Carolyn Michael

If I had you
I’d give you my heart

I’d take it from my jumping chest
...

Golden curls rest on her pillow
Tom Toad gets a kiss on the nose
Mother’s curls are kept away
With satin bows that glow
...

I took a walk on Sunday
Down the railroad tracks
A row of boxcars came and went
Pulled a breeze across my back
...

I live in the grass
Sometimes they lure me to the doorway
With promises of wine
But they punch my stomach
...

I live in a hole
I like it
It likes me too
The walls are hard here
...

The people I meet have died
They shake hands
They shake fists
They chomp and chew
...

I see you every night, I know

Because when I wake up I feel like
...

He was taken away
By childhood
By mother and father
By everything he made true
...

Forget your arms
Forget your legs
Forget your lips, your chin
Forget your head
...

Each day as a prisoner
I see birds in the yard
Free to fly south to warmth
Or north if they please
...

My greatest fear, darling
Is not losing you to
War, and darling it
Is not losing you to
...

This me wants a pain
A sharp one that pokes ribs
No dull aches that press so hard
On my charred breast
...

The poetry around me ain’t even words
It’s a feeling I try to get rid of
Not by overflowing or war but
By stayin’ in this poor town poor
...

I can’t talk
I grab at winged words that slip
Around my fingers
I jump to reach the high ones
...

Hurt takes your place when you leave
Whether it’s the absence of a whole
Or your coldness at departure
I’m left alone with an enemy
...

[Inspired by Bob Dylan's 'Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie']

If you find yourself stumbling over sidewalk curbs
And your friends help you up, but they just make it worse
...

I said I wouldn’t let it get to me
But sometimes we all lie
From the blacksmith’s window I’m staring
At the bustling crowd outside
...

Saul knew how to do it right
He was always so content
He stood his ground with dignity
More solid than cement
...

Kids sang songs and slapped greasy hands behind the school bus
driver. Head up, eyes forward, glaring into smaller
species. Unsaturated, dry, prime for filling up with pointless
facts. What, are, you, doing, Tourette’s driver pushed forward
...

Your skin surrounds strange beauty,
So blinding and pure as if
An inadvertent miracle began you.
I know one day if the earth is sick,
...