William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Poetry’

The Lovers

Evening star on His lapel — Moon — her Goddess fingernail — Never saw them dance so well — wonder if they bend this low To see us fall — and feel us feel — or if they know — The dream they dream — is real February 28, 2020 [ 679 ]

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Call and Response

Things are exactly as they should be — as they must be — all is simply a matter of natural, inevitable succession, as fluid as a river, with the river’s twists and turns — none are right or wrong, better or worse — the river is acting according to its nature, and is fulfilling itself at its own timeless pace, heedless of the sluices and dams in our thinking. Hold […]

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The Great Pretender

Time is the ultimate convenience. I don’t know what it is, how it works, or if it even exists. And yet in my precious ignorance, I claim to watch it pass. If I were God, I would laugh — then get up and dance. [ 676 ]

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The Poem Can See

I cut the grass and it keeps growing, Blade by blade, green and green on green. I cut the dawn. It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. I cut the man. I kill myself with deeds. I turn to seeds. I sow the grass, I sow the dawn, I sow the man. And they sow me. I sow the poem, blind as blind can be. But the poem can see. The […]

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Warm, the Flesh, Sweet, the Veil

Noted thus far, very lightly in pencil, near the top of the blank page opposite the Index of First Lines, the poems numbered 435, 712, and 730, beginning, respectively, Much Madness is divinest Sense — I could not stop for Death — Defrauded I a Butterfly — all three of which are old favorites of mine — and yet when I encountered them in my slow but steady progress through […]

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Canvas 843 — February 15, 2017

Canvas 843 — February 15, 2017

 

Heaven and Hell

A pebble in a child’s pocket, a feather, a shell.

A child in God’s pocket, a star, a well.

God in a pot on a stove.

Soup in a bowl.

Where is heaven, Master? Where is hell?

And the old man smiled.

I too once asked foolish questions, said he,

And brought his spoon to his mouth.

And when we die, and leave this world?

Maybe when we arrive, we will know.

But for now, I beg of you, please, sit down.

This is better warm, than cold.

Recently Banned Literature, February 15, 2018


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Canvas 843 — Heaven and Hell

Soliloquy

If my past is a fiction, and my present a dream, my future could be anything. If my past is a dream, and my present its awakening, the future has much to explain — And that much must be little, if it means what it seems. Such is the play. Such is the scene. To write is to be written. To speak is to sing. Where the mind fails, I […]

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