Green Boxes

Have you ever seen a poet perform
who turns the lights on for you?
her words laid out as a copper conductor
hot to ground voltages on a an inductor

the world is languid
therefore the artist exists
arc to my soul a high voltage
on the summer nights
          could you hear the transformer
          humming in our suburban back yards?
          I too, write poetry, drunk, beneath the stars

she uses electricity like a goddess
humming transformers in their green boxes

An Act of Worship

Maybe another time
Another place
I would've kissed every side
Of your face

I step with the intrepid
Love never unrequited
I'm a god among the insipid
Flavor of stars among the timid

It's only demons that dragged me here
They're having me over for tea and conversation
Such atheism needs no introduction
Like white fingernail tips they know well the art of seduction

And play vinyl records to dance to
sing romance to
Push me into a corner
And recite Shakespeare and Homer

A dark room with no pictures
Will be the death of me
A small table for three
A chair, red walls, and a cup of tea

Let the torture commence with dignity
My friend let the hairs on your head
Stand in solemnity
We don't need whips and chains, conversation is enough to hold my head under the
          running water basin that started innocently enough because your secrets are
          buried deep but mine are an open wound for all to see so keep me back in this
          low lit corner with demons and torture and work me like you had worked last
          summer the stalks fell down due to the heat, an act of worship to the coming
          storms.

Schlafen

There is a place for it
and it is an empty side
walk on an empty side
street with no cars or

foot traffic rumbling by
but no hay bails either
just a couple of drops
of water falling from a

now grey sky

concrete and glass
seem so cold but why are
we so at home in them
and why are we not awake

yet?



-JM 2010

Paper Trails and Providence

Paper Trails and Providence

True art is not aggrandized
and it scares monsters away
monsters make mad metaphors in
mystery I pray as grass grows

years are cut from the dirt
and grow again or a bird
makes a home from the
scraps rise calm and

Agape rose from Greece
to Rome curved and columned
marble and stone became Europe
with velvet and gold

paper trails and providence
bring perfumes to the taste
peace is power of chaste over
haste with yellow roses

a wall can be a path
and monsters are turned to
grains and salt and
carried away with the wind

So true, paper trails and
providence bring things to
life again blue and white
breakers will bring you safely in

stuck sails and lighthouses
paper trails and providence


-Jacob Michael 2008