Daliesque Dreamscapes etc...

In the break room

The coins never tumbled from
His mouth like slot machine levers
More like a few good blueberries placed
in a bucket at a berry picking session.
He was tired of checking his accounts,
transferring his worries to save his sanity.
There were few new books to be had for the arts
if we were too eat as well.
He ripped into peanut butter sandwiches,
chicken nuggets over brown rice,
a ziploc bag of sliced almonds...
Was it quitting time, time to quit
or merely to relinquish ones duties
to the slum lord and find another one?
He does not know how to win arguments
or haggle when hunger pangs hit
and he can no longer yell at the public
who totally disregard the signs,
the carefully plotted words
you go through one by one
like an instruction manual.
He will bury them in a pile a paper
he will never look at again
until it is time to go on the road...

A Rough Draft....(Ok little Monets out there Aren't we all Though)

A Rough Draft…

I live in the gap between boarding and exiting
and the vexation of never being able to walk
through steel like a ghost.

I told you I don’t drink anymore. I’ve made
adjustments to my consciousness and although
there are many holes in my plot and it’s useless
to stop time and fix what is shattered or broken
I keep urgently forcing my words, my intentions,
my projections upon you…

I’m not an act or even if the camera shining in
my eyes tells me so, I’m just being myself .
No one holds cigarettes like I do with thumb
and forefinger out of some dime store novel
alleyway. No one downs a beer as if beaten
back by heat and gulping as if a glass of chilled
water in desert glare.

I don’t drink anymore but to stare off a massacre
I must go to Otto’s Shrunken Head and blow up
the lonely person’s head I know until it is healthy
and lucid.

Yet, I see blood in her sight and wonder how it does
not make her blind. She smiles at me and tells me
to join her at the bar for drinks. She orders one of
those drinks that makes you believe you are some
kind of tropical island vacation when you are actually
in a retro bar on the cusp of spring in Manhattan
to watch some amateur stand-up comedy all the while
managing to keep your food down.

I am not miracle on 34th street but I pay my rent to the
Bronx. I hopscotch over the dog shit down my streets
and avenues. Each and every morning my brain is like
a scrambled egg oozing out of an overly buttered roll
and down my chins staining my shirt. I am sardonic in
a can of half peeled opened eyes fluttering as I push my
way through the automatic doors, and hope I wake up
in a semi-conscious state somewhere new…

I will follow you and sit down and feign giggling just to
stave off a massacre. You ask how am I? What am I up to?
I say, which one? I feel obligated to save her and everyone else
excluding myself from repetitive destruction, from history. I am
not an impasse in a relationship. I must be selfish, not annoyed
and put these grating apprehensions out of my mind. I can save
myself from insanity….

by Micah Zevin 2011-2012

Keep plugging away even while attempting not to trip into the cesspool....

Modern Manifesto (Walled off Streets but Occupied by who?)

I will fight for my button pushing
resume typing book searching digits
until the rusted metal gates shut and
the Wi-Fi fades into the cracked concrete
by the bus stop that takes me to the subway
on my way home.


I will fight against the narrow-minded power
hungry pretend subway riding CEO slurping
billionaire mayors and governors who want
to give a free pass to the rich while extracting
the stitches out of the state: civil service workers,
firemen, policemen, teachers, librarians, nurses,
who hold our bodies together, our homes, our
minds with masking tape, construction paper,
staples, presence and a hose on a ladder.


I will fight, I will sit-in, stand-in, sleep-in on the
Capital stairways, petition until slime and grime
and crimes are rectified? And the crust is removed
from your eyes and the rich have one less summer
home to return to, one less yacht, one less crystal
chandelier or Camaro so the state can pay its bills
and I can continue to live my lower middle class
economic dreams and not be so scared that I will
let my parts up/off breaking at the seams…


I will fight because the termites are multiplying
and the dragons are spewing fire onto our rapidly
disintegrating paychecks and wrecking our non-
existent saving abilities further. I ask your mr.
volition, mr. politician what about my crashing
ceiling?, my debt ceiling, the parasites collecting
my sanity in a locked box of broken legal tender
and throwing away the key?


And I will fight because I am more than just vexed
by hexes I don’t believe at moment like these,
but I do believe in a potluck of bad luck, of tyrants
and schmucks mangling my entirely shriveled futures
forcing me into a darkness, a creature afraid of light,
and moving onward….

by Micah Zevin 2011

Complexes (The Modern Condition#+++always occupied with itself....)

I pop lozenges like they were Xanax. I am not a phallic symbol (cymbal?). At work, when I point fingers I am statuesque and somnambulant and intuitive. I clean myself in the staff bathroom as if I’d been exposed or inflicted with germ warfare. I am a zombie so in order to think properly his/her/your brain (unseen forces) must be consumed, even if inadequate or tainted or mangled in some way, because I will never be satiated, satisfied so it will never conclude until you chop off my head as if I was some kind of many pronged modern digitized Medusa. I only drink tea on the slim chance that the crumbled leaves will offer me some wisdom about paradoxes, dilemma’s that have become inscrutable to me in the face of advertisements, chemical dependence, economic anxiety. Maybe, as a result of being resistant to suggestion and easily distracted (ADD)by shiny sexy things it is difficult to form a sentence or some sporadic revisionist poetic histories and click send click send, impatience praying like/to some kind of literary/illiterate living gods…. by Micah Zevin 2011

Projections or Projectiles....Occupied...my blog reborn one year later...

