Emily Dickinson & other poetry.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
...Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
...Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
...Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
...Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
...Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
...Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
...And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

.....Bright Star by John Keats (1795-1821)

"Song Of My Life"

if i could make a song of my life
would anybody care to listen?
would it be bright like a summer day?
should i send the truth to hide away?

if i could make a song of my life
would the lies outshine the music?
would it make me stop and wonder why?
could i hide the tears and fake the smile?

and it's a long, long, way
but i try to find my world
i've been searching for a long, long, time
has anybody seen my world?

if i could make a song of my life
could i paint the tears with music?
would the lyrics drip with empty lies?
would it be a waste of time?

and it's a long, long, way
but i try to find my world
i've been searching for a long, long, time
has anybody seen my world?

(2008 db michel)

"Fading Away"

i can't feel the way you want me to
i can't be the one you want me to be
and you know it ain't easy

i can't stay until the bitter end
why hold out for a tearful scene for lies?
don't you know it ain't easy

i could stay another day
pretend there's nothing's wrong
but that won't change nothin'
'cause i'm fading away
one day you'll turn and see that i'm not there
by then you might not even care
so it won't matter

you won't even know that i have gone
until i've been gone most of a week
and it won't be easy

i'll skip the kiss and the last goodbye
hit the road and be gone tonight
but it won't be easy

i could stay another day
pretend there's nothing's wrong
but that won't change nothin'
'cause i'm fading away
one day you'll turn and see that i'm not there
by then you might not even care
so it won't matter

(2008 db michel)

Now five have come to dine
off the steady banquet of pink geranium;
the only sound is the whir of their wings.
Soon it will be autumn.

One is a window washer on scaffolding;
it pauses as though to sigh
before cleaning the next section.

But something, as always,
will abruptly reel up the ropes of summer.

Hummingbirds
by Ann Iverson

Medallion
by Michael Heffernan
I'm going to go out and walk around a little,
because it's a nice day, in the seventies,
after a night where the temperature dropped
just below freezing. There isn't much here
in the anteroom of the self, I don't think,
so why should I go on investigating
what last night's dream meant, or the subtleties
of the numerology of the soul as evidenced
in cryptanalytical encodings in the poems
of Bertran de Montségur? I'm out of here,
and off on a little walk in the neighborhood,
but first I'd like to tell you I appreciate
your letting me share. It meant a lot to me.
Quite candidly, I'm not sure what to do
on days like this, or any day, really.
It all runs together, into a place
the good seem to have occupied as their own
and spruced up so nicely others of us who aren't
so good, but not the worst of citizens,
can't help but feel a little out of pocket,
as the saying goes, and I for one would like
to reach into my pocket and pull out
the ruby medallion my mother gave to me,
which fell out of my coat into the grate
by the front tire of the bus I'd waited for
across the street from the Shubert Theatre
in Detroit in 1959. I'd say,
to anyone around inclined to listen,
here is a little something you can have.
I hope you like it. Why don't you just keep it
and give it to another good person some day.
Tell them it used to be Bertran's, who came here once
on a horse all spangled with rubies and golden bells.