What exists is imagined, and what is imagined exists — our demons and gods, our presents, futures, and pasts, our truths, our errors, our facts. Observation, reason, instinct, fear, madness — these are all of the dance. This is my experience, and so this is my guess. It is the ultimate solitude — there can be none greater than my knowing, and none greater than my not knowing. It is […]
The stub of a candle in a rotting old pumpkin — let’s light it one more time — then watch brave autumn cave in on itself — and treasure the rind. Pumpkins I love them best on frozen steps with sunken cheeks and moldy breath, abandoned. I love the rest in muddy fields, bright with age and ripe with next year’s children. I love them riding on a truck, […]
A full three hours before dawn, and the geese at the pond are already in an uproar. What starts them so, there in the dark? What fuels their urge and feeds their eyes at this hour? Their sound makes light of the intervening mile. Waxed apples are a modern tragedy. Surely their trees would weep to see them. A truck hauling apples across the country is a chilled mausoleum. The […]
Whatever its origin, I am part of this universe, however it may have been, or may be, scientifically and imaginatively defined. I feel neither significant nor insignificant in the face of this seeming immensity. I am not small. I am not large. I am as much star as I am snail or stone. I do not fear the unknown. I am part of the unknown. I do not believe in […]
If the mind’s a muscle that remembers its pain, Then work it, work it, and work it again. And if pleasure be its prowess and rightful domain, Raise the chalice, and treasure the palace it’s in. October 24, 2019. Late Afternoon. Upon finishing Herman Melville: Complete Poems. Library of America, 2019. [ 551 ]
Enough mist to say the page could be a street the day the way fingers please a face Recently Banned Literature, October 26, 2013 [ 549 ]
My wife and I are picking our way through a narrow passage cluttered with stepladders, paint cans, and bits of old unfamiliar machinery; finally we squeeze through a partly blocked doorway into a dingy hotel lobby where we are unexpected and obviously not welcome; we are surprised ourselves, for we do not remember making reservations; the view through the front window is bright, colorful, and completely artificial — a series […]
I woke up thinking of something white — bones, or maybe snow — whites of varying hues. A bone in the snow would stand out. Like a drop of soup on Sunday School clothes. There was the sense, too, of having traveled a great distance — of having been an old man on a narrow high-mountain road, with but an apple and notebook to sustain me. And the notebook was […]
When a young man rhymes, we smile and nod. When old, he is forgiven. When in between, we shake our heads, and think we understand him. Or do we just pretend? Fool that I am, I can never tell. But I wish him well. I wish him well. For that is love, and this is heaven. Honeysuckle and Lemon Paneled wall in oaken hue, piano in corner near wood […]
Leaves in the fall — and you still cling to the notion of perfection and flaw? October 17, 2019 [ 543 ]
William Michaelian 