Are you awake William Blake?

Heaven in Reverse

The passive aggressive angel cursed me in my sleep
And vowed to hit me over the head with a “real” mallet
Not the Acme cartoon variety. They did not want to
Waste their time on someone who would not reveal
Themselves. It was none of their business.
I had a cloak of invisibility.

by Micah Zevin 2008

Reading is not always so fundamental a right...

Functionally Illiterate

The man in the corner over there, on the
Right hand side is eating a bagel while
Glancing at the bill. He raises an eyebrow.
He thinks he has been charged for something he
Did not order. He will read your mind although
He will never see or analyze your words on the page.
He will not ask permission to go through your dirty laundry.
He will only look for the addresses chalk line scribbled
On the front of your garbage can. He knows you are not
Too far away. He will wait until you come.

Micah Zevin 2008

A Homage to Jose Saramago's The Cave...?

The Cave

There is no place to live anymore
Here only do we bristle at the thought
Of the day’s repetition
Canned air fresh, only the vague hint
Of sunlight in crevices near rooftops
There is something that can be said
About total order, the animal’s duty is
To resist the removal of the primal urge
Each day, someone tells us how to inhabit
Our space, good, bad, indifferently blood
Will continue to follow its path and become
What the tide not the fake computer generated
Tide signals and carries us away to where
Our sorrow will be excavated
Do we die in the blackness on a stone stool?
0ur clay fingers soaked by rain
And returning to the earth…
The incapacitated will view monstrosities
As if they were a historical carnival exhibit
(We’d rather escape the temporary)
We can no longer live at the center
Without the balance required being human
A place where the curious are punished
At least discouraged from their thoughts
Because one day they too will be put
On display for all to bear witness…

by Micah Zevin 2008

A Cry for help in the stacks from an eccentric patron at large!

Abandonment(Yelp!)

In sunglasses and baseball cap
She enters, her cane ahead of her
Purple and white sun dress. She sits
In front of the computer and enters her
Number.

“When I was young I wanted to be a
Veterinarian. I use to work with animals
I’d like to take that pit-bull home. He’s been
Outside for hours and seems so melancholy”

When we open the doors the next day
She is the first in line. She points toward
The empty food dish with wrinkled finger
She looks as sad as the pit-bull before
Animal control came take him away.

by Micah Zevin 2008

Will The Truth Be Told?

Aphorisms

Feed your storage space
Hungry puppies
The fascist-capitalist
Frontal lobe must too
Be stimulated by
Multi-colored rainbows
How does the eye taste
Once removed and rolling
Helplessly on one’s tongue?
The discontented too have a
Right to their emergencies
Why, why is there no union here?
When the parade has died down
And the mock rallying cries
Sigh at their apathy
The platform disappears
The hit is so dissatisfying

by Micah Zevin 2008
also check out new book reviews and online lit mag reviews as www.newpages.com

Commentary from the surreal perspective Yes/No?

Advice from the surreal

It’s not a lamppost, blue
The best through the decorative!
A regular place in your environment
Install it, blue! That light.
Two weeks, what’s next?
An emotional haze, a symbolic feature
Navigate with the proper illumination
Be deluded
Slowed down
Touch a bit.

by Micah Zevin (2008)

Pop goes the weasel as a metaphorical subtext!

What’s Inside (Pandora)

We do not just like our boxes
We love and nourish them
Like the mimicry of newborns;

When these boxes say follow
More often then not, we
Follow as if hypnotized by
What or who we are supposed
To be representing.

Human beasts, my imbalanced
Credit card debt generation,
Are fragile and ornery like
Constructed mathematical
Limitations;

The economy, drinking
Our own blood and spitting
It back into the wound
Now damaged as if it could
Reform and re-form and

And become a better box
Full of fancy multi-colored
Ribbons, and when it opened
No jester or weasel popping
Out to our surprise

Merely a swath of mouths
Void of salvia and comfort
Screaming in our ears
As if to ask the question
If we are boxed and remain
In our boxes,
How can we see what is
Beyond our borders,
Our electrified fences?

by Micah Zevin 2008

Stop Humping...Oh! I mean jumping on our bed!

