A Visit From Diotima ll

D Do you like it?
MM Hell, yes.
D What do you like about it?
MM I dunno. It's...different.
D The second verse reprises the first.
MM Oh?
D Check it out.
(sings)
'Our love is so odd, odd, odd-
Baby, oh, baby, oh, baby,
Odd, odd, odd, odd, odd! -

How do you like it, so far?

MM Well, English is a funny language.
But I like it-oddly enough.
If you could only not sing so loud...
It's after three, remember.

D What does it matter?

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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Epistle l

what if you built a tree-house
and suddenly the supporting
branches of your airy aerie
disappeared-vanished quite
and left the roof momentarily
suspended in mid-air, before the
leafy couvercle crashed down
at the usual speed of 32ft/second?
That's what it would be like
if suddenly your dear little mind
were cleansed of its assumptions
swept bare-what a scare
of, yes, assumptions, those children
of Memory and Usage, those kids
that refuse to leave home
having too comfortable a stay
given you by father, fashion, faith,
that you love but resent
the need to feed; after all, you got 'em,
and they're not going anywhere-

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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Whales l

I can recall a time
far away and long ago
before my untried eyes had seen an one-
the sea was shallow and the sky was low
and like a word patiently awaiting
its compliment of rhyme
I longed to see them
never knowing why or how
or when they'd cross my bow.

But now the windshield wipers of my mind
can't beat fast enough to clear them
or make them vanish, and I find
peculiar order in this moving mayhem
Indigo above, and dun; below
a so un-named a color(or non-color)
brighter now, now duller,
so predators above may see a stone
while those below may see the sky alone.

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The End Of All Questions II

Why men and women too often mistake sex for love
Why moldy ancient texts still inform peoples prejudices.
Why some people bash the past but can't let it go.

Why the dog wags the tail and not vice-versa.
Where to get the GPS that can take you to the rainbow's end.
Why the well of Truth is bottomless, bottomless.
Why the Spanish, spendthrifts of punctuation,
Insist on those upside-down marks at the start of each question.

Why, why why, what and occasionally where.
Just kidding, of course, but if every question were answered
Still one would remain of all those neatly laid
Out fitted with their answers at the bottom of the page:
Why I loved you from the very first moment of our meeting
And why I continue, in spite of formidable odds, to.
I think it must have something to do with 'character'.
Yeh, character. It must have something to do with that.

poem by Morgan Michaels
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Weather

Overnight: a light fall of snow.
Sitting on the couch
observing through the open blinds
the way the wiggles of white
clung precariously but stubbornly to the thin
branches of the sleeping trees
made his ankles chilly;

Sounding like a duo
between a dishwasher and a garbage disposal
sung over the the chorus of a garage door opening
he sang (both parts)
covering the singers on a CD
which only rarely skipped.

Behind the sink she munched an apple out loud
stirred her cup with a deafening clink
immune-even oblivious
to his efforts. The
problem was obvious.

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The Wintergarden lll

Toys of the wind,
which, by the way, has shifted from the east
and ushers from the west
now-a very little thing-the least
that you should worry on or mind.
It sends the birds way southward-ways,
tumbling, helpless, wishing they were there
already. There? Where? We can only guess-
the Floridas that they alone know best.

Somewheres, a distant horn is blowing
Not one, I mean, from a parked car
but the sparkling, gleaming, brassy, braying kind,
valved and belled
bellowing a line
informed by rhythms, melody;
I wish I knew from where-
alas, the ear
is not so wondrous as the eye

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The Dirty Boy (and what befell him) II

'Spitting is dirty and crass', said Mim,
and isn't very nice
and by the statutes of this state
it constitutes a vise.

'So grow up, Jack', said little Mim
'So Jack', said John, 'get big'
But all that Jack would mutter back
was 'better pig than prig'.

'So here's to you, mate', shot back Jack
and here's to you-take that! '
and to the horror of them both
forthwith hauled off and spat!

Such the scope and depth and pitch
and tempo of infraction
that they hired a lawyer, (greedy witch)
and filed a class action.

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The Saints-For Bloomsday

If you thought them rare, or worse, extinct,
think again. Assure yourselves,
there is a land where they abound
like birds on a telephone line at enormous dusk,
preening and taking pleasure in each other's presence.

And you are almost there-
just another hundred miles or so to paddle
before that shore where you reach the beach the boat,
drag it over hot, pink sand, inverted, toward a stand of trees
near where rears an oddly quiet headland.

Out they slip, delighted to greet you,
from between trees, singing hymns in Portuguese,
hands clasped piously behind,
thin silks blowing like line-dried octupi, the golds
of their Olympian ideals slung about their necks.

E-mail home you have seen them
in short, tense clauses. Cc

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Aunt Fritzi II

always there, when-
ever Nancy came home from gallivanting with Sluggo
that sometime visitor from the other side of the tracks,
sitting vigilant, reading the paper

in smiling deference to Pascal's advice
to dodge unhappiness by sitting quietly in a small chair; what,
by lamplight was she reading, forever? The obits
the classifieds? maybe the funnies?

Anyhow Nancy, hush,
wash your ears, strap on your training bra, and
by the way, forget your allowance, you're grounded
till your homework's done, corrected to perfection,

or better, go to bed. TV,
that influential new medium, might as well be orbiting
the earth with Sputnik as far as your concerned.
The trouble started here,

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Elephant's Graveyard II

But then, almost imperceptibly, the boulders shift,
slowly at first, then increasing speed:
here a bit, there a hit
the eye perceives. Uncannily, they march through trees,

Till what you thought a wall of mere marl
proves an elephant's crinkled back-to be;
what you thought an un-tenanted grotte,
pretty enough, if bare,
is really the dark between an elephant's thighs-
between it's belly and the grass,

and you realize you have discovered a plot
piped by motherly trunks into pachyderm ears
assuring them there's a place they will go
if steadfast, in spite of crocodiles and bogs-
though one must be mindful to avoid both.

And suddenly, in the quiet of a grove
generations on generations of elephantine shapes

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poem by Morgan Michaels
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