and then you feel like a poet come back again,only to be loved this time around — scribbling furiously,toward the second time you are gratefully undone. “Toward the Second Time”Recently Banned Literature, August 17, 2016 Canvas 738 August 17, 2016 . [ 1176 ]
This morning I saw a hairy spider crawling on the edge of the counter in the bathroom. It was in no hurry. I found the small plastic jar we keep for such situations, guided him into it, covered the top, then released our surprised friend outside, where he trundled off through some dry moss. I try not to sit very often or for very long. I feel better when I […]
What would I do with the time I spend adding to this collection of poems, notes, and drawings if I were to stop doing so? The first answer that comes to mind is, More of what I already do when I am not doing this. But I think a more inspiring answer would be, Find out. Or maybe even, Find out, and then, do not record it as I usually […]
Craft, and practice; and, perhaps, water, on stone, neath a gray god’s tongue. Recently Banned Literature, June 8, 2014 . [ 1098 ]
The rain isn’t falling in huge amounts, but there’s enough of it every day to keep things glistening and drenched. There are piles of ice storm debris to attend to, but getting to them leaves deep footprints, where miniature lakes form, not in the shape of Italy’s boot, but in Oregon’s mud-and-moss-encrusted hiking shoe. And so that work waits — or, rather, the worker waits, while the debris does what […]
Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Wells Brown are both in Europe now, seeing the sights, meeting people, writing their observations and travel notes. One is a free man, wondering what freedom really is. The other is a fugitive, who knows what freedom is, or thinks he does. This leaves us to ask the reader of these two books if he knows. And he replies by saying that whatever he knows, […]
I have pruned orchards, and rows and rows of vines. Mud on the ladder, frost on the ground. This makes me different somehow. Cold toes. Orange peels. The bright fur coats of faithful hounds. Now my pen has wooden handles, with a blade at the end. In the fog, its voice makes the strangest sound. November 29, 2020 . As It Is Written After a long day’s work, the writer […]
I expect to write as long as I’m mentally and physically able. I realize, though, it’s possible there may come a time when I no longer feel the need to write. My present sense of the matter is this: the longer I write, the nearer I come to the beginning; I am now in my childhood, working steadily towards infancy; the very moment I’m born, I’ll lay down my pen, […]
Death, or politics? Politics have neither death’s dignity nor purpose; and they lack death’s sublime, optimistic future; for after death, that which is once said to have been living, goes on living in myriad forms and ways; whereas politics are an accumulation of toxic waste matter that is dangerous to all living things. That politics often cause death, is reason enough to set them aside. Why sacrifice my precious energy […]
Little Boy Blue It’s my pleasure and good fortune to work every day of the year — to set down a few words, to draw, or to otherwise tend to the bookish details of my elderly childhood. But the word work should fool no one; I use it only to distinguish from the rest of the play that constitutes my daily life. For I’m as silly and eager about […]
William Michaelian 
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