Their Hold on Me

They block the solar waves of summer

pounding the earth like arrows
and hold onto me by a plexus mass
spreading like a cancer through me

I'm unable to stop them
all summer long
they are rooted in my memory
and even as the fall turns on them
and the winter harshness beats them
brown and mats them
against my icy black loam
their hold on me is parasitical-
they will be back in spring



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Counting

What's going on
in his miniature mind
another day of rehab
by 10 pm he is as worn
as any of us

His eyes will acknowledge me
but they'd rather close
in fact were part way there
but grew bigger on my account

His front right leg is jittery
a nervousness pent up
in legs that have done little
since a brute attack

We hear estimates
two weeks - a month
he sighs and I do as well
it seems long
longer if counting
in dog years


Michael A. Wells © 2010 - All Rights Reserved

From my journaling today...

"I cannot expect to grow as a  writer
 staying in areas of comfort.

One does not explore in comfort,
one soaks in it like a leasurly bath."

Auld Lang Syne

On a lesser day
I’d be working with the masses
and you would not be privy
to what I am saying—
but a lesser day this is not.
Today I hopped a ride
over town and joined you
and others and was touched
by your laughter and smile.
The cloudy sky had broke wide
open by the time we parted.
As I dove into the east
I left behind the topaz ball
slowly descending
like the Times Square ball
on New Year’s eve and I thought
how I celebrate you each time
we are together—
and how departing is like
saying goodbye to the passing year.

Spins

The knots are tight

laced lies that hug

her waist

she sees them
for what she wants
to make of them

one day blunders
another she blames
on her genes

Rainy Day

The rain slipped past us

like a line cutter

and puddles glare upward

frown and all

It was a day that stuck me

in the eye

with the tact of Donald Trump

and plagiarized my distaste

Out For a Drive

The flames rise on either side of the curves

and the fall wind threatens to spread the colors

about the ground.

The asphalt with shapely hips allures countless lookers

trusting the calendars will not deceive them

or waste their valued weekend.

A new delight awaits past each camber;

imperial topaz and alexandrite flickers in the autumn sky

subdued only by the occasional rust, tan or brown filament.

Technorati Tags: fall poem

Journal Bits

A few bit and jottings from my journal recently...

• vases stand tall/and empty on coffee tables/that seem lost without coffee./green plants offer no proof/of authenticity
• quote from Charles Simic - "The sense of myself existing comes first. Then comes images and then language."
• The asparagus was green/with envy next to the Julian carrots./My therapist would ask/how this makes the carrots feel.

Technorati Tags: Journal bits. Michael Wells

Visiting My Journal

Bumper Sticker seen tonight on car in Target parking lot:  Spiritual people inspire me / Religious people scare me.

Few Journal Bits this week:

notes to self....

topics to inspire future poetry

• Grandma fishing at Muscle Fork
• the act of shaving
• peanut shells on the floor
• geese on the ball field
• pill routine

polite conversation drizzled us/two scoops of vanilla ice cream, side by side with chocolate syrup

flies behaving badly in a seedy joint

I should like to have been there./Been somewhere emotion ruled/even if to have been speechless/but in the body./To witness a pair of long exposed legs/and feel some kind of movement.//

the stakes in the garden lean from the westerly fall winds

Technorati Tags: journal bits. Michael Wells,life as a poet

Back From A Weekend Run To St Louis

Back home after a whirlwind trip to St Louis to See Daughter #2.  Haven't done a Journal bits post in a while....  A few things from this past ten days.

