The Regent holds court in a vat of cock-a-leekie.
The Regent prefers cock-a-leekie’s odor to that of borscht.
The Regent mistakes cock-a-leekie stasis for spirituality.
The Regent’s spontaneity resembles cock-a-leekie squirts.
The Regent’s proximity-fuzed door prizes imperil a fragile détente.
The Regent’s travelogue, Meine Stinken Fahrt, contains not a single umlaut!
The Regent delivers his regret-face address at his weekly auto da fé.
The Regent pokes about under the bushel where his light is said to be hidden.
The Regent’s edicts in Proto-Welsh are curiously entertaining.
The Regent demands of his mirror, Who gave you permission to wear my face?
The Regent’s ball gown and hour-glass figure lead to confusion.
The Regent declines invitations to events requiring batteries.
The Regent remains indoors when the heavens shed shards.
The Regent’s dispensations are mistaken for calliope toots.
The Regent says, I give them iron lungs. Does anyone thank me?
The Regent applies palette-knife textures to his generals’ battle plans.
The Regent’s abundant opinions rattle when he walks.
The Regent thinks of something else he should have said.
The Regent welcomes the palace’s first penguins.
The Regent, had he wished it, could roll up your lawn.
The Regent whispers state secrets to trustworthy furnishings.
The Regent enjoys pushing red buttons.
The Regent’s parents spoke in reverse to spare his feelings.
The Regent favors edible transitions.
The Regent’s occasional evaporations cast doubt on his resolve.
The Regent believes an aspic is a toothpick’s anal counterpart.
The Regent turned Cousin Lewis into an asparagus.
The Regent encourages moonlit calligraphy.
The Regent calls for plonk and any available thou when he reads the Rubaiyat.
The Regent’s peppermint alpenstock resembles a candy cane.
The Regent asks the Tooth Fairy which dental products she recommends.
The Regent thinks Stabat Mater means Stop That, Mother (pace Pergolesi).
The Regent preserves his best memories in Formalin.
The Regent’s ice cubes embody the essence of evanescence.
The Regent avoids targets that shoot back.
The Regent notes that, from above, his forests look like broccoli.
The Regent mislaid his velvet fist’s iron glove.
The Regent receives raptors but only after they’ve dined.
The Regent has been informed that turning the other cheek is not a tropism.
The Regent’s clouds wipe their noses on his shoulder.
The Regent favors vacuum cleaners for removing small petitioners.
The Regent, when he babbles, demands to know whose tongue occupies his mouth.
The Regent perforce wears his kepi to bed, having failed at biting it off.
The Regent’s pubic lice find contentment in long walks.
The Regent pelts adulterers with dust bunnies he harvests from under their beds.
The Regent’s bon mots amuse his parrot.
The Regent investigates every sparrow’s fall with respect to residency.
The Regent’s three sheets to the wind account for missing bed linens.
The Regent’s revanchist dandelions encroach on neighboring gardens.
The Regent, astride his grand mare, Grand Mare, reviews the realm’s nursing homes.
The Regent regards constipation as fecal sedition.
The Regent slips out at night through rifts in the alphabet.
Mike Silverton’s poetry appeared in the late '60s and early '70s in Harper’s, The Nation, Wormwood Review, Poetry Now, some/thing, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, Elephant and other publications he may have (and most likely) mislaid. William Cole included Mike’s poems in four anthologies: Eight Lines and Under, Macmillan, 1967; Pith and Vinegar, Simon and Schuster, 1969; Poetry Brief, Macmillan, 1971; and Poems One Line & Longer, Grossman, 1973.
As a culture go-getter, Mike produced poetry readings for The New School for Social Research, New York’s municipal radio station, WNYC, and Pacifica Radio’s WBAI, KPFA, and KPFK. One glaring regret: Mike had arranged to record Frank O’Hara on the week in which he was killed, the weekend intervening, by a dune buggy.
Mike’s music writing, centering on modernist classical, appeared in Fanfare, a bimonthly review, and several Internet publications, including his own LaFolia.com. Mike's reviews of high-end audio hardware appeared in the main in The Absolute Sound, a print publication, and StereoTimes.com. For the unlikely audiophile reading this, Mike's speakers are Wilson Audio Sasha W/P.
When Mike and Lee relocated from Brooklyn to Midcoast Maine in early 2002 he indulged an interest in Dadaesque assemblage, resulting in several works in a group show at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, and a one-man show at Belfast’s Aarhus Gallery. Mike and Lee’s 1842 house and barn are peppered throughout with work he’d have preferred to sell. (Jefferson Davis spent a night, obviously at an earlier time. Really.)