William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Consciousness’

Tragedies and Toy Soldiers

We are the bird, the cloud, the drifting insect. We are the waterfall. We are delicate bits of dandelion fluff. We are all of space, and all that space contains. And we contain that space: space enters and leaves our bodies with every breath. Space is not only out there, where the stars are. It is here, where Earth is, and where we are. And we — you, I, and […]

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This Morning the Sky Is My Beloved

Only upon waking does this body form. What need is there otherwise? March 9, 2021 . This Morning the Sky Is My Beloved This morning the sky is my beloved and she beseeches me to take the earth from her hands for just a little while the earth heavy but so small and the rain is how her wept love falls. Recently Banned Literature, March 9, 2017 . [ 1043 […]

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And Came the Day

Opinion is dead, isn’t it? Isn’t it that cozy-numb part of you which has already decided, and chooses to see the world as you once thought it was, rather than as it is? Isn’t feeling entitled to your opinion like refusing to wear a hearing aid if you need one, or glasses if you need them? Isn’t it like a being a juror or judge who refuses to consider all […]

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Eyes as Windows

There is a mist now, softly falling, saying, Distance, dear one, is something you’ve imagined. People, things, mountains — peace, justice, joy — love, enlightenment — all are as immediate as these kisses I weave upon your face. What are miles, but a place to leave your burden beside the road? What is time, but an awkward counting towards the end of fear? And what is enlightenment, but needless proof […]

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Reading Weather

The reading ebbs and flows. Lately it has slowed to a crawl. Or maybe it goes on by itself while the reader is otherwise occupied — except that the reader often is not occupied at all. In fact, the reader’s presence should not be assumed, although his body may be, for it serves as a kind of bookmark in the story that is the reader’s life. A great many stories […]

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Revival

Sometimes, as I sit here writing in the dark, I feel as if my hands belong to someone else working just beyond the veil — a parallel realm in which objects roam free of any given meaning, and the sound of a passing train — I hear it now — is that someone’s remembered childhood. “Arrival” Poems, Slightly Used, February 18, 2010 . Revival . . . and now / […]

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Making Us Round

Yesterday evening after dark, we had the universe to ourselves. So it seemed, so it felt, out walking under the clouds and stars, knowing full well that the clouds and stars were under us as well, making us as round as this dear round globe. Above us, though, in the swath that was visible to our bare naked eyes, were majestic rivers — rivers of illuminated clouds in galactic strands; […]

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Tea and Oranges

Fennel seed tea with just a bit of blackberry honey: a timely cure for all the physical and mental ailments of which I remain unaware. On the path beyond Goose Lake, we came to a place where a tree was down, blocking our way. Just inside the network of slender bare branches, there were two brown rabbits. They kept their eyes on us as we made the long way around. […]

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Snow Day

The icy granite leaves             * no doubt                         * you wonder                                     * about your consciousness                                     * and how it came to be                         * this eternal             * fragile * thing * with wings             * * January 27, 2021 . [ 1005 ]

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