Secrets
A secret burns in my brain
like a glowing coal.
Yes, the secret lodged behind my eyes
sputters and mutters like a burning coal
pops and rocks through the long lights of York
singeing its tissuey bed
abashing its keeper.
How it longs to slip the keep of its living brazier
To impart to the world of itself at least a spark
perhaps, credence given, to start a small fire-
How it yearns, wee imp, to hatch out
timlily as a chick from an egg
and trot about the world crying 'peep, peep, peep.'
I, too, crave the rout of the secret
(which fidgets in there like a bean)
I, too, crave its flight
into the ears of a few.
So would you. It hurts. Its hot.
Its eremite existence serving scant purpose, at all,
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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Whales ll
Single-sole or two by twain or threne
by threne they flail the blue-confronting-blue
which, finally, is the horizon
with their tremendous tails and gulleys of baleen
sad to have grown so small
compared to their immense forbears, and so dull-
mindful how the seas former denizons
(twice as long and thrice as green)
had skill to sift delusion from the True.
There is a moment before all that follow
you know what each succeeding one will bring
what it hasn't yet but will allow
before its fellows fall a-following;
so though your watch has stopped
you know exactly how the time will on.
I don't know how we know it but we do
I call it 'memory-anticipation; '
flat and glassy blue
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An Intruder 2
'Hey', I said, aiming the hey downward
toward a pot wedged in the corner, carefully planted
two weeks before with seeds of batchelor's buttons
according to package guidelines
for time, depth, moisture, exposure, etcetera
and set by bushes, charged with yellow roses
nodding heavily to one another, which
thorns notwithstanding, I intended to douse.
'Hey' to a smooth, gray pigeon-
attractive enough as pigeons go
who'd turned the porch into a dove-cote
and a flower pot into a sort of nest.
We'd gotten used to each other
after it wore off-early mistrust,
like the quick wore off the planters
exposing map-like zones of tolerance
respecting each other's goals:
that being the most important function of tolerance:
to stay the hand while we get used to things;
and miffed I was at first,
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Valse
How like a game of musical chairs
these fee-for-service systems
where profit is the goal, not service,
and people do not ask
'what can I do for you', but
'what is it worth to you? '
What can repair the sentiment once,
honest and pure,
lost?
How like a game of musical chairs
when bosses, cold to peoples losses
underwrite their profits with their blood,
caring only for their own and their constituents' enrichment,
and greed dazzles need
through the blandishments of advertisement
tv and the movies.
fa!
How like a game of musical chairs.
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The Nightingales Of Platres 3
So long as their lairs were buff and good
to serve as choirs from which to sing-
scorning birds of lesser skill
who did, after all, what they could and will.
For them, I guess, it was eternal spring
even in December, blear,
which all the world made pleasant
even when it very wasn't
to the pleasure and vexation of each listening thing.
And I found, from so high up, that just
as their wings lifted them to the skies
passing through the harp-strings of their song
lifted a listener into visions-
nothing, mind you, you could trust
or hold for very long:
hookahs amidst carpets stained with flower-colors,
saffron heaps and snow-clad peaks and dark-eyed houris,
dervishes a-whirl and dancing janissaries.
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A Troubling Moment
It was all very troubling:
after seven years of marriage to her whiny husband
with whom he exchanged a functional loathing
when their virtual twin-ship must needs be admitted
in spite of biological differences, by all involved,
when Fortune seemed to shine again,
his sister began to show; smiled mysteriously
informing the table at dinner one night, 'Yes, it was true'
confirming her first pregnancy at thirty-three.
He contributed to the round of clapping
the oohs and ahs of genuine delight;
too, tinked his water glass with a nearby fork,
the tedious wedding enacted again
in a smaller, more intimate version,
but it made him uneasy.
It was the usual thing: love-neutralized venom-
he didn't like it-it gave him indigestion,
the now-endless prospect of blame.
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ASong
Many wonders disappear
never to return, so they say-
Tyre's towers, Minerva's spear
Ptolemy's library
And that paragon, the Parthenon
stove by a shell one day
But I don't care, let them disappear,
I don't care, I really don't care.
refrain
So they say, so they say, but I don't care, no
I don't, not a bit, let them go
I don't care at all what is gone or will come
I don't care anyhow.
Even Earth grows old
and trudges a little on her way
Her heart goes limping worn and cold
and duller every day.
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An Intruder 4
I am not superstitious. In the least.
But I found his suggestion to reach inside the nest-
However shambley-grab the eggs and sow them in the vacant lot next door
Over the rail, you know, among the standing tares and purple thistles
(Opening Nature's ring...slipping in the non-conducting link,
So to speak) wierd.
Barbaric. Unlucky. Un-nerving. Contra naturam. All that.
Also a bit crude.
And certain to have the same unwholesome effect
As opening an umbrella in the house, say, or
Failing to say 'gesundheit' when somebody sneezes,
Allowing a black cat to race across your path,
Separating twins and other indiscretions
Popularly (and, so, indisputably) held
To conduit disaster.
This, I recalled, was the new millenium. There
Was only one thing to do-get a second opinion.
'From many, one.' The more the merrier.
So I called my other friend Grey Wolf-
Part Shoshone-who better to ask?
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Creationist I
When the good God who made heaven and earth
had labored six days, he looked back on his work:
all and all he found it good
and wonderfully suiting the weather of his mood;
winding it up, might have let it go
forever to spin unseen, unknown,
left it behind, or drifted on-
for he could do better, he knew;
But watching it wink and pulse and gleam,
vanish behind its atmosphere
of cloudy swag, to reappear
in a twinkle of azure, gold and green,
something like longing mixed with fear
blew through him-he muttered 'all,
all for naught, my pretty dream-
all for nothing, it would seem.'
And loath to leave it drift without
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Secrets 5
But the third kind of secret
is the heart secret.
Secrets, these, of things that transpire in the dark
between two or more persons.
Secrets which expose the inveighlings of lusts, the tightening limbs, and cinematically cast the fissuring and collapse of will
upon the mind's eye, like a sand dune sacked by a seastorm
These, of all secrets, are considered most elite:
virginal. inviolable. Patronized by the deese,
and while they are young
worthy to be held in utmost confidence
by any man who changes his socks daily,
who has a bank account
or hopes to see his children prosper.
Secrets whose telling may rend apart
the fragile liens of newly-weds;
interfere where serious troth is pledged;
that in their very unleashing
start household wars; burn down houses
wherein lives and livlihoods are merged,
and costly, new dining room chairs commissioned from Henredon.
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