Morning wood
by michael hessel-mial
Like entering a room
where a woman waits,
reclining, with coy eyes,
I stumble into awakeness
onto my erection, silent
and patient.
Given time to dress,
it isn’t rumpled or slouched
in its suit of hardness, but relaxed
and full, having taken the morning
to wake up before me.
It doesn’t want me to wake
to cajole it to orgasm
and fall back to sleep,
but [...]
nineteenseventynine @ October 12, 2009
The Opening Line
by michael hessel-mial
Something
punctures the center
of the surface,
but of what isn’t the surface
for long,
like a ball’s gravity
bending space
in an unseen dimension,
matter leaking towards the intersection,
the point of reference
that allows it all
to be seen through.
Punctuated
by an exclamation point,
a lofty claim,
or a dusty feeling
opened with rusty hinges,
it neither traps
nor sets the trap
but announces
the bait that warns
of [...]
nineteenseventynine @ September 14, 2009
sky-green clouds, blue earth
by michael hessel-mial
Sun curving lightly,
twist
over the glittering
blisterdome, six
mile-high coffeeshops
direct lightning
to where it cannot be reached,
except through
handshakes. I long
for the days before
the menstrual taboo
replaced the world of smells,
somewhere between sulfur
and the aging limburger
our parents smelled for us.
Taking the same feeling,
and without turning it
upsided down,
what once was brevity
is now gravity.
Industrial smoke is best
rendered
in pastel, [...]
nineteenseventynine @ November 12, 2008
Do it.
by michael hessel-mial
Do it.
Right. Man, that’s Right.
Man, you do it. Forever.
This time. But a moment.
Bookends, bookended. Right.
For once
I. Never mind. Open.
Spaced out under heat lamps.
Faster, faster. Do it. [...]
nineteenseventynine @ August 27, 2008
girl in one glance
by michael hessel-mial
I spent all day following a bruise
on a pale bare thigh,
all day, every day,
over hills and down rivers,
at the bottom of the ocean and the center of a star,
beyond the day in the year of our lord,
during innocence and after the modern,
past the sentence through syntax,
onward towards preposition and allegory,
turning [...]
nineteenseventynine @ August 8, 2008