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Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Let’s bomb Dresden
with the black fire
of thousands
of bookmarks
with poetry
of poets
far and
wide

-so it
goes-

and
each
side is
printed
with verse;
flip flopping
through the air
each to land on
Dresden’s ghosts.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
From a room away
I thought Snoopy’s
high-pitched growls

and vocalizations
were the screams
of the Zuni

fetish doll
in Trilogy of Terror.
I was very excited.

But now it’s children
using polysyllabic
words

which just reminds me
of when I lived
in Park *****.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Third weekend in July
I love canoeing out on Northwood
Lake, early morning hours melting
into the pines, as I head toward the
island where the wild blueberries
lie. Tiny morsels, abundant and packed with
the taste of summer and beepollen and freshwater
and snow. Minnows nibble my toes, each one
a solid worm for the biting, as I slowly
fill a one-gallon jug, berry by berry,
to use for breakfast pancakes and
Belgian waffles cooked golden from
the waffle iron. Some of the ripest
berries plop into the lake. I swipe
them up before bass or sunfish
see them; always leaving the
green berries behind.
Pausing to taste some, they
split between my incisors;
I marvel at the flavor
while a loon’s haunted red
eyes stare at nothing.
Blueberries split like
relationships
occasionally do,
sour at times, always
leaving a taste on your
palate. Families, young
lovers picnicking on the
beach lake, confused couples;
they branch off, moonlight
silhouetting their outlines;
silent elegy softly blossoming
downward as their paths skew.
They won’t cross again.
My jug filled, I oar
back to the dock,
ears filled with
humming of birds,
insects, boats;
brimming with
the bream from berries
splitting apart,
and the intense
silence of blueberry
picking in late July.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
she gave him the moon he
put it in his head, said
I have no stars for
you tonight so take
these comets instead so
she took them held them
up right up so
high up to the night, saw
future past and presently
she bottles them in light
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
He hands her bouquets
She swats each away to see
Guns firing petals

She cannot recant
The burn of spells cast daily
Ring ‘round the roses

And we all fall down
Iron-hued blood that stained
Empty bellies rouge

It bled everywhere
Darkened slick of sick roses
She won’t let him cry

Flowers from his eyes
Or hanging paper dollies
Says that it’s okay

Says that it’s okay
She can’t spill bone-dry flowers
To drown in the Nile

She swats each bouquet
Why won’t she just let him care?
He’s swatted away
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through

glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,

that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating

the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,

cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab

hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,

his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,

3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,

liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks

in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-****, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-

and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-**** crust in his stubble,

and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying

she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Mike Jewett Mar 2015
That secret place in my brain
where my soul sleeps
when the beast
of depression
comes out.

When the
black beast
of depression
does come, it's
simply death while living.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Grackles singing black
Beaking notes of melanchol-
Panoramically
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
A scarecrow
Tired and pale
Rakes himself up
After the squall
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Marshy night, feux follets
glow, foo fighters on reeds.
Birds flocking from the fens,

nerve-wracked, prized
possessions left behind,
their collective nevermind,
divining rods to show them away.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
I carry the runes of you in my pocket
Smoothed while recalling
Your blank walks

A wash of blackcurrant and
Holly in your hair

Wandering aimless by shorn clapboard
and storm kestrels overhead.

I think of your eyes
While watching Venus blink,
Tiny speck of green popping

Out of the witching hour’s emptiness

Distracted by a sweet orb only daring to show itself
in time-lapse Morse code-

City firefly’s shy hesitant glow
of phosphorescent luciferase
Impermanent tattoos in the humid air

Asphyxiated by the hum
of flowing electrons by wayward wings
Vintage and neon.

I sweep your edda into the hearth
Ashen mingling of myrrh
and incense sprinkles its cinnamon

Onto bare exposed brick.

The lightning-scarred tree
with its bullseye of char
Burned inside-out,
Cindered base,
Reminds me of our concatenated dreams.

I touch the ghost of you
Roaming the paths of King’s Chapel
and Granary Burial Ground

Farsick and windtalking to yourself.

I still taste the ozone on your lips
After you rained all night.

I throw the bait of you into the water
and the sunfish of Northwood Lake nibble the worms
of your toes.

