Best Michigan Poems
Just as bees squeeze like watermelon seeds
Spit across apricot fields
My wife and I on Friday
Join the lines of highways up north
Pulled by hilltops to the Leelanau blue sky
Where lakes stir in the wind at the citrus rims
Of wine valleys below
And cherry orchards blossom in row after row
Like sheets of cupcakes spiraled with frosting.
Tonight we will sit tight around our lakeside fire
As petals closed upon this blaze of flower
With a Loon trilling her flute of bones
To the stars salted across the night
And voices bump from shore to shore
Murmurs softened beyond repair
The cabins flickering to a second life
In a fuse of fire lit around our lake
A tradition. We stop the car a ways away
From my mom and dad’s cabin
And let out our kids on the shoulder of road
To run like deer the final half mile.
I used to call Michigan my sweet home,
growing up used to camp by Lake Erie,
now this state has left me sad and alone,
honestly there’s nothing left there for me.
Jet’s Pizza was my most favorite food,
Jimmy’s Coney Island every Tuesday,
now all the loss and death has changed my mood,
and to leave this state is all I can pray.
Renaissance Festival in the summer,
used to be a place of laughter and fun,
but now Michigan is a big bummer,
and pleasurable moments I have none.
Michigan used to feel like home to me,
but maybe I should move to Tennessee.
December 29, 2016
I look upon the water glittering and bright, white caps flashing, dancing diamonds in the light
The breeze is strong, crisp and clear. Boats abound jibing sails dotted far and near
A flash of white and screeching cry, seagulls appear racing through the sky
Sun on my face fills me with cheer, for finally spring is here
The coast before me melds into cityscape, buildings spiraling high. Glass and steel glimmer bright in the light, stretching far before my sight
People hurry by hither and thither, and I wonder if any take a pause to consider
The beauty of this place, this breath in time, spring is here truly a moment divine
“GO BLUE!” I hear the crowd scream,
the fans all get excited and blow off steam-
University of Michigan rocks college football,
as the Wolverines prevail and Ohio State falls.
Maize and Blue with Michael Jordan jumpman,
jerseys to die for, everyone dressed in the stands-
A touchdown is scored and the crowd exclaims,
“HAIL TO THE VICTORS! Tom Brady in Hall of Fame.
I grew up in a family where you must marry a fan,
so, I married my Nicholas, he loved me for who I am-
We have season tickets in a Big House suite-
to the Michigan Wolverines, you can’t even compete!
Sports Shorts
May 19, 2017
Coast to Coast
The sun ascends over the Great Lakes
Settles back into the indigo depths
Flight of a copper swan shore to shore
With her sweeping wing tips skimming
Commanding
The azure locks of eternity to open
Gather her iron-ore souls from the cliffs
That lift along the turquoise bays
Arise
Our northern Holy Ghost.
These drinkable oceans are graves to glaciers
Tombs for freighters
Limestone crypts
Where condemned sailors still dance and drink
A thousand clicks amidst the ancient glow
Below
Moon boulders like mobiles of suspended fish.
It’s as if Michigan’s peninsulas
Was its own sliding green continents
Fitting together pieces of a new planet
Waves bellow a dare to all the apocalyptic surfers
Come sail these giant breaking swells.
Though you’re a dipped hand
Waving to outer space
It’s your down-to-Earth bare cold caress
That we count on for dousing the summer steam
From our steely brow.
Michiganians
Plant your bare feet into the hot tops
Of the Sand Dunes of Sleeping Bear
Prepare an avalanche slide
From the side of your hand
A child pushing away the world’s troubles
Throw out your hard chest
Reveal your beautiful breasts
Like the goddesses and gods that you are.
Gaze out from these colossal pink shores
To the horizon that bends like a violin
Under the chin of a setting sun.
Michiganians
You are the everlasting Keepers
Of the Mighty Mighty Great Lakes.
Mute forests, harmony with nature some prefer
Intimate times in her lakes and fields
Cities, huge, cramped, cacophonic clamor
Hit the forest every weekend
Is still pure, when you go "way up there"
Great untouched woods of the north
Another cannot compare with the Great Lakes Splendor
None need try, none need dare as I will ferociously defend her.
Embrace her in her beauty, if perhaps someday you go,
Enojoy autumn leaves, fishing her the lakes or playing in the snow
A TRIBUTE TO PRINCE FROM PONTIAC, MICHIGAN
Driving a new Colorado Storm into the City with the radio disc jockey playing a song of Prince.
The sky is clear and the sun is shining.
I feeling good irregardless.
Of course, he will be missed.
It seems like life is leaving today with a mental preference.
Is it better to believe in immortality?
His [Prince...] body was found in a peaceful state.
It seems to be best and in a better place.
Walking into my place of business with a solemn face.
My mind is preoccupied with thoughts of life itself.
It seems like so many known travel a foreseen path.
Transgression is life expectancy destine.
A lifetime is never aged when you live life to its fullest and enjoy every day.
Even when sadness embrace, as all of us know, our life still will span the globe.
