Poems by Michael Brownstein

STRENGTH AND STEMS

The flower rickshawed through her,

a water blossom yellow and strong

like a plank of wood, smooth and narrow,

a one by two, only true as if true

could ever be exact or honest

or even a deity worth dying for.

The stem of her body fluid and full,

her root work deep and philosophical

as if the voice of pain could ever be a flower,

the thick trunk of a tree, a nearby stream

bubbling over river rock, the carcasses

of the dead fish who swim there.

 

SHE WROTE HER DIALOGUE IN VERSE

She wrote her dialogue in verse,

her emails in near rhyme, her thoughts

as sonnets, haiku and ballads,

but her eyes could not hide her fear

of aversion, her lack of understanding

dissension, expressions of danger and fear,

the rising poem like the hunter’s moon,

deep and glowing from the depths

of the dark waters of night into midnight’s

rampage of nightmare, agonies, and terrors.