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~
A blood promise
On the threshing floor
--a strand named Skull of Sidon.

The sunset passage
No longer a place for them,
The acceptance of absolute negation
Remedios the beauty.

Saint Fishermen churn in the waves
Crushing grapes from the estate,
Even the girl with the silver eyes,
Only then will their house be blessed.

Women uncharted,
But prisoned on watery shore,
Hum a silent prayer.

This is atonement day,
May grace be with them
In all the days ahead.

~
I was putting on jeans.
My dog was smiling.
Sun was coming in the window behind us.
We were there
reflected in the screen
of the old tv I had fixed myself.
A second sun
was reflected there with us.

I was young.
My dog was alive.
We would watch "The Adding Machine"
on the old tv that afternoon.
I was getting sober.
The room was small.
It was years ago
and I didn't know
that I would remember that morning
forever.
2025
Kentucky cookie cutters are the best,
For cutting pieces out of your head.
Memories and distant pleas,
Erase with ease,
When you chop em out,
Using a Kentucky Cookie Cutter Thing.
Patented pain remover

Awaken refreshed, hush the alarm, time for another caper,
cuddle with the kitty, good morning, my fuzzy lil slayer!

Feed the furballs, cereal for me, start the coffee maker,
may be a good day today, at least it looks good on paper.

Drain the main, check the mirror, what-up my playa
wait a sec, is it my self-hate, or am I a little greyer?

Inhale my morning nicotine with a sugary caffeine chaser,
hazelnut and doubt, mmm, that's my favorite flavor...

Brush and shave, step into the Hypothetical Argument Simulator,
hope follows soap down the drain—oh well—see ya later!

All dressed up, glance to verify the happiness imitator,
hold my chin up high, but only for the cologne sprayer.

Front door locked, start the car, on the lookout for hidden radar,
try to outrun the bitterness, traffic jam, wish this were single-player.

Make it to work in one piece, if just the outer layer,
brain boiling beneath, my good old trusty traitor.

Copyright © 09/11/2025 Jason R. Michie. All Rights Reserved.
she inquires why I write so many poems,
easy comes reply:
It gives me a fantastic living,
it makes and gives, each poem,
a calculation, a reconciliation
of who I am...a miner of the
mineral wealth in my veins
Sacrament of an autumn park:
yellow wafers on green tongue,
blowsy refrains of early dark.
Head spilling and heart sprung,
I step across these broken shields
to a new-faced evening street
under clouds with bruisy weals
that peel, reveal white meat
of moon, sliced thin to eat
& maybe sate a null that gnaws,
a null that was born when I was:
a branch is incomplete
until the last leaf falls,
transfigured into scrawl.
ABAB CDCD DEED FF
Gravitational Arc, my debut poetry collection, is now available in paperback and on Kindle!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ46FNR6
Six
On a day that was
fraught
with anxiety and anger,
I sailed on
to the
other side.
The two pens that
blew up in my hand
foreshadowed the
prolific writing
streak to come.
Six poems today,
a personal best.
Bukowski would be
proud.
He might even
wonder
How I did it without
******
***** and
cigarettes.

It was easy.
I had bluebirds for
lunch, and listened
to Vivaldi.
I just let the telephone
ring
ring
ring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMbrfKP2H38
Here is a link to my YouTube channel where I read from my recently published books of poetry. The latest video is a reading I did at the Clear Lake Public Library.  They are Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse, and Sleep Always Calls.  They are available on Amazon.
peeress: a woman holding the rank of a peer in her own right.

what tools fo you require?
a microscope, binoculars, perhaps an observatory telescope...

you ask to peer into my soul,
the heart of the matter,
and I object
not,
asking only for a workman's wages,
of honest preparation,
have you the tools to see me properly,
and when you love what you see,
will you have them by your side
to see the future close by,
and so far ahead?

do you possess within thy
secret places,
an archeological brush
to wipe  gently away my ancient earths,
or a toy red shovel to remove fossilized
10,000 year old grains of old hearts,
or fresh, damp from this morning,
of words and sand from my inner
beach, even then, the tonnage may
require an industrial excavator
to clear, hold and perhaps contain
    all that poetry, all that love that it contains,
so I ask, you, myself:

Do you have the proper tools,
the necessaries and the necessities,
to find     to store     to relish and    to delight
in what you may find?


be an explorer,
and write of all your discoveries,
hurry, for the word
time
means in soul terms & the heart's specialized verbiage,
never enough

so girl scout/ mademoiselle peeress


you s t i l l
have much to assay/essay/uncover
re the meanings of love...
for there is  as much to learn from the
quietus of love,
as there is, from the vibrant tumbling of
climbing to new heights

peer carefully...



