Author: Michael Angelo

  • Wish Upon a Star

    Wish Upon a Star

    The stars in space are twinkling
    my name across pearl petaled sky.
    Something within eases, a child’s sigh
    escapes my lips and into the wide vision
    of a godly dream.

    Bronx streets are crackling with concrete
    grief. Feet draggers and dazed loiterers,
    brittle toilers, come apart regularly—

    One wonders if underneath
    such sky
    a gun or knife can take away
    such silverly light—

    Can a stranger’s deranged might
    truly cut down infinity
    smiling, perpetually mute?

    It soothes my heart, it does,
    how still
    things can seem to be.

    Although, I know
    heaven’s bodies
    and city’s bodies
    spin and cycle
    black depths and black speeds
    so fast that to the eyes they seem
    to be resting in peace.

    Can such illusionary serenity
    free the mind from debts,
    from the pains of making ends meet,
    from the strains of maintaining the lightbulb
    of the soul alight—

    can the reality of inner poverty
    cease to be?

    I wonder how many others
    look up at the night sky
    and wish.

    Does the bruised branded,
    gun-toting and scowling jacket,
    youth?

    How about the quiet nurse
    who over long seasons sheds
    her spring bright eyelashes
    over sanitation sinks—does she
    peer through the ceilings of hospital wings?

    Do we all feel childhood’s pang
    reaching
    from an infinity inside?

    Can we hear the muffled prayer,
    its delicate wish to come alive?

    Do our hearts somehow still retain
    a vision for haven,
    a yearning for home’s continuity,
    even long after we’ve been casted out
    onto the wet stoops
    and into the glare of unblinking streetlamps?

  • Within the Stones

    Within the Stones

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  • Above a River

    Above a River

    Sometimes, I close my eyes and imagine

    the breeze
    taking it

    all

    from me,
    leaving purity

    like sunlight on the surface of a river.

  • Exhale, Inhale

    Exhale, Inhale

    This very breath

                 is the life that births leaves.

                These very leaves in evening breeze

    is life that fills me.