House Party

All these bastards are lounging
On my leather couch in the
Living room.

Yes, it’s a party, but if they go
Into the off-limits bedroom
To sit on the fire-escape,

And come back to lie on the bed
For a tongue session,
My fiancée and I will be furious,

Because we are the only ones that
Claim a stake to this territory
Where no one fears reprisal

Or embarrassment.

by Micah Zevin 2008.

No Fork in the Road to Gentrification

Crossroads

We work on top of the remains of the industrial complex.
14th street and Astoria boulevard trucks of petroleum
And tars deliver nausea through library windows
While across the street men do not lumber,
They build your kitchen tables, desks and bureaus,
Carefully sawing the shape you will call home
And place your things on.

By the bodega downstairs, glass is carved for windows,
Storefronts, indoor gardens; and one can only hope
You see yourself in their not so tinted reflections,
The future. I will call this forward movement
The condominium, the co-op, the high priced rental
By Astoria park so that the gentrified too can sample
The delectable taste of the East River,

The twittering of birds that once the mall is built
And the poor have left will be trendsetter territory,
The new Williamsburg where the arts will not flourish
Because the rent will become a surreal rendering
Soon, there will be no more homes to care for
The children coming home from school to projects
Will have moved, vanished or become hallucinations

Yet, traffic’s death trap on 21st will still be there,
Magnified by the loss of small factory jobs present, long ago,
The forced migration of a population to a netherworld
At the edge of the darkest bodies of water only to be replaced
by upper class city dwellers rummaging through the
Neighborhoods stark and crumbling past for gemstones
to open and attract this crowd to its magnetic temptations .

by Micah Zevin
also check micahs new online literary reviews on Newpages.com
at these follow links
http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/default.htm#spilling

http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/default.htm

What's a Hero and, No not that Show on NBC!

Hero

When I came out of the hole
There was no belt buckle,
Arguments or rest stops
That could save me
Nothing but soggy fries
Fallen from the carton
Wedged into the seat cushion
No signs of the dreams that
Made me feel dizzy

It seemed that the wasps
Prodding my belly had
Escaped along with my
Father, mother, sister
Who had left me alone
To stare at the tinted mirror
To see what remained of
My face

I remembered something about
The precipice.
A plateau had to be climbed first
To snatch the sun away from the
Toasty smoldering desert
I felt sweaty and stuck to the seat
Like lifesavers candies melted
To the packaging,
They could barely save themselves

I pushed the coat off my back
Covering me as I was passed out
On our way to somewhere in New Mexico
Now we were stopped at a Tex-Mex joint
By the road
And I had three yellow jackets
Hugging the side of my blood stained stomach
They were squished dead
I must have been perplexed by my victory

Death and The Enemy at the Ice Cream Truck??!!

Death and the Enemy

When the ice cream man rang his not so ominous bell
We came scurrying like little ravenous thieves. We
Did not worry about the finality of endings, just that
Our ice cream would melt before we finished it,
Or that the local bully would knock it from our hands
And onto the floor by our feet. He would laugh and
Point as we sobbed as if we’d lost our best friend or
A member of our family in a war to some crimson enemy,

We would not forget how he shoved us and we skinned our
Our skinny knees, yet we would recover. In adulthood, there
Are no bells to keep track of who will be left behind, no machine-
Gun, ticking time bomb or three wishes will speed their return
Little pebble flashes of memory will remind us that their chimes
Once faint and indiscernible are firecrackers going off inside of us.
And it is best that we continue to run when we hear sounds that are
Familiar to us, once again, and leave the musical change rattling in
Our pants pockets to chance,

Pity a Ghost...

The After Life

The ghost carried me to the television
It was time for the morning news
Some sick bastard killed a young boy
And his pet bunny rabbits
I cried, being a ghost must be such a
Lonely mess.