Lot
'Do not look back!
need I remind
you? ' warned
the angel, ahead.
'Alright, ' panted Lot,
'I'm trying. I'm trying
to do what you said-'
while the town behind him burned;
But he wanted to be sure
his daughters complied:
one covered her face with her veil;
the other tied
a sash around her eyes
and limped along;
only his ditz of a wife
dallied and turned.
'No sir, you needn't remind me',
he muttered, under his breath.
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Sea Turtle III
Into the azure drink beside me and that was that.
I guess I should consider myself lucky:
I could have been soup, my shell slung on a wall
Sporting a tape-patched bullet hole. Ah, well.
And so I go
Like the sea-going thing,
Like the turtle I am, memory-bereft,
A dark sun, a discus,
Scuttling over the sea's bottom,
Basking in the moonlight,
Weeping, kvetching-out heaps of ping-pong eggs;
And-let this shock your dichotomies,
I really don't care what becomes of them-
I wish them well,
But I've done my bit. Let heaven manage it.
I only long to be
Wrapped once more in the arms of the sea,
Dissolved, all breeze-born memory
Acquired on land, that hiss and burn and kill,
And tell you where to go
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Keith Haring
If you see a man of a certain age,
hair still determinedly dark,
but having some time ago switched to khakis
striding Eastern Parkway Plaza
professionally proud,
a bit self-absorbed but unmenacing,
fireworks past,
backdropped by the pediments,
backgrounded by the friezes of the Brooklyn Museum,
its reassuringly old-fashioned pantheon
still reassuring, despite the heat,
and wearing a T-shirt a lighter shade of red than blood
blazoned with a baby, white but out-lined black,
palisaded with hatch-marks denoting radiance
or kineticism or both,
that would be me, for you see
I have just been to the Keith Haring show-
the Keith Haring show which ends soon.
What did I think of it, you wonder?
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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The End Of All Questions I
Every question ever asked had been answered.
Everything you'd wondered, staring at the night sky.
Where those shooting stars do finally go to
What, indeed, lurks in the hearts of black holes
Anti-matter, parallel universes, yes, the whole show.
Why the dinosaurs perished from this earth
The truth behind those god-awful conspiracy theories
What, exactly, the link between earthquakes is and fracking
Why all those jobs were packed off overseas
Why many suffer never-endingly for the gains of a few.
What the difference is between man and the monkey, assuming one.
What inspired the first man to climb the first mountain.
Why men eternally think themselves victims of women.
Why women eternally think themselves victims of men.
Why Americans believe in nothing they haven't heard on CNN.
Why population control is never, ever discussed except in Asia
(limited goods, unlimited demand-makes sense to me)
poem by Morgan Michaels
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The Wintergarden ll
Hum-ho, the summer was too long.
(where have you heard that, before?)
But enough of shallow summer song!
There is only winter, here, and
soon it will be snowing, snowing,
out of a perlmutter sky
which we can only scan, shrugging, and say
'Schnee. Schnee.' again and finally,
and wondering, wonder 'why why not and why? '
There is no longer need to proffer water
Store it away, away, then:
set the can down, there,
beside that granulation of the heavens,
nitrous fodder, yet so pricey-why? ,
that golden-spoons from cans
and means as much to flowers as their nectar
does to hummingbird and butterfly.
Every work is done.
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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The Seagull
One day in the hot sun, under a mackerel sky
on a bench in a parking lot, waiting
for a bus to Kingston Station, wielding
fans, we found ourselves approached
by what? a lost-looking seagull-
bow tie-less, but in charcoal
tails and a light gray vest, nonetheless,
waddling formally our way.
'Now what, ' I wondered, pulling in my feet, and
sitting up abruptly, 'could it possibly want with us?
Spare change? ' So far from the sea
did we look like sardines? I watched as
its webs drily toed
the sun-softened tarmac; as it padded closer
on stalks half-lit like hollyhock stems
I saw in a painting once.
There was much to admire
in the feathery plush of its breast,
whitecap-white but whiter when the breeze blew it back;
I clucked at the way its level head swiveled
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Lovebog I
Love has no truer likeness than a bog
dissembling with a superficial sheen
the thirsty come to sip-alas, instead
a greater thirst, pre-empting, drinks them in.
Lightly they descend from proven banks
lured by the waters undulating smile
'my lap is luscious and my bed is warm-
here you may lay and slake your thirst awhile'.
But straightaway, the floor begins to boil
agitato, such is the water's taste
the mire ups and claps them to the knees
and uncontented, sucks them to the waist.
Swim then who can, them that must sink must-
oh terrified cries and desperate looks to shoreward
the wily water sucks them to the jaws
exacting three steps down for one step forward.
In at the mouth, in at the ears it pours
down the throat the caramel river flows-
certain tubers manacle their heels
as over their heads the guileful waters close.
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Hawk II
I could see it turn, slightly-the sickle-like beak
over which it watched a handful of wrens
chatter mockingly in a leafless, nearby tree;
the umber thumbprints of its breast coverts
stenciled on to perfect scale, strung in bead-like arcs;
its tale from which the vivid spark of no fire leapt
when it turned suddenly into the sun. Just more brown
suggesting youth or a different kind of hawk;
see its talons aclutch the iron rail.
It looked a little untidy. Was it left behind?
Did it miss its friends? Was it sick? Welcoming new feathers?
suggested by those flakes of down stuck to its back.
Here it was November:
What time hawks fledge and fly away I forget.
Terrified, I didn't dare move a shiver
for fear the thing would flap away-a fear
seeming, for the moment, to outweigh
the fear that it would stay, people
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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An Eccentric III
It took just a while to conclude
she lived on a pension that
even a cat would sniff at,
and SSI, of course, so when we went monthly
to Tir Na Nog, I usually paid.
A doctor suggested warfarin
for her atrial fibrillation.
'I appreciate the recommendation',
she replied, 'but I'll take no rat's bane
and what's more, intend to outlive you! '
So she compromised with aspirin,
dying at home, ninety-ish, years later.
Annoyingly, she'd say 'see you later alligator',
each time we parted. I understood-
folks get used to the idioms of their days.
She was cremated. At her uptown memorial
leaning my arms on an odd upsurge in the table linen
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Centenary
If, in your life's dark night,
if, in your life's very center
racing from berth to berth,
asleep in your cot in the steerage
you hear waltzes tossed
into your dreams like banners from above
and feeling a little shudder
imagine you hear groans
of metal rent asunder
pay it no mind.
It is nothing, nothing.
Your stomach grumbling, that's all.
It is indigestion.
Return to sleep. Turn over in your bed.
Ignore it-draw the covers tightly
over your head. In the cold sky of night
the lanterns of the stars burn brightly
and though there's far to go
tomorrow's a new day, guaranteed
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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