Author: Michael Angelo

  • Christ

    Christ

    I found a flower on the ground,
    the only flower sprouting through a field of concrete.

    I called it Jesus.

    Every morning,
    I visit to watch the miraculous thing
    lift up the sun, marveling
    at how it pulls light into cupped leaves,
    and scatters it.

    Jesus calls it rain,
    and every day I,
    with all the creatures of the land,
    all critters crawling on cement,
    drink until well drunk.

    We then watch clouds swirl into stars
    and laugh.

    Sometimes,
    to make us laugh some more,
    Jesus takes a seed,
    covers it with sand,
    and skips it across the night-water,
    where its reflection becomes our reflection,
    a silver joy round in endless sky.

    After a while,
    on those nights,
    birds descend into their nests,
    dogs and cattle nestle,
    and long echoing yawns
          slip
    from the bottom of my chest
    to fill the land with sleep.

    We sleep, Jesus and I.
    We dream, Jesus and I.

    Our dreamscapes never needing concrete.
    We never needing legs,
    with their bulky burden of muscle, bone, and flesh.

    We fly
    like fish fly sea.

    We breathe
    like fish breathe sea.

    The world is open
    and we are free
    to forget who is who,
    and what is what,
    and what the name of Jesus is.

    That is the sweetest thing.

    On these many flights I cry,
    and my sad and happy tears scatter—

    Always, I wake
    on level ground,
    with half remembered dreams
    sprouting through my heart.

  • The Woods

    The Woods

    It’s so nice here.
    I feel like a newborn in love,
    like someone looking at the Sun
    feeling a tickling in their heart.

    A giddy spell is overwhelming
    my freshly blossomed senses,
    and a shiver slides
    along the cord still connected
    to the womb;

    an old laughter stirs:
    it is the Joy of the World. 

  • Defoliate

    Defoliate

    Sometimes I feel horrid,
    like a lecherous man
    who takes what he wants
                        and then leaves—

    I venture into Woods,
    inhale her orchid scent,
    bathe in her turquoise stream,
    and dance,
    holding her long leafy tresses in the palms of my hand.

    How I love you! I sing,
    grateful for all of her gifts.
    My poems sprouting like butterflies
                               in her expanse of flowers—
                                                                   

                            then I leave.

  • The Two Trees

    The Two Trees

    I.

    Inside me
    there is a wild and rolling forest
    with trees of all kinds braiding together their roots
    and intertwining their branches.

    Happiness abounds within my breast,
    scurrying across countless moss bathed stones
    and filling the leafy base of my being
    with sounds of life unfolding, of life unwinding
    petal by petal, exposing
    all that is sweet nectar
    for all to drink and be nourished by.

    Outside of me,
    there is also a wild and rolling forest—
    it is called Humanity.

    I am a stranger in this land,
    though my face appears
    so clear
    on the dark surfaces of its rivers and lakes.

    But this Humanity,
    despite its familiarity,
    is cold and foreign.

    The easy mist of my lungs
    within moments
    freezes to ice and plummets
    with the sharp icicles dangling
    on the sapless branches
    of Humanity’s trees.

    Leafless, skeletal,
    the gnarled fingers
    are pierced through by the rays
    of a spiteful Sun.

    What has happened to Humanity,
    I wonder to myself
    each moon’s turn.

    My mind cycles—
    first a saintly compassion,
    then a righteous indignation…

    Just look at the mountains!

    Once proud and noble aspirations
    lying buried, obscured by frost,
    inspiring no one and nothing
    to challenge their lofty heights.

    Indeed, in this winter wilderness
    my eyes are needled by countless icy spears
    that conspire a netted haze,
    blinding I and countless others,

    and perpetually dispelling the fires of ascent,
    and keeping our soles from reaching the peaks
    where our former trials would stretch beneath us
    as ant trails in a bush.

    II.

    Blinded,
    and oppressed with a faceless horizon,
    I struggle
    to move
    a single foot.

    Humanity
    is a white wolf
    ravishing itself.

    Steam from smoking blood
    is ever pouring from pores
    formed along the ground, Humanity’s
    raw red heart
    which thunders like tectonic plates—
    clashing,
    thrashing,
    and breaking apart
    as the pillars of Man
    in a continuous and vein attempt
    usurp one another.

    Such a futile fight,
    to feel the blessing of a Sun
    which continuously glares hatefully
    at such a confused planet.

    The animals have gone with the flowers,
    and the insects with the natural rhythms
    of life and death.

    Now we die discordantly,
    as slitted notes on sheets
    burned by fires stoked by hands
    that have traded instruments of song
    for instruments of death.

    Ours is a tragic melody!

    Ours is a tragic melody!

    Ours is a— melody, no less.

    III.

    Though I find this forest’s wild white howling
    obtuse,
    and struggle
    to love it,
    I note a soft fluty breeze blowing through
    its desolation.

    It asks one to close the outward senses,
    and to hear it;
    it compels one to discard their coverings
    and stand bare.

    The golden gale
    requires trust.

    Thus, I stand naked, always waiting
    for this tundra’s absolving breezes
    to brush my tingling flesh and enter
    the slopes of my lungs.

    Against my own shadow,
    I remain hopeful that these fluty currents
    sweep across my inner mountains
    and bring a calming coolness
    to my spirit.

    IV.

    Nightly, I dream that within me,
    my soft and happy creatures
    croak and chirp and sing, and infuse
    this outer wild wind
    with verdant heat and pulsing feeling.

    I am not a continent so far removed
    from the world;
    thus, I exhale
    golden breaths twined with emerald,
    offering back
    something warm and alive
    to ice scorched
    Humanity.

    V.

    In some hidden dens, I hear
    the ice walls melting, dripping,
    seeping into softer earth.

    I envision my face
    within those puddles,
    my reflection in their depths
    clear as moonlight.

    Humanity, my kin,
    my mirrored happiness and despair,
    my vibrant thunder and wrathful hale,
    my fire and ash—

    How can I hate you?

    Indeed, I am lost within your storm,
    seeing nothing in your distances—
    but, that is only ignorance,
    my embittered eyes’ slant.

    There is a horizon.

    It waits—

    It waits beyond the white walls I perceive.

    I know this—

    I know because there is also a horizon
    inside of me.

    And somewhere—

    Somewhere in those ice pearl plains
    stands a godly tree.

    Its body a tower
    reaching
    beyond the heart’s petty wintry whims,

    and its branches crossing
    the bladed border that divides
    one man from another.

    Within this shimmering twilit space that splits
    apart horizons,
    stands

    a bridge and revelation:

    Winter and Summer,
    their branches interlaced
    as beginnings
    to one another’s
    ends.

    Humanity,
    a limb
    of my World Tree.