And I watch the sawing motion of your thoughts
on DVR over and over
Hearing the fibers tear

Knowing the damage of blades and friction

How your heart will always bear
All ninety stone
of Hunters Lodge.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Next stop: Haymarket
Doors will open on the left
» subway tunnel breeze «
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Grey clouds roll in
Over Mount Fuji
– Miyazaki –
Mike Jewett Mar 2015
Winter tide
She sits beside me
     The seashore
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Midnight’s glowing solstice moon
From moonrise to moonset-
She feels, hears, sees
Magic, crickets, skunks, dew-

She’s summer.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Inugami
gnash their teeth

at frigid air that leaks
from florid pores.

Bloodletting makes us weary
so we sleep and bleed

and dream
of Fuji's winds.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
The lapping waves
Knock around moonlight:
Coalesce, ripple;

Kestrels in their nests,
Reflected faces; bodies still ring
-ing
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Outside in the cold
darkness, neck craned
toward Orion’s belt
waiting for streaks
across the sky.
Leonids passing
by, your name
orbits in my mouth
like planetary moons;
shooting stars
reflecting
the past
in your
eyes.
Mike Jewett Mar 2015
I liked how the moon was low
hanging fruit on the newly
budding tree.

The blossoms seemed to
reach out, blindly grasping
for another tree's fingers,

fruitless, but the blues
of the sky
got in the way.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Moths frozen to the bark
of hundreds of trees
thaw in the warmth of the day.

By nightfall,
crescent moonlight
shines on dust motes

crucified to wood.

Specks glimmer,
beginning to hatch-

lime-green luna moths
unfold

from wingdust eggs,

edging off of oaks,
enchanting

the night skies,

in search of sap
or cinnamon.

By lighted sliver
they feed

on sugars
and moonbeam
stopping only to freeze

nights later,
fluorescent

bodies,

dust to dusk,
whispering along,

to the soft soughing
of pines.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Falling pink petals
Plinking my head
A saxophone serenade

Kind of kind of blue
A solitary birch among many hundreds
Of deciduous trees, its paper

Bark scored with age
White among shadows
And the endless breeze takes me up

Into Tiffany-blue sky
Pollen clumps litter the edges of lawn
Calliope streaming from a mared and seahorsed

Carousel dances in my head
Disobedient canine in exodus
Defiant against the silhouette

Of a circled dog
Line diagonally cutting across
Wah wah wah as the ducks in the pond

Are chased away.
Endless verdant day criss-crossed with
Walking paths and robin’s-egg sky punctuated

With drifting cotton shapes.
Brazen squirrels accustomed to the pleasant
Bustle and hustle

Bat City, unopened, in my lap
Mothers feeding children
Hungry mouths to breast.

Seeking out a lemonade stand
Near Winter Street in spring
A yellow burst of sour notes sing

On my palate
A bargain at a fiver on a day as this
Soundtrack peppered by buskers and

An ***** grinder turning the crank on his street ***** and
Birds and
The woo of occasional sirens.

A mother wheeling her child along
In a stroller
Mohawked, tattooed, pierced lip and

She smiles on by.
Ivied brownstones and balconies railed
With wrought iron

End our stay
On this idyllic day
In month of May.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
I love you the way the sun rises every day, without fail. I love you like the night loves the moonlight, covering the darkness with her glow. I love you the way the universe expands into infinity. I love you for each star in existence and that ever will exist. I love you like seeing a streaking comet that comes around earth once every 80,000 years. I love you the way the soil huddles and heaves in winter. I love you for every grain of sand, and I love you the way sand becomes glass, solid and liquid, when put to heat. I love you for the lovebirds in your eyes. I love you as silkworms spin fine reflective threads. I love you past galaxies and superclusters when seen at the speed of light. I love you at the speed of love. I love you with the wild abandon of migrating butterflies being taken by summer’s wind. I love you for each tear that’s ever washed your face. I love you for every smile anyone has had the fortune of witnessing. I love you like a sunset’s last rays of the day, turning everything pink and fiery. I love you as a boulevard winds between houses with closed blinds and closed minds but the road ahead is open. I love you as words meet paper and poetry is created. I love you for every ant that ever worked to make a home in dirt mazes. I love you like the snowflake, vast in number and each unique. I love you the way bullets explode from chambers stopping at nothing but nothing. I love you like jellyfish sting, unforgettably. I love you the way a lioness defends her cubs unflinchingly. I love you the way fog slinks in, engulfing and blinding and in love with the moonlight. I love you like time heading forward and backward and all that is is now. I love you for every ‘I love you’ ever spoken, written, and thought. I love you like sage growing in a sidewalk crack. I love you as hieroglyphs carved within Egypt's tombs, for the way glyphs of people all face towards goddesses and gods. Je t’aime, je t’aime, mon petit rouge.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
If there is a God,
my God
is a **** brunette.
Doe eyes,
stunning violet,
dark with eyeliner.

