Lied Poem by Morgan Michaels

It came, the time, never coming, you knew would come
like night, suddenly eliding into day, firing off stars, mists,
crowding out the time that, never going, you knew would leave-
that strange, oxymoronic, dog-paddling cur of an existence
when, smiling, you and I compared impossibilities like fruits,
jealous only of which, apiece, was cleaner, plumper, sweeter-
victory so assured and foregone it was folly to tilt (it
not being the design of any designer to be having his model
lay gasping in the sand, bleeding, bluish guts piling out)
All now ending, suddenly or gradually. Laurels? Sure, why not.
and runcible good health? Ok. Gradually unlearned,
the follies and inconsistencies of our times, but meanwhile,
where the whine of the mower, the soft, gasoline-fume strewn air
the cry of the quail, flush from the underbrush?