Michael Blumenthal Poems

Conformity caught here, nobody catches it,
Lawns groomed in prose, with hardly a stutter.
Lloyd hits the ball, and Lorraine fetches it.
...

after Tennyson
Now come the purple garments, now the white;
Now move the vagrant beds among the disinfected halls;
Now stretch the opaque hose between the antiseptic rooms:
I waken: and she looks at me.
...

Not merely because Henry James said
there were but four rules of life—
be kind be kind be kind be kind—but
because it's good for the soul, and,
...

If you are terrified of your own death,
and want to escape from it,
you may want to write a poem,
...

Just because a man pulls out your chair for you
and takes your coat at an elegant restaurant
is no guarantee that he really loves you. You know this,
and so whether he burps or farts over the dinner
...

[I] retrace by moonlight the roads where I used to play in the sun.
— Marcel Proust


At night, when I go out to the field
to listen to the birds sleep, the stars
...

A man in terror of impotence
or infertility, not knowing the difference . . . .
Adrienne Rich
...