Star tattoos
twinkle on her face,
shooting across the skies

of her cheeks. A lower
lip piercing
accentuates

the **** curve
of her pouty lips.
Her lithe body,

also inked,
golden from the sun.
She smokes Camels,

sunlit smoke glowing
as it pours from her lips.
She’d ask me to join her

every time
she went outside
to have one,

grinning when she exhales.
I believe already.
My God.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Cheerio, cheerio
Four AM they call to keep the awake awake
And lull the slumbering deeper adream

Clutching vapors of the musky night
Cool, humid, starry eve
Betelgeuse humming a tune

Rigel entranced by the melody
Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka belting along
While the nightbirds

While away the hours, embedded
Deep in the canopy of springtime maples
And chirp, and chirp, and chirp the expanse

Singsonging to insomniacs
******* of blue, red, orange, all grey
Parading the atomic clock onward

And every night they chirrup
Never before two o’clock- why at such a time
As the deadzone of slumbering night?

And there goes the first
Cheerio, cheerio
Good night, good morning nightbirds.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Moonup, shades of sangria
hazed in mothwing
      dust

motes. We wrap in
flannel, tartan Seattle
      warmth

accompanied by smudging sticks.
Batteries never charged-
      defibrillator

shock. Flatline.
You said no violets (you
      didn’t

mean it). Moondown takes
time- scores of swaying shadows
      to arc

the parsecs. Inherit starlight,
bank it, never blink; wet stones
      echo

in the noise of stars.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
We fall hunting for laurels,
shredding

       our purple bruises
       into rose hips.

Our silversmith rings lose their fingers,
cracked irreparable.

       Our lives of lavish luxury
       lives as lapis lazuli.

The banks of the Ipswich
call out:

       silhouettes behind birch bark.
       Remember

how we used to swim
her waters;

       tread her auric ebb?
       We aim at deer, at ripening

persimmons. They chew
the fruit pretty.

       We aim at killdeer.
       Kiss a wasp.

We were dead fireworks
under Laniakea eyes.

       As midnight, we are
       films noir:

we imagine *******
Lauren Bacall from behind,

       speaking and kissing in tongues,
       her mouth tasting

of unfiltered smoke,
breathing the snow

       melting
       down her rose hips.

We stuff the stuff of nightmares
into a cardboard box.

       We howl at solar winds and polar vortexes.
       We are a vesica; both/and.

We fall hunting for laurels,
adolescent pulsars with persimmon eyes.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Whenever the sweet-scented
calyx of palm collects the blue
midday sun in your hair, I sit
passing time in the moon’s
phases and listen to the roaring
silence of thousands of fireflies.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Ptarmigans
under
permafrost

tundra

nestling eggs
hidden

from the moon’s
wan
glow

dreaming
of Seas
of Tranquilities

and outside,
outside,

desolate
snow.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
I showed her the stars-
I showed her lightningbugs-
I showed her the moon-

She showed me
That all of them
Were us;

That all of us
Were one.
Mike Jewett Mar 2015
Be-be-be-because, he starts,
stutters breaking words apart,
intoning what he’d overheard;
it’s painful listening, like darts

prying loose repeated words.
Naught’s amiss, we say, the birds
they laugh at us, ignored lampoons
and bullies’ taunts, how absurd.

He sits and watches his cartoon-
two mice who call a cat buffoon
I hate mieces to pieces!* shouts
Jinx the cat; it ends too soon.

Our son despises school, flat out.
We believe him, there’s no doubt,
But he’s a well-adjusted sprout
But he’s a well-adjusted sprout.
Utilizing the form in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Rhyme scheme: AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD, written in iambic tetrameter.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
snow for dinner for two on the town
with up so falling thousand flakes down
tie skinny knot to knees how they bow
dress floral pink enrapturing glow
Riffing on Cummings.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
This poem is a Google Adwords ad,
Intruding into the sidebar of your heart.

It’s a 1-800-LAWYERS commercial
Making you money off your personal injury.

It’s a brutal, ****** UFC bout,
Weak in its ground game but knows its Jiu-Jitsu
And it’s got you on the mat, begging you to tap out.

This poem is *****,
a SNAFU waiting to happen.

It’s the sarin gas Syria used against its own
And it’s the attack America will be responding with,
Using ****** to punish murderers.

This poem is a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken
Getting your finger-lickin’-good fingers nice and greasy.

