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Best Poems Written by Earl Mitchell

Below are the all-time best Earl Mitchell poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

Microscopic Windfall

Perhaps I’m facing pogonophobes?
Apparently wore the wrong face.
Age-hardened wiry wisps forge
post-pubescent platemail -
protect strangers
from my truest fleshy pores, protect me
from the xenophobes of the Winter Conference.

It’s all pitching and coffee breaks
In a hall too grand for these meager mergers
Silent hecklers - likely clean-shaven -
likely Twitter-blasting about
an awkward pitch
and bitterness.

A beard grows opacity over my ebullient disinterest,
feigns sophistication amidst sophists,
and harbors microbes – an entire ecosystem –
Bored, I wonder;
Do they hold conferences as well?
Share stories around a follicle?

How uncomfortable
the itch of capitalism,
This profit pilgrimage
huddles us together
for that sickness to spread.
Free meals, networking with the estranged -
connect vacuously over downed drinks
and political action.
Shallow words spread thick
on the biological superhighway
bacterium feast freely.
The Winter Conference;
a microscopic windfall.

CONTEST ANNOTATION:

I’ve attempted to employ alliteration (‘post-pubescent platemale’), ambiguity (‘…for that sickness to spread’), double entendre (‘free meals’ and ‘bacterium feast freely’), imagery (‘my truest fleshy pores’, ‘Age-hardened wiry wisps’), paradox (‘ebullient disinterest’, ‘networking with the estranged’), and parallelism (‘likely clean-shaven – likely Twitter-blasting’). Not sure I’ve nailed every aspect of these devices - love the contest format as a way to force us in new directions!

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

Canmore

Splashed carelessly aside 
poised, patiently resisting 
every earthen pull. Only you reside,
carved statuette persisting
tethered on stony mountain tops
asking much of fortunes favor.
Catching crisp sunlight, life stops  
upending sensibilities; labor 
like your brother Banff. Capture
all the beauty of the world,
record it for the rapture.

Sunday, January 17th, 2016

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

Figure 8

Alt music serenades an aromatic algebra;
delicious, bitter, subtle notes served black.
We dance the math - I swipe, she smiles,
equations we don't know we've become. 

She measures quanta 
in these mathematical grounds, a coffee shop 
where perfect rationality is axiomatic 
and we've all come to get a good buzz on. 
Imbibe the finest chemicals on Earth,
in history perhaps, for a minor modern pittance.
Everything is marginally consumed, 
we cooperate despite ourselves
and yet we feel alone. 

The sign reads 'Figure 8' 
That perky sidelong infinite
of Escher, of Godel,
of all those lofty thoughts 
borne of a simple brew 
and so much mathy froth.

3/12/2016

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Wool

Sprout from the body, coiled
manifest superstrings becoming what we want
supple wisps of an organ exposed
hacked off and hemmed; 
now a wonderful christmas sweater

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Pygmalion's Bride

That's just what perfection does - 
As hopeful torrid night spills in through stargazing windows 
Illuminating shadowy grays drawn by God's hand in charcoal 
on taunt, sepia skin. She simply retracts from you, from the floor, 
scoffing at all those gaudy tones - the colorful imperfect other. 

Despite Aristotelian pleas to logic, propriety
and function, she teases us seductively 
dancing motionless in impossible air.
Crouching half naked, poised on Platonic tippy-toes
with perfect condescending balance as if we'd all been naughty girls and boys, 
as if a chair were never meant for sitting,
and gravity makes her an exception.

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

True Love Waits

A hope we harbored, coveted in youth
Aided then by an awkward innocence, 
Or unacknowledged preference for truth
Though honesty was not our competence. 
How small and incomplete the world was then?
What little Father taught to us of love,
And what longings remained unfulfilled when;
Withdrawn from matters of the heart, above
An azure sky marked that complacent death.
As all young boys must one day become grown,
To empty out the hopes of love’s sweet breath,
or hollow out one’s life to live alone. 
Accept a bitter mist into your lung -
The fairy tales of love have come undone. 

The mind grows weary quickly on its own,
Oxygen tastes better shared by two,
And even imperfection finds a home
Wherever imperfections will accrue. 
Perspective dawns upon us over time
And beauty blooms in corners we forget
To nurture lest we settle in our prime;
We sought out fairy tales in all we met.
Then at last we have grown enough; touch it  
Cloaked in all that dawdy ambivalence – 
Love is incomplete! Love is that regret!  
Time alone provides this equivalence. 
Decide with haste to tear our souls apart
And stitch together this imperfect heart.

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Faith

Please believe in me my friend
I remain what I have been.

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Simple Pleasures

Water coddles my numbing fingers
warmth floats upon stubborn clouds of mist
impacts unenthusiastic cheeks and lingers
morning’s winter heated by a whetted kiss.

Hands clasp as a lover to a lover
skin sliding smoothly through soothing soap
fogged mirror a glassed and cozy cover
warms my hands, my face, my hope. 

Simple pleasures, unnoticed sunrise -
not epic love, nor joyous dream,
only eyelids lacquered over sleepless eyes
and chilled hands warmed in a faucet stream.

January 20th, 2016

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

Sedoka Contest

So my aunts dying - 
    a dispassionate aside
        over coffee, Saturday
No point in crying
    bitter death taken in stride
        and a sugary frappe

How fit the topic?
     Heated chemicals imbibe
        Caffeinating hollow sounds 
Reflect myopic
     Her death we fein to describe
         with muffins and coffee grounds

Saturday, January 16th 2016

Details | Earl Mitchell Poem

Wind Chapped Desire

They no doubt enjoyed drinks and pleasantries; 
perhaps weights torn from chests 
that I'd kept heavy for weeks now.

If that distance to fondness corollary should hold
we might find a more somber truth in its negation;
for proximity makes us color blind and somewhere,
not too far from where I now sit alone, she shares cocktails 
and meat grease under dim lights with a friend, a stranger, 
someone far removed from the last few years and 
our lukewarm passion. I honestly pray that a new lightness 
lifts her there, she can forget about the world a moment, 
in the unpredictable presence of someone else. 

We do this to ourselves, us romantics, us wallowed 
woe-stricken mental isolationists. A full farcical day of 
that poorly veiled jealousy I'm never sure what to do with. 
Sure, I was invited, but an invite feels like scorn when it's 
hoped you wont attend. Now, alone for the first time,
struck suddenly with heart ache and thirst, we must laugh
at our own self-righteousness. For strangers stomachs 
never ache, at least not that they mention, and the way 
they look at you could heal a broken head or heart. 

When the weight is gone she'll return to me here, where
I'll begin the long process of piling it back up. What good
do all these soured feelings do anyway? For what purpose do I 
cling to this wind-chapped desire?