William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Recently Banned Literature

November 2016: Poems and Passages

When one posts blog entries almost daily for ten years, there are inevitable changes — in mood, certainly, but also in subject matter, style, and approach. And yet, written as they are by the same hand, they are familiar and recognizable. It’s a bit like visiting a waterfall during different times of the year: now the music is heightened; now the rocks are more exposed; and while the distance from […]

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Rainbows and Windmills

I think I’ve already mentioned somewhere that I tend to forget poems almost as soon as they’re written. It’s interesting, because so many, like this one, are memory-driven, and each verse is its own childhood or family album.   Rainbows and Windmills Sometimes we leave with rainbows in our pockets, and sometimes we travel without them, knowing there are always rainbows about; and yet a crumpled rainbow is its own […]

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Verses

1                          at the center of which is Man, said the woman unto him, laughing, her symphony a breath of hands. 2   There were walls in those days: 3   The cotton patch on one side, impossible to mend; her father at the window, plotting murder; her mother knitting sandwiches: 4   Bolls, half open, scratchy to retrieve; the failed blood of […]

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If Not Tomorrow Then Today

This poem was written early in the morning one year ago today. It was published on Recently Banned Literature and shared on Facebook.   If Not Tomorrow Then Today Sometimes I think of the bodies of friends and loved ones motionless in their graves — my mother, my father, our old neighbor the beekeeper, and even our faithful old hounds — and I feel a beautiful harvest is in, call […]

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Drawing and Poem

Canvas 960

This drawing and poem came into being one year ago today. They were published separately on Recently Banned Literature, and subsequently shared on Facebook. Canvas 960 is one of my favorites. But I feel that way about a good many of my drawings, especially after I’ve forgotten them, which I almost always do, and then happen upon them again. Old friends? New? Both. All.     and this is the […]

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