Projections or projectiles…? (Occupied)

Am I free? I’m not free. What’s free mean anyway?
Putting your snout in the trough with the other
assembled pigs at feeding time until the whistle
blows and it is time to go. Sitting on the couch
in a trance, watch DVR programs and cablevision
while the debt mounts and the bills go unpaid.
Nothing is free in this world excerpt or not even
your anguish at foreclosing, being homeless,
forget about not even accomplishing your goals,
living up to the standards of your parents, your wife,
your children yet to be born. Do I have time to be
forlorn when I can’t get what I need and feed the
blood of my fortune beholden to your expectations,
your disappointments, your apparitions?

by Micah Zevin November 2011....folks

My blog Reborn ha ha ha ha lol! read on if you dare....

Poem#24:The Massage Parlor: My back has potholes...PoetryMonthApril..

The Massage Parlor

my back has potholes
squeeze with feet and fists rub oils
exit work blues clues
is a fart a beautiful sound
await my release...

Micah Zevin 2010

The Sardine Can: Poem #22 and Poem #23: At The Hotel

The Sardine Can or Subterranean

peel the can back slow
take out crack pipes hide in smoke
everything dies swarmed
open sesame no exit
fool I was here first

At The Hotel

the black dress confess
do pests wear old lady vests
mess with the mess less
blame psycho in the mirror
check out prophecies

by Micah Zevin 2010

Incentives: Poem#21 April is Poetry Month...hi ho!

"Incentives"

Underlings like things
money carries shiny snacks
nap sacks to eat
we long for praise and patience
we crack toes and wait

by Micah Zevin 2010

Poem#20: From The Top...AprilisPoetryMonth

From The Top

rhapsody in spew
at the consolation of thieves
where reprieve means shit
lecture moles and sheep with heat
they will gasp and hurl

by Micah Zevin 2010

Giant Tanka: Poem#19: 'The Looking Glass' AprilisPoetryMonthproject

'The Looking Glass'

i walk the ocean floor
in venom black underwear
ready to spread ink
onto vultures beaks at dawn
i have tossed my turn

why remember dreams?
to make fetish past peep-holes?
in still waters we drown
just as we live with the fishes
all is alarming

i peel back sardine cans
and watch my father cry hunger
at palates assault
he's not mystified by loss
just disappointed

The blame blindfolds me
and places me in freezers
at the butcher shop
I opened her diary
It bore through me fast

when shiny new pans
attack will knives follow too?
wear baseball helmets
as darts shoot from her eyes
see my reflections

by Micah Zevin 2010

"Dead Again" ( butthistimeforreal: A tribute to Pete Steele of TypeONegative

"Dead Again": A Tribute to Pete Steele, lead singer of Type O Negative...

With sharp teeth of steel
you sang to night your demons,
romance's, many sweeth deaths.
Kisses were not just bloody in
the mind or dominated by October
Rust. They left an impression,
the mark of keys opening hill tops
reserved for some Nordic gods on
their way to the heavens.
If your heart failed it was not
because your heart was a failure.
Your fingers knew the right strings
to pick...

by Micah Zevin 2010

RIP Pete Steele of Type O Negative

Poem #17: Through the Storm: AprilisPoetryMonth...

Through the storm

Umbrellas shatter
I am wet and done
Spellbound by surrounding pools
I watch birds scatter
I smell the sewage...

by Micah Zevin 2010

Transformation(s): Oil in the Ocean: Poem #16-April is Poetry Month

Transformations

her plumage lost sheen
when she fell in the black vat
there was two more eyes
and a longer neck rose above
branches to view what was never...

by Micah Zevin 2010

Hallucinations: Poem #15 April is Poetry Month-See it and Believe!

Hallucinations

i miss the boat house
by inches in my sailboat
I live in the breeze
and breathe with gills like a fish
Now, I am not here...

by Micah Zevin 2010

With Time: Poem # 14 April is Poetry Month

With Time

we are not round
dip us in dirt and sunshine
we will not wither
unless you forget we grow
or shrivel into dust...

by Micah Zevin 2010

AmericanTanka#13: In the Air: Inspired by the Polish Gov't plan crash.

In The Air...

in the plane a fly
gets into the pilot's ear
as he skims the trees
He thinks about the government
They are together...

by Micah Zevin 2010

The Food Court: Another Tanka Poem #12

The Food Court

in the maze of food
she searches for hamburgers
when she feels thick as a brick
it clears her minds fried debris
There's no room to fill...

by Micah Zevin 2010

The Mood Swing:Yet Another Tanka...Poem #11 April is Poetry Month:

The Mood Swing

while lying on couch
tears of anger shoot inside
as reality show
exclamations pelt with stones
I let my wounds bleed

Micah Zevin 2010

Poem #10 Creation: A Tanka

Creation

at secret harbors
nets catch newly born children
fisherman blubber
and smoke cigarettes deeply
as each leave the womb

by Micah Zevin 2010

American Tanka#9-"In Springtime" AprilisPoetryMonth-Onthespotpoems

In Spring Time

missing the winter
like yearning to be roasted
sun makes us vampires
and allergies sweats out eyes
she speaks to butterflies

by Micah Zevin 2010