Michael Stefan

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

Classrooms of emptiness
Remember her linen dress
Iron-on patched backpack
Math class with no slack

Crumbling walls
As we ghostwalk the halls
The place we had lunch
With our wild bunch

Trash littered parking lots
Weeds rule football plots
Wind whistled window frames
Dreams we'd achieve fame

A culture of bullying
With behind bleacher ***-beatings
They might all be gone
But scars are carried along

A tomb of lost memories
Waxed floors on our hands and knees
Now just empty dirt
The school may be gone
But never the hurt
Never the hurt

Sometimes as we get older we forget about the everyday awful things that happened to us in high school and how much of our lives were defined there. I wrote this poem as a tribute to those high school memories that we all have or are making presently

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

Swallow

Swallow the seeds of hatred
and bloom
into
something horrific

Swallow the wine of fools
and get drunk
on
your stupidity

Swallow the meat of madness
and be
forever
unfulfilled

Swallow another breath of ill intent
and don't be surprised
when I, with glee
watch you choke

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

White Lace Desert

Slide
out of broken glass beer bottles
to greet the yellow sun
as we pack our van together.
Lurch
onto baking highways
as i inhale your salty sweat
and feed on all your essence.
Ignite
those feelings of passion
you echo drummed away
into our white lace desert.
Pale
against the glowing horizon
your bleached contrary
visage in moonlight.
Awash
in feelings that you hate
for making you wonder
if you took the wrong trip.
Wallow
in the evening breeze
that builds its spite
at all your battles lost.
Allow
yourself a chaser
of barley and rye
mixed with laudanum.
Yell
in fury as you're tangled
in our white lace desert
as you wasted away with me.

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

Playful

When you sleep,
I think of putting my finger,
in your nose.

Would you be mad?
Or...
happy that I was thinking of being playful
with you?

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

Mentorship

It is not in knowing
what you know,
but in accepting
what you don't,
to find intellectual
humility,
and strong hands
to guide your path,
that separates
human from beast,
and hobbyist
from truest artist

Like, find someone you can learn from and accept that we all have a long way to go to reach our pinnacle and our peak.

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

The Lighthouse

Oh, in a faraway land
It stands, of deepest black
The great lighthouse
Judging us, weighing us
As we're measured
And found to lack

No seams of stone
Nor hollow sound
Nor doorway made for us
A midnight fortress
Set to sunny skies
As landscape turns to rust

It's ghostly light
Brings naught,
Absent of illumination
And so it's stood
As quiet sentinel
Passed down from crumbling nations

Devoid of any human sound
Quiet as graves
And cold as ice
No one dares touch
It's absolute surface
For fear of its dark price

For all of eternity
It has stood
And watched you on your journey
From rage to joy
And love and loss
The lighthouse observes your yearning

Michael Stefan Apr 2020

My Muse of Sorrow

All poets speak of muses
To light their way of verse
For us who've lived abuses
Our muse need not bring us mirth

For sorrow is a motivation
It's a loss that guides my pen
My rhymes take form of devastation
My verse speaks of the end

Tragedy sparks fire in my fingers
With bleak outlooks for tomorrow
This saddened spirit always lingers
She's my muse, born out of sorrow

I have always been that person who is spurned to action after something bad happens. It's a sad way to be sometimes but I find my best poems speak of some of the worst times of my life. Keep hunting your muse and hope you don't find it in the same box that I have.