Michael McLean

Michael McLean Jul 2014

I climb in a way daring the floor to crush me for

the sky to touch me so that I feel meant to go

down though deeply I think I never will I think

that on a journey to the centre of the universe I'd find a mirror

and the discovery would take from me an awe-inspired 'I knew it'

and through this I avoid reflections

answers to questions unexpected or unwanted because this

life I'm writing needs to glue me to the page or else I veer away

and into the submarine that would take me to the floor of the depths of

the deepest darkest sea

#dying #in #i #two #night #one #know #monophyly

Michael McLean Jul 2014

Water, White and Black

I am of water still thinking I'm in it

there's no ripple it's internal

body temperature thick and dark like black marker or pen ink

writing yourself poisons you

but I feel fine

maybe I read it wrong or heard it for too long

this love song in the chambers of me

#love #song #eliot

Michael McLean Jul 2014

Baghdad

we love a guy with a black eye blood shot

those cute five-finger dimples in his jawline up in millennial graphs

of x-time and y-self worth

increasing steadily in units knuckles and palms

lips and prods in a smooth

arching crescent down-facing hieroglyph of his swollen socket as

the plane descending for Cropper and kudos

touchdown

#self #worth #youth

Michael McLean Jun 2014

Here

I just looked at the fire pit all full and overflowing

with ribbon-fire a bit like the beer can I think I'm holding

thinking about burning oxygen not kindle running my hand

through to feel but too fast to know what it might be like

without burning alive or maiming to the point of uselessness that I

couldn't sense with a lack of nerve endings in my puddle of

finger tips deconstructed into money I gave the bartender for

remembering my name until the wolf whistled in the closed night

that I recognized and dilated down to now

#wolf #here #there #anywhere #whistle

Michael McLean Jun 2014

The Awe of a Lack of Centre

as a kid I believed

I thought of the stars as high in a sky grown

from the ground up straight for a hundred years

in the eye-shaped pattern of sight I

with my *****-shoes dug slugging heaps in steps eighty-years

long like there was somewhere else to be or go but o this is it I'm

stuck in the awe of an out-of-focus centre and infinity that scares

me but is truly just a blurred hour glass fallen on its this side

#oblivion #infinite #infinity #spelling #canadian

Michael McLean Jun 2014

Back

my chest kills in heaving beats tommy-gunning-for

an enveloping ringing without ear plugs in the maddening

murdering manipulating ever-exacerbating

well we ripple grains from the walls for the newness of a Spring’s

retention-of not the express delivery of an immaculate conception

#back #read #without #punctuation

Michael McLean Jun 2014

Stupor

liquor gets me real drunk and warm

in my stomach is whiskey kindle

my chimney throat smokes without fire

and all the burning and pressing

matters leak without heat

#stupor #drunken