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Best Poems Written by Michael Kalavik

Below are the all-time best Michael Kalavik poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

Moonshine Shuffle - Moderate Country Waltz

Moonshine, diesel fumes, and chicken wire. 
Laundry hangin’ on the line. 
Bible open to the Book of Job. 
Backyard thick with prickly pine.

Jacket pocket full of Red Man dip. 
Work boots laced with leather thongs.
Wedding portrait on the mantel piece.
Shotgun right where it belongs.

Kettle simmers on a cast iron stove.
Faucet’s drippin’ in the sink.
Matchbook underneath the table leg, 
Teacup teeters on the brink.

Cobwebs draped across a window screen. 
Horseshoe nailed above a door.
Things calmed down some since the weather broke.
Same sad silence as before.

Ma’s been servin’ up the buttermilk,
Boiled potatoes in a bowl.
Pa starts eatin’ while she’s sayin’ grace.
Lets her worry ‘bout his soul.

Man might say he be a slave to love.
Women make the same complaint.
Neither really know the meaning of
What it is and what it ain’t.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

She calls herself Bunny Boucher, but she was born Veronica Chermak. She’s tall and leggy with a body that looks tidy, yet lived in. She’s high and tight, but flexible like a strong rubber band in a tricked out pinball table. She reminds me of that actress Tracie Lumbar playing the actress Fern Hall in that old movie Iguana Sunset. Her topography leaves no room for global climate change. Her tropics are seductively torrid, while her poles remain perpetually cool; makes you want to straddle her equator with your meridian. She’s been to Mussel Shoals, Shucked Oyster, Bearded Clam, Moose Knuckle, Camel Toe, Beaver Falls, Cottonwood, and Rabbit Patch, just to name a few of her more well-known hangouts. Some would say she looks Greco-Roman, but I’d describe her as looking more like a Hellenized Phoenician who emigrated from Trans-Alpine Gaul, or maybe she looks more Etruscan, with a hint of Minoan when you see her by moonlight. They say she’s as pure as bloodstains on a purloined letter. She traded in her Biblical name soon after she left her home in Mississippi and never spoke of it again. It may be just routine housekeeping, but who could blame a girl for sweeping off her back porch. She recently had a front end alignment. They say her rearview mirror never lets her down. After arriving in New Orleans she passed her bar exam at Vaughan’s on Dauphine and kept the circuit judge disrobed till way past last call. She’s a sexy banshee when she’s in the catbird seat with her cherry basket swinging from a bungee cord. Last I heard she was sharing a dump with a couple Guatemalan dancers. Her room ain’t worth a dollar, but it cost a pretty penny. She pays the rent with a pickup truck full of contraband. She says she needs the space, but not the distance. Like most women, nobody’s ever been able to figure her out. But there is one thing I know for certain, her smoke may sometimes offer you a tempting indication of certain possibilities, but her fire has never been known to lie.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

Labyrinthia

Her full name was Labyrinthia Pennyweight Babineaux, but her closest friends called her Libby. She was of blended French, German, and Native American heritage. Her Great Great Grandparents were said to have come from a practically non-existent town on the Bay of Fundy called Shorn Otter. They were deported by British authorities to Louisiana along with most of their French Acadian brethren in The Exile of 1755. This occurred during what Europeans would later come to call the Seven Years War, but which the Babineaux’s had always referred to as The Incident. Their family Bible recorded the history of their transplantation in poignant detail.

Labyrinthia possessed the ethereal beauty that sometimes blesses those descended from mixed stock, with all the best traits of each inherited in well-balanced proportions. Her clear azure eyes could capture the light and give it back again enhanced by the experience of having been directed by her gaze. When she smiled, which was often, it was impossible to not smile along. Among her many charms, she was said to have the most beautiful ears God ever bestowed on a woman; and everyone knows what they say about a woman with beautiful ears. Her gracefulness betrayed a habit of being satisfied inside her own skin and most comfortable when in the nude.

She discovered her powers on Saint John’s Eve in the summer of her seventeenth year in a private garden located on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. From early on she could levitate spirits and see through the fog of conflicting interests. She soon thereafter earned her reputation as White Witch of the Lower 9th Ward. She could wade shoeless through the bayou without getting her feet wet. She was famous for being able to tell the difference between a love affair and a love of fire. She parlayed her insight into cold, hard cash scripting reality docu-dramas for PBS television. She donated much of her earnings to charitable neighborhood endeavors. Young children were instinctively drawn to her and she knew games that kept them entertained, yet calm for enviable stretches of time. She spoke several obscure dialects of Cree, and her French sounded musical, with a sensual inflection that left her words trailing off at the end of each sentence as though they were fragrant, feathery wisps of the most exquisite perfume.