This poem is yet another poet writing yet another poem about poems,
With the word poem repeated ad nauseum.

This poem is a bunch of awful band names,
Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Tapes ‘n Tapes, and Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!.

It’s a summer blockbuster and a teen dystopian trilogy.

It’s riding *****
In your ex’s car.

This poem is anthropogenic global warming
Whose CO2 emissions are dangerously high and climbing
While its polar bears are stranded on the broken ice floes of its verses.

It’s a baseball crowd speaking the words “no hitter”
In the midst of a no-no
Which itself is a no-no.

Its bad grammar, who’s comma’s are all, out of place
And its’ apostrophe’s, are meaningless.

This poem is Zooey Deschanel,
Who will not marry me some day, any day, in the future.
In fact, it doesn’t even know I exist.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Her scent- a supernova
Wafting with bells on
Come hither, come hither
A subtle pheremonal display
Lust, love, instant attraction
Racing hearts in sync
And we were madly, so madly.
Hand in hand
Wandering whitened cobblestone
Owing it all to the moon
Exhilaration and spontaneity
My eyes targeting hers like a bullseye
An unbreakable pining gaze
Hops and falling deep
Elbows on scarred wood
An empty universe
Except for you and me
Liquid angel- entrancing
Beguiling me, enticing me
What a mere drop used to do
Before the binary stars exploded.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
I remember when you were all
Tattoos & cigarettes
For me-

Cherries and swallows inked on your skin
You knew how tattoos got me going
Especially on you.

How you used to light a Camel
With a devilish grin
And blow your smoke right at my face

Maybe a few smoky kisses,
**** in your scally cap
While you’d snap inhale

Huge white ***** of smoke
Popping out of your mouth,
Right back in,

God how I loved that,
And you knew how your smoking got me going-
Your smoking was always the sexiest.

In our little barn
You’d show off your new tattoos
Smiling like the sun.

I still dream about
The tattoos & cigarettes
We used to share
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
The Big Bang theory
says nothing about what banged,
why it banged,
or what happened
before it banged
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
For Theresa. Rest in peace.*

Every star shines on you
Tonight.

Polaris, the North Star,
Will be your guide,

Reflecting your aura
In the smile

Of the Atlantic’s waves.
The silent forest

Looks to the skies
Where Ursa Major twinkles back

The light held in your eyes.
Sleeping bruins dream

About ice and glowing
Blues and greens

Dancing above;
The Northern Lights.

Every star will shine on you
Tonight.

The North Star, Polaris,
Will be your guide.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
All the elements of a perfect storm
But there isn't any water,

It's our drought. We thank
The families with thank you

Cards for siphoning
Out gas tanks

Spiced with dry rub
Rust.

Our children are eager,
Learning things you can't learn

From books; jailed women
Shackled to beds, giving birth

To honeybees
And teakettle songbirds.

It's hard when you have
No home to call home

Because snowflakes bring
Out the worst in him.

His dogs use scent to tell
Time. Time to board

Up the windows,
We say,

Waiting out the bone-white
Hunger,

Wondering which way
Is home.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
The mosquito was ******* my blood
and I let her.

My heart was breaking
and I let her.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
She slides it out
The sound of paper gently scraping cardboard
And it embraces her lips
A click and a glow
And all he can see
Is the ruddy orange light
And all he can hear
Is the sibilant intake of breath
As she draws her thoughts in
Warm and acrid
Through pursed lips she exhales languidly
And the breeze takes away her worries
And she gets a headrush
And takes in another mouthful of smoke
Scenting the air
She watches the white expand
Flowing like liquid through the air
She smiles to herself
As she takes her last drag
And a light in the dirt
Fades out into the night
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Utuqaq, the apocalypse,
won’t burn us alive by fire, no.
Mayans never spoke of *muruaneq

even in predictions.

Pirtuk, the apocalypse:
left behind in snowy bark,
footprints of squirrels
alarming at circling eagles.

Matsaaruti, the apocalypse —
the walking dead are peonies
furrowed on tombs. They’re not the end
though singing bowls sing

our breaths, icy and visible.
Siguliaksraq, the apocalypse.
Earth is grey and white;
pukak - the coming snow.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
The skin in our psalms
Our saviours

Is the skin that night
Peels from our bones

When stars refuse
To glisten like dew.

Our crossbars bear weight-
Nanograms

Adding up
To the density

Of hearts.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Books
of
snow
in
daguerreotype
swollen
on
the
creases
sprinkling
­from
where
only
peregrines
dare

— The End —