• 9-11-08 "I look at a picture on my desk of all four of our kids together and note their facial features and how much they look alike."
• 9-11-08 Quite from Rainer Maria Rilke ~  "If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well."
• 9-13-08 evening... "There is in you what is beyond you"  ~ Paul Valery
• 9-14-08 The blackened windows was unyielding./There is another side to this-  I dispute,/the blank stare, dark and framed/in a plague of crippling lies./
• 9-15-08 "conscripted fantasy"
• 9-16-08 I am better suited for productivity this morning as I am not zoned out on carbs. Life is a balancing act to get enough but not too many.
• 9-16-08 The language that we cling to is a monument that testifies to the organized progress of man. It is so exciting to be linked to this feat, this act of human achievement by the very use of it on a daily basis.
• 9-19-08 I got my ass kicked good a the office today.
• 9-20-08  ...had dinner, tacos from Jack-in-the-Box.
• 9-21-08 "a box store full of false hope/discount prices and depressed wages
Technorati Tags: journal bits. Michael Wells,Rainer Maria Rilke,a poet's life

Tricked

Ornamental excuses abound.
Window dressings, all of them
to purchase the justification
necessary to have his way
when validation was a rabbit
no where near the scene
of the black top hat.

FREE CD OF LOCAL POETS

Technorati Tags: Poetry,Johnson County Library,Michael Wells,CD

Monday, September 8, 7:00 at The Johnson County Library, 8975 W. 87th Street, Overland Park, Kansas : Poets on CD release party and reading

Why should kids get to have all the fun? We deserve a reading program too! Come hear great poetry and find out how to participate in the BlitzRead! adult reading program at our kickoff party. The first 50 attendees will receive a free CD of local poets reading their work.

Yours truly will be there to read and is featured on the CD as well.

 

Siblings by Michael A. Wells

An Audio Link of the revised version of Siblings.

We Missed - Broadside

My Second Annual Poetry Month broadside is still available.... email me with name and address to receive a copy.

Fell off the NaPoWriMo Wagon

I did it.... I'm confessing and hopping to climb back on. My daughter and her new fiance flew in to town Thursday evening and just left to go back to Arizona this afternoon. It was our first time meeting Derek. Of course if Meghan had been alone it too would have been distracting from poetry. I'm not complaining. I'm glad we had the time with them. I'm just saying that a poem draft a day was not going to survive this event.

So there, I'm bad. I've failed. And now I've gotten it off my chest. Tomorrow is a new day and I'm ready to get going again.

Day 10: My NaPoWriMo blog released from the grips of bloger at last

A spiked presence—

Before my eyes
A star with supplementary credentials
Far more prickly a presence

A perverse way of making points
And overload of opinion
Not at all shy of expression

The tentacles of the nucleus
Of radiant light
Obliquely insane

Day 9 ~ Accessorizing

Accessorizing

The shuffle of shoes—
Black pumps, red sling backs;
The ruffle of the lips—
Earth tone hikers and aqua fluff flops…
Just a few stepping out
Across my mind.

A casual tennis shoe—
You need several colors
To accessorize; if you know what I mean.

I pity women in third would countries.
I mean when you only have a single pair
You’re so limited with your wardrobe.

Day 8 - Untitled draft

Untitled

Uncorked and non-confrontational
An evening slumping gingerly
Into shades of melancholy
Befriends me and embraces
The many reasons lacking interest
In commitment to any plans tonight.

A hum of snow on TV
And nothing else in particular.
The phone may or may not have rang

Earlier. I was settled into the nights dip.
My hand has held the stem of crystal
But nothing else has required my energy.
A sip on occasion. A hint of pear and oak.
Buttery perhaps, if you say so,
I don’t recall—

There is a presence stronger than I—
Inescapable.

Even in a night of solitude
I am not without the presence of old age.
A shadowy figure that is at a distant
But not too much so
And he maintains a horizontal view
Of the future.

Day 7 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

In Your Head

Allowed into your imagination
I wandered, surveying foreign landscape
It was one of your shadow boxed thought
That informed my view of how you saw me.

There was a frightening simplicity to your organization.
Everyone you had ever met or hopped to catalogued
Into the Dewey Decimal System.
There I found your own self image scantily riveting.

Day 6 - Split

Split

Blue eyeliner
Lowered in sadness
Told just enough
To know he left
Again
The details
Were insignificant