5:44am
Wed Sep 10
Twenty Twenty Five
"you have the power to inundate,
pro-create as you initiate the young
with the magic of your words.
" ^
<>
awake, askew, at just past midnight,
reread these worded cords with no deliberate haste,
as is not my wont,
no smile and drive~by for these privileged privies,
that unknowingly wrench and divvy my parts

no, theses require forethought,
deliberation,
there will be no outpouring,
there is no need,
this is not a crack to be slow filled with a potter's
artisan gold,
but a cutting that highlights continental divides,
wounded spaces and pain,
for which no glossing over can easy relieve,
each word a chosen well

for you make your own Grand Canyons,
in this life,
chasms that render, sunders with a constant but
invisible echoed thundering,
off /of my soul,
turned my persona, physical and intellectual,
into a walking, though awaking of the deadening
of a personal failure, a fail~you~are,
that cannot be undone, and now, out loud,
alone in the dead of night, in the construct of early mourning,
yes, in the sunroom where there is no sun nor son,
I weep openly at
words that should not have been
so tenderly and sweetly,
tendered to me

inundate,
I know this word,
better than most,
for grief is an old acquaintance
that you want to keep at a good distance,
for when it in-un-dates you,
you, visibly marked,
a cheekbone or two crushed,
a limp with no raison d'etre
and a chest pain, no pill can bring to
heel

for I am a centuries old grief,
and the inundation I speak of,
is the loss of child,
who has divided his living cells from my mine~mind

how oft, what is plainly visible,
is missed, goes dot unconnected,
this pulsing compulsion to lift the chin of the beginners in life,
whose sorrowed demeanor, complected temperament,
incompleted confusions,
can sometimes be so easy swatted,
encouraged away, and sometimes not,
but openly pleads for compassionate leave,
an easy helpful nudge away from
from the riptides of growing up,
& growing lower...

so my wonderful life is not so wonderful,
and my bad posture bent over is not from laziness,
my surgically repaired ventricular machina,
is more than a physical symptom, just a ticking clock
that solves for the quantity of beats of
busted opportunities

outside, an owl,
perched in a nearby acorn growing giant.
whom we have never seen,
for darkness, his/her palatial estate, hiding place,
hoots with no regularity,
a derisive hooting,
thinking I am too, asking for compassionate leave,
'but I am not

some five, nearly six decades ago,
a young songwriter wrote:

"Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by
"^^

this never just passes by,
for its arrow is a permanent implantation in mine,
and the owl just hoot hoot hoots with the stubbornness of
an unhappy chile^^^

so I see now,
how I overcompensate,
and without a knowed thought,
extend a finger, an arm.
an entire tired life,
to
initiate, pro-create
the younger ones, (1)
but this still,
does not,
nor ever will it,
rhyme with
expiate

this, my very own
9/11,
and that other one,
which I experienced,
as well...


2:03am
Thu Sep 11
Twenty Twenty Five
<nml>

now, I rest, for how long?
^
words in a note from patty m., my unseen dearest friend

^^
Graham Nash

^^^
Children: "Chile" is a dialectal spelling for "child," pronounced like "chīl"

^^^^
expiate: atone for (guilt or sin).

(1)
""and the new players,
the young poets,
slap me on the back,
saying I had a great run,
but they don't know 'bout my
secret stash,
preprogrammed to appear,
long after these fingers
cease their tangled tango of tap dancing,
my dust,
my lusts and musts
will unstilled yet be
blowing, floating in the
soon to be'
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