Muscle Poems

Michael…

Shimmered on strings, hung hungrily like a thread

Trembled on wings that are too big,

Like lips, like hands, that wrench their fingertips.

 

Anguished from controlling carefully the molding

Of the Sistine epiphany smiling uncontrollably

Looking up, yet

A shyness frowned upon, too cold

Strung along, frowned upon

Then he’d wail,

Just give it me

Oh, give it me

Then flail me in the air

 

Words and shaking like swords shook the timbers of the Lord’s

Cutting through ether, flying that soared

I then to promise,

I’ll make myself more.

Yet, don’t talk to me about mysticism

I am all unto myself

A saint goes through something, something like that?

It may drive me mad, and that is something else

Rumi and Chamms have been well, all alone.

Strung along, trembling on wings too small.

 

While fervency is angrily showing up, shoring up its strength,

While the herald of this age professes to be more,

Some false romancing of the present to satisfy the bored!

It’s the past in me, the past in me

Had having to conform.

Where has Heaven gone? Is it gone?

To get there, I must move on.

Oh, my Lord!

 

Instead, at home, as the rain checked in

The Jehovah’s Witness came to the door again.

With a guilty smile, I greeted as it was prophesied

Like I’ve heard these words,

One more time.

Like I’m dealing lint in pockets for heaven’s rhymes

How long can I keep this up?

Silence and its standing ovation. Til it hurts.

 

Names like Elijah or maybe Jeremy

Roam freely from home to home

Though Michael that I am, entertained, I refrain

Cuz my wings carry snow.

 

As air blindly slices through fresh ether when you dance

As your hands make mile posts in short wind with a listless lance

It’s too late to keep my feet on the ground.

I don’t know if I punch the ground will the ground win. Anyhow.

 

My eyes, now sickly pale, fluttering, in the iris in its garden, rolling around

 

Suddenly free, shyly enjoying the now

Out of me something beautiful, an unfamiliar laughter

A sudden grin emits from my clever less chin.

Love, what me are you after?

 

I come from Babylon, too

That’s come how I know

The mystic drip, the heathen dross,

Ascetic ways, the heathered moss.

Accentuating nature’s sultry flaws

I don’t pretend.

I scratch the itch.

I am God’s.