Existence is eternal to our souls.
Prince was a sparkle that true essence shown.
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Written April 24, 2016!
Abstrusely they spoke about things unknown.
They figured she understood because she responded within knowledge given by the Lord.
Never could she state what was meant.
She countered innately.
She rejoined her past.
Her findings were that someone, other than herself, revamped yesterday.
How does history repeat?
Atrocious is this cruelty.
What went before is not to be.
However, a reality has formed from yesteryear.
The future is a seed, which has matured profusely.
Seething a lost is she who faces a breach in her memory.
Neurological resources are their tool.
The mind willingly enters this superlative institute.
Reconsider what has been done because tomorrow has come.
Reflect to divert to revitalize a city’s self-worth.
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Penned on September 06, 2014!
Our old Plymouth wagon sits junked in the yard
Collecting pine needles and rust
Ten years of abuse and driven too hard
Now an eyesore, the neighbors might fuss
Chrysler Corporation was not at their best
Before Iacocca, I think
"Car lot got flooded but we did a road test."
The salesman said with a wink
A knock on the door, 'Wanna' sell that ole wreck?
I live down 'ar right crost the creek'
"How much?" 'Thirty bucks!' "Okay, what the heck?"
(He stuffs some more Skoal in his cheek)
"Whatcha' do with 'em?" I ask. 'Crush 'em!' He hacks
And spats on a flat balding tire
'Front 'uns look good, we'll haul 'er from the back
Now what did I do with my pliers?"
'Anything in 'ar you might wanna' keep?'
(The door handle sticky with sap)
A moldy child's baseball glove on the back seat
And a faded old little league cap
Slowly the wrecker-hearse jacks up the rear
It snaps and it groans in protest
"Thirty pieces, that's all? Please let me stay here
I'm tired and I just need to rest"
(It's backwards I tell you, something's not right
With the way that old car's being towed
So lonesome it looks, its hazy headlights
Staring sadly down at the road)
N/A in contest 'Pick a Title' judged on 11/13/2014
Arms and legs peddling struggling
I tread
In the middle of the lake
There is 300 feet of blue water
Between the soles of my feet
And the 10,000 year old dance floor beneath.
Torch Lake never gives up her dead.
The lake’s bottom is pocked
With springs bursting as jets from Middle Earth
Jumbling boulders like popcorn.
This is where the drowned bodies sink
Irretrievable by dive teams or priests
Those Ojibwa fishermen ripped from their Birch canoes
Loggers clunked dead on their heads
Great Depression titans
Still stitched to their britches
Top hats and bow ties
Pistols clutched to their hands
Wives sunk from hurt and betrayal
Factory workers snapped in two
A young girl from a rowboat
Caught in a sudden storm
Clapping for her tossed dog
She dove in.
I wonder from down there
Where they’re all doing the jig
What I look like to them
Up here?
Another man walking on his knees?
Just as mirror of the sea,
Lake Michigan’s shinning big.
Boats are passing with the sails –
summer has refreshing air.
Ideal shallow to swim water –
heated, crystal air vibrates,
at trees people sit in shades,
some are playing on fine sand.
Shining with the crystal sparks,
spacious beaches - waterfront
and the Downtown stands afar.
Reddish setting sun with lure,
sky has color of vast water –
pleasant air descents cool.
One day, I saw a very unusual thing
in a business newspaper I was perusing.
It was a brief story present on the front page.
A taxpayer considered this thing an outrage.
He was a very honest and straightforward man,
an American from the island of Saipan.
This is a territory in the Pacific;
the Marianas Islands to be specific.
He filed his Federal Income Tax return.
He did not omit anything that he would earn.
The territory was reported as “M. I.”
Some IRS agents soon caught this with their eye.
It appeared that somebody goofed up again.
He got a state income tax form from Michigan.
M ishigama my love,
I nto your water wonderland of brook trout and deer I
C an hear the cherubic song of chirping robin and rustling pine.
H eavenly harbors and pristine beaches shape a welcoming hand
I nfused with indigo lakes and teeming streams while three
G reat lakes enshroud to form a kirlian aura of rippling verve.
A live for but a flicker of time, my Michigan home away from Home
N urtures and readies me for the final cruise to the Wonderland of Love.
Note: The word ‘Michigan’ is a Frenchification of the Ojibwe word ‘Mishigama’ which
means ‘large water’.
We may have high crime rates, but there's nothing like living by the Great Lakes.
I live in Detroit Michigan
Where I Live Contest
Sponsor: Silent One
October 3, 2016
Tip of her kayak
Tears
At the tissue of Torch Lake
In its morning middle
New sun floating blurry
A half-deflated balloon
Struggling on a string above the hills
Fists of fog like marble hands
Warming themselves in the steam
From the night-chilled water
I can barely see our daughter
Out there
Lit
Like a dragonfly
On the petal of a blue flower
The ends of her pink paddles
Slowly
Beating up and down
Along her sides
Wings
Testing the delicate air
Making her way to the other shore.
I put my binoculars down.
Next week she leaves for Marketing school in college.