Three Poems

By

Michael K. Gause

The Czars of Poetry

run this town simultaneously

from opposite ends of the city.

More like Hatfields than Romanovs

each remembers an idea of history,

each suffers a University of Truth.

Campus offices

and basement apartments are

both ivory towers, and I should know

I’ve drunk with them both,

and they both get angry when they’ve had too much

talk about what real poetry is.

I just sit back and take notes

on how they really should get together,

pool their resources,

start buying better wine.

Music Perfect

Pitch black, I need to hear screaming down the street

and that eternal hymn of our weakness

Swears mingle with moist cool air

like drunk brass arguing over the tempo

An organ of tires comes screeching so

I do not miss a moment’s beauty

Breaking bottles act like symbols

for me and the other metaphors here

And once in a while,

upsetting the whole composition with a laugh,

an uninvited coda of hope

The Gift

In the small Asian restaurant
I see the young serving girl for the first time
in years at lunch

sprung from awkward bones
into the flesh
she is poised for things we know well

I will not look at her
I do not need more questions in my life

it perpetuates the fantasy, I think
as I pick the young leaves of holy basil from the stem
and drop them into my soup

but her power will be pilfered soon enough
with curves like that, those eyes constantly glancing down
unable to ignore her own growing succulence

as she approaches I focus on the space just around her and smile

my new year's gift to her family