A poem more enduring than a diamond?
Impossible but yes!
In our exuberance we pour hair on our wine,
cascading o’er the flesh shielding our coccyges
from scrutiny. So! A first in life and art!
Almost hairy coccyges!
The best poems smell of faraway caraway.
They mesmerize constituencies, yet beauty goes rancid
too long in the sun, so enable your resolve
with a good breakfast,
the day’s most important meal.
The best poems inspire envy. Swinburne vivifies, enfeebled,
sod-flecked, malodorous, in chunks. Also
I think we must pause and kiss.
The best poems throw switches somewhat recklessly,
allowing hummingbirds of a vaguely threatening demeanor to
menace ornithologists. While no one seems to care,
indifference offers no impediment to a courier, breathless,
with a fresh line:
“A moist aroma upside-down . . . !”
Somewhere that could be interesting,
plus thoughts about skin-care,
plus entertaining directions to alternative routes.
“Where should I put this Friend of Music?”
“Volta! Gas! I love you! Alas!”
For a better view of the poet’s aspects
one removes a thick black impasto. In his
melancholy phase (see phases of the moon)
the poet fills sauce pans with tears, their specific gravity
exceeding that of urine. “Is that a consommé?”
No, nor a contumely, mostly, and O how the blood
it makes one to dance in and out of
holes in the air!
Time is odorless. If one values his place in
the Cabaret Voltaire’s Catalog of Heirs,
one avoids adding thyme to our syllabic goulash.
Better than average poets experience time as a textured surface.
For the very best poets time is like a mango juice spill one
forgot to wipe up. Not to neglect the auditory. If one
knows how to listen, one would have heard
the very best poet ripening:
In infancy, squeaks; in adolescence,
rumblings; in maturity, ruffles
and flourishes.
Impossible but yes!
Mike Silverton is most recently the author of Anvil on a Shoestring (2022), Trios (2023), and Yoga for Pickpockets (2024).
His 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.)