Libby never laughed out loud, but giggled in a girlish way that was disarming, yet provocative. She had the bearing of a midnight tryst in the City of Lights with a whiff of grapeshot thrown in for excitement. She spoke in a manner that illuminated a topic without the need for flashy alliteration. If she chose to be intimate with you, she could get you to tell her those things you’ve never dared confide in anyone. While at play, she required the use of several safe words and in the aftermath, she’d leave you feeling as though you’d been cleansed. She loved sipping absinthe while listening to Django Rhinehart recordings on Sunday mornings. Around her slender neck she wore a delicate gold chain. Suspended from it was a solitary pear-shaped diamond. She would never say from where it came, but would sometimes hold the stone between her graceful fingers as though it were her most cherished treasure, or her most onerous burden.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

Octavia - a Haunting

What’s left of Octavia glides down the hall 
Past the portraits she painted in life,
Now framed in mahogany, rosewood, and oak, 
And they’re hers for the haunting tonight.
She looks for the canvas she started the day 
Her desire became indiscrete;
A nude on a balcony under the moon. 
It was one she would never complete.

What’s left of Octavia passes the wall 
Where her art is the featured display,
Recalling advances she made in the past 
That went far beyond being risqué.
She goes to the window and conjures the scene 
As it happened those long years before,
And thinks of the model who posed for her then; 
A temptation too ripe to ignore.

What’s left of Octavia mourns what she’s lost 
Like a dreamer deprived of her dream.
Her husband threw open the studio door 
To discover her subject and theme.
He looked at the model, he looked at his wife,
And he saw what a fool he had been
To blindly indulge her artistic pursuits, 
Which she took as occasion to sin.

A new moon at midnight. She whispers a name.
Her face in the shadows, a study in pain.
Still searching for what she can never regain, 
And she’s out on a haunting tonight.

What’s left of Octavia longs for the time 
She felt anything other than numb.
The smell of the paint and the feel of the brush 
Being foreign to what she’s become.
A specter deprived of the flavor of life.
An obsession that won’t fade away.
A monochrome canvas, a faintly drawn sketch 
From a pallet with ten shades of gray.

What’s left of Octavia stands on the ledge, 
And considers the landscape below.
The moment of impact still fresh in her mind, 
Because time has not softened the blow.
Her family gathered to lay her to rest, 
And the ring was removed from her hand.
Though people would gossip, and ponder her fate, 
There are none who in truth understand.

What’s left of Octavia comes to him now, 
Late at night when he puts on her ring.
A family heirloom entrusted to him 
When he married his lover last spring.
He stands in the dark as she enters the room, 
And the séance is set to begin.
She watches him pose, while he takes off his clothes, 
With her brushstrokes caressing his skin.

Confessions at midnight. She whispers a name. 
Her face in the shadows, a study in pain.
Still searching for what she can never regain, 
But he's hers for the haunting tonight.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

Wee Small Hours

We’d read nursery rhymes by the bedroom light
In a magic land once upon a night.
You were just so big, so the story goes,
With a picture book, eating cheerios.
You had your mother’s smile and eyes of daddy blue
When the wee small hours were larger than you.

We’d go soaring off for a midnight snack,
Fly around the house then we’d circle back,
Like two brave explorers in a big balloon,
Taming wild things beneath a winking moon,
And we were always searching for your other shoe
When the wee small hours were larger than you.

It’s a simple truth on a windy day
How the pages turn when you glance away;
Till before you know someone’s moving on
And the binding’s cracked and the cover’s gone,
But I can still remember when that book was new
And the wee small hours were larger than you.

Now I lose myself watching evening fall
Where the highway stands like a long, low wall,
Till I see myself in a rocking chair
With a little boy and his teddy bear,
As I recall the days before the birdie flew
When the wee small hours remind me of you.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

Second-Hand Something - With Apologies To the Surgeon General

Lord, it’s been a good chunk of time... 
Been such a long time. 
Time enough for me to know... 
To know it so well.
Been without it too long... 
Too long to take it. 
And baby I need it... 
And honey, you’ve got it. 
And I need to have it... 
So you need to share it.
Just send a little bit my way.

Lord, it’s been a mighty long time... 
Sentenced to hard time. 
Time to have to go without... 
To struggle without it.
My need is so strong... 
It’s stone-busting strong.
You know I crave it so bad... 
So bad it’s sinful.
And it hurts me so good... 
And you’ve got the goodies.
I just need to have it... 
You need to breath it.
Just blow it on along my way.

I need your second-hand smoke... 
Second-hand smoke.
I need thy kingdom to come... 
Not nicotine gum.
In through the nose,
Out through the mouth...
I need your second-hand smoke.

Details | Michael Kalavik Poem

To Do List

Follow down the garden path 
That leads to inner peace.
Plant the seeds of gratitude.
Indulge your best caprice.

Simplify each ritual.
Improve the whole routine.
Stay flexible and balanced.
Fold the laundry once it’s clean.

Clear out all the clutter.
Dust the cobwebs. Brush the cat.
Forgive the unforgiven.
Hand it over; pass the hat.
					
Appreciate the glories
That reside beneath the sun.
And silence all the thunder guns,
Yes, each and every one.

Best Poems Written by Michael Kalavik

Silhouette

Moonshine Shuffle - Moderate Country Waltz

Occam's Butter Knife

Birmingham Grace

Curriculum Vitae

Labyrinthia

Octavia - a Haunting

Wee Small Hours

Second-Hand Something - With Apologies To the Surgeon General

To Do List