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Best Poems Written by Michael Warner

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

Details | Michael Warner Poem

The Middle East

Are the mother’s cries less bleak, 
In a language we don’t speak?
Why does the pain not translate?
When we speak of love but do in hate
    
Is it their freedom we are fighting for?
It seems to be a foot in the door
We make them pay for our small toil
And steal and pillage all their oil
 
We say we have a better life
But all our green and silver is built on red
We ignore and disregard the natives’ strife
And pretend to care when they pile their dead
 
But we do not care and we never will,
So the lives of millions must pay our gas bill.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

Days-Gone-By

I can stand the coughing and a disparaging glare
To each their own, his cross to bear
“So what?”, to you, if I at night I get high
And relive a dream of days-gone-by.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

The Open Prairie, the Western Sky

In an old shack 
on a dusty hill
an old man sits
and writes his will
 
His cracking  throat sings
“The day of Bexar”
And he goes outside
Looking wide and far
 
The corral he built
his livelihood on;
the 7 crosses
by the okra lawn
 
He closes his eyes
one last time
On the open prairie
Under the Western Sky

Details | Michael Warner Poem

La Cafe De Les Miserables

I see my reflection staring back
From an empty cup of coffee, black.
And new lines that I have never seen
Have made an older man of me.
Typists and calligraphers alike, like me
Come here to decipher the human psyche
And through and through all of us fail
And eat plain biscotti with coffee, stale.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

I Watched a Grown Man Cry

I called my Dad at 5:30 P.M.
The sun would set in an hour
Or two. I would wait till then, 
Or more. I watched Apollo cower 
Unwilling to witness a grown man cry
 
Texas cedar floated on the air,
Coyotes cried their wicked throats dry
I sat with my ball, alone, unaware
I was soon to watch a grown man cry
 
The grass was longer then
In that old, lonesome, cracking field.
A field where I used to play pretend;
And soon learned not to feel.
 
Lake flies buzzed around my head
And just like them I was very soon to die
When I stared, and watched a grown man cry
 
A distant rolling, a black sedan
Was revealed to me by staggered lights
I was so excited to play ball with that man
And embrace one of childhood’s finest delights
 
I’d ask him about when I was a baby
And if he had ever told a lie
But instead of stupid fantasies
I watched a grown man cry
 
He stayed in his seat, his car 
Stalled.. I was confused and
Awaited a brand new scar
I let go of the pig skin in my tiny hand
 
He drove away without even a word
A small plume followed behind
That has taught me more than all I’ve ever heard
As tears rolled down from an older mind.
 
I walk to the bathroom mirror and
As I open my puffy eyes
I find myself watching
As a Grown man cries.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

Men At War

Men are evil when left alone
The tearing and thrashing straight through to the bone
It’s not their fault when we really think
Little boys train to kill and not to blink
Toy Guns in their hands from the age of three;

Life is little, across the sea.
Hatred develops in a powerful way
Anger compounds every day
When  evil men are left alone
Because hatred is integral and and there’s grenades to be thrown
They slash and cut at the already dead
Disembowel the woman and parade their head
Men embody cruelty when faced with the chance
And there’s death in their eyes when tasked to their dance.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

Every Night I Fall In Love

Every night I fall in love with    
the girl inside my dreams
Waiting there with scarlet hair and
A folded pair of jeans
 
A soft wind blows in the coming night
And I close my sunken eyes
I kiss her neck and she kisses mine
And I feel what good decries
 
There’s nothing there 
But skin that’s bare and
A vision of endless mirth
Who am I 
To deny
The coming, of my rebirth?
 
I feel my soul being ripped apart and
I don’t know what to do
Lust against love and god above
And to whom I’ve been sworn to
 
Beauty and youth is stretched and worn by
The two extremes in me
Plotting parallels pull and pry
Away, who I wish to be.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

Chairs Upon the Wall

Chairs upon the wall
The table that adorns it- 
Dusty and tall.
 
The table stands on oaken stilts
The rug beneath holds ancient mold
Upon this painting, hanging still and bold
Inside this manor, which my hands did mould
 
I sit at the table
upon the wall
At night they hear my muffled call;
My descendants in this ancient house
They blame the rustle in the wall
on an old wheat mouse.

But what when the wheat mouse dies?
Will they accept what assaults their eyes?
That abrupt confusion that irks the core-
That after life, there is life- or more.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

The Sickly Bird

Mine flaps and falls while yours glides and soars;
I can’t match in my heart what you have in yours. 
And if there’s anything we don’t have time for
It’s brand new paint on a cracking floor.

Details | Michael Warner Poem

The Singer

Love soared from his lips in Major C
    But grief has set his soft heart free
Despair has furrowed his delicate brow
    So the singer sings of nothing now;
 
Hope scalded his throat in Major F
    But all his hope has froze to death
He takes but the breaths his sobs allow
    And the singer sings of nothing now;
 
He sang in sorrow in C minor
    But now, it seems, the pain’s much finer
The answer is plain as to why and how
    that the singer sings of nothing now.