April is Poetry Month Poetry Project Poem # 1....

Poem #1

On the days precipice candles are lit
As we yawn and recite our prayers
Into blankets at the foot of our beds.
What is warmth if not an invitation to
Seclusion and reverie?
In our dreams we trample over our wishes
And lament at what we can no longer possess
Or have never gotten in the first place.
Here we are simply projecting onto others images
Our grandest wishes, our worst fears,
As we wait for them to speak or whisper into
Our ears what we want to hear
And if we don’t wake in a pool of our
Own sweat and jump up as if a robber
Were breaking in or climbing through our
Window, an incomprehensible emptiness
Replaces the tears running down our cheeks
Because we cannot remember where we’ve been
Only where we wanted to go before the sun rises…

by Micah Zevin 2010

Bass Sol Take V: Hey What happened to the first 4 takes man? Well...

Bass Solo Take V

Extinguish flames from exhaust pipes
Smash horizontal mannequins right
Between the eyes when they refuse
To come home with you and submit
To your wildest fantastical whims.
Take the blowtorch out of the garage
And some clay and multicolored paint;
You are tired of others telling you
How people should be and want to
Construct your own Pinocchio, Cyborg,
Human being out of its silent wooden pieces,
Until there is a glimmer in its eye
You’ve never seen before.
And then, just when it seems ready to
Speak, move its arms, ask you for your name,
You plug in your saw and start to saw as it
Screams, cries and bleeds chips, as if it just
Learned how to, until it is a silent
Pile of dust, and you are in its way again
While its remains blow in the wind,
Your Frankenstein monster…

by Micah Zevin 2010

Meditations on Past Situations....a crazy hellyeah yeehaw to everyone!

On the mountain

The crows gnaw on my knuckles because they smell
Like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and I’m wearing boxers
As I rock in my imaginary chair while I mull over my metropolis
The boy smoking pot over trashcan fires is staring at me
As if to test my mettle…

Bloated as a wild boar I snort at him until he offers me some,
Addressing me as ‘old dude’ as I sit on newly painted park benches
Where I went to escape oozy’s blasts of water, boomerang Frisbees
That hit me in the noggin, or the onslaught of acorns when I was in
Elementary school and it was recess.

I ask this boy as he smokes a “doobie’ why he isn’t in school,
I see the school principal and quickly tell him to hide under
The park bench so that he doesn’t get caught. “Is that you Jerome.?”
She asks, as I rise…”No,” I say, “It’s me George…
Do you remember me?”

Even basketballs would give me concussions until I developed speed
After being on the track team for a while. Now, sometimes, I am slow,
Even doddering sentimental ‘numb nut,’ as the crows point at me, laugh and eat what’s left of a dead squirrel,
Even its bushy tale.

I remind myself there is no such thing as an “Age of Innocence,”
Only moments in time where wicked sites and sounds
Attach themselves to throats like honey
And bare fruit…

by Micah Zevin 2009

Off The Cuff? Guns at Star*******

Unfiltered

I took out my gun in starbucks. It's time
To hunt some latte drinking smucks or should i with holster by my side join in for a muffin and a conversation about literature, diversity, controversy oh no not me! I am just practicing my right to bear arms then no one will question
My charms. Oh my precious why is the world so viscious forever testing my mettle. I dream of bloody rose petals and your silver gods killing my dinner
Maybe a yuppie or two,just kidding, how can I get you to do my bidding? I can look right down yr barrel without fear encountering those different from myself. I am poltically correct to a fault. Instead of commenting on your race or religion I call u a communist a socialist liberal devil and leave other judgements to the heavens...

Micah Zevin 2010

Dying for Accpetance .....

Dying for Acceptance

Don’t you poke poke poke me in the face
Or I will go gaga wah wah all over you
Until you are surrounded by my insurmountable tears
Ducts releasing there cloistered moisture

Onto your jumbo black cat umbrella riding
Rivers sewage down Broadway’s brassier
Another bad romance lit by a sea of blights
And nothing is ruled by time (simultaneously)

Clock the clock over the head and put your ambitions
To bed at the pillowcase factory on the back alley
Side streets where cats fight in front of apartment
Complexes over a sleeping bums half eaten slice of
Pepperoni pizza

It is easy to be dismissive about another’s failure
And not your own during such moments there
Down denial is cluttered with syringes and the
Bodies they have touched so unceremoniously

When you are stuck, you are like a piece of gum
Some junior high school boy has angrily squished
Under his desk or on the empty seat next to him
Waiting for whom he certainly knows will sit in it

For cheap laughter or some unexplained vengeance…
by Micah Zevin 2010

In Transit...(in the underground?)

In Transit

The spasms are cold as they crawl up
The ridges of our spines…
In the tunnels the behemoth
Waits like a scourge in the timeless world
The sardines, punch lines in an old joke,
Peel back their metal tops and breathe
Before they go bad if they have not already
Elbows, knees, assorted arms splay on top
Of one another as fatigue overpowers the senses
Decaying flesh talks like robotic Peanuts characters
On the loud speaker and we don’t listen
Until the news is tragic because lamentations
Are so natural; murder hard attack, bomb squad
And these loose moving parts quit there
Unauthorized or hapless touching as we are moving
The slowest building guitar solos
Anticipating crescendos of shake and rattle
Snapping of our most precious strings
Until we are home and turning on our lighters
Reserved for the soothing ballad that
Helps us all justify our stint with snipers in the mountains
Of the desert, our beds made of fire…

By Micah Zevin 2010....Happy New Year fellow poets and writers....

The Neighbors....

The Neighbors

Who’s bowling up there?
I’m not a radically conservative square
Who doesn’t like a party but I do believe
At three a.m. my sanctuary should be silent
Not the pounding fist of belligerence
With mop handle brooms poking holes
In my ceiling
Every night my neighbors chew my glass
Skull with their teeth on a microphone,
Recite Lou Reed’s metal machine music
In the voice of a shrieking cat,
Weld shut their children’s braced teeth
While they mumble and scream
Warriors chipping at my walls above for
Revenge— nothing seems to curtail
Their all night orgies of fascist trampling
Over my beleaguered eyelids that would
Like to remain shut until 6 a.m. at least,
So I can do my yoga without rupturing
Tiny holes in my stomach or passing
Out until my bicycle while parking
And because they don’t stop
I must get old-school-acme-cartoon
Explosion on their asses-maybe they’ll
Think its drug induced and they will turn
Into a basket of stars scattered in the cosmos
Ready to explode, as you will stand outside smiling
As the building cookie crumbles to the ground
In a swath of dust and blindness, and realize you
Have taken it too far and now have no home to
Return to…

by Micah Zevin 2009