie crumbs.
All the mice and men
who’ve held you,
forgotten,
every
one.
Poems, Slightly Used, February 27, 2011
[ 286 ]
Twenty-six-degrees, and a walk through the frozen neighborhood before sunrise — an exhilarating way to start the day. I was careful, of course, to pick up my feet, ice being what it is, and bones being what they are. On the snowy parts, where cars had not been, the crunch of my footsteps was loud enough to wake the dead, if they were not awake already. Day of the […]
An early-morning walk in the cold . . . the bark of a dog . . . slowly rising smoke . . . As If Buttons Are Eyes Before my bath I set out clean clothes gently, now, as if buttons are eyes. From “Morning Notes: Three Short Poems” Poems, Slightly Used, October 24, 2008 [ 275 ]
William Michaelian 