I always thought there was something innately good about Cleveland Tech Czar Michael DeAloia but didn't know why or what, and then I learned he's a poet, who has published a book of his work and is now participating in area poetry reading for good causes. That enough tells me he is special, but no way to tell how without reading or hearing the poetry. So I asked him to send over a few works to post with him as this Poet of the Day [1], for us all to preview... and tomorrow, September 7, we all can experience the complete poet Michael DeAloia as he reads more of his work at a fundraiser for Meet the Bloggers. [2] Thanks for the good words for Cleveland, Michael. Read on [3], and be there, you all!
The high sounds of strings
Are teased by petite one-sixteenths
Infecting my soul,
Making me want to dance.
A whole note engulfs my sense of style.
My fingers snap!
Sweat rains on my forehead.
I perish under blue fever.
There rests my anger
On a lofty quarter note.
High….
Buzzing sounds of life
Are being played by a maestro,
By a drug addict,
By a man with a matter-of-fact life.
Ready your souls for cheap brass.
Rich men play money.
Poor men drums.
And I fly away riding on an eighth-note, waving.
Back in my summer fields of slumber,
Yellow as far as the eye can see,
Rests my dreams
The dreams of me becoming greater than who I am,
In the warm resting fields of mustard.
(So He Hung.)
I see the clock striking twelve
And it’s time for me to talk with
The boys,
The little boys,
Out of the idea of hanging me
From my prized Joshua Tree
Captured during the Good War.
“The good war that started other good wars,
and helped our economy except for
inflationary measures,” quotes the Times,
and madcap capitalists, socialists, communists,
as well as fundamentalists.
Crazy “I like Allah a lot you dig” fundamentalists.
Who smoke hash, not weed, unlike American hippies,
“Bell-bottom, wide belt, Birkenstock kind of hippies,”
who were hunted out of existence
After Kennedy,
Posthumously Kennedy,
Post-Kennedy.
Post modern, like furniture.
But my furniture was destroyed
During the flood.
“The great big huge monstrosity of a flood of
early century Post-Kennedy.”
So I had no furniture, but I had a tree,
A tree named Joshua.
Joshua the warrior,
Joshua the prophet,
Joshua the ‘60’s radical,
Who has since been hunted for sport,
After the war, but before the flood
Yet sometime during my marriage.
“My gosh, I wish I could have had pre-marital
sex with someone else type of marriage.”
I endured her.
Lea, a woman, a Sagittarius.
A “I have a very serious attitude problem, type of woman,”
You know – that kind of woman.
Sexy though.
Sex.
Which is something I do not get enough of.
Hot sex.
Steamy gratuitous filthy smutty perverted kind of sex.
The kind that clears the sinuses,
But leaves a wet spot on the bed,
The very bed that was lost in the flood.
“The flood that was typical of Noah’s flood,”
Quote the Herald,
And the pompous popes, true believers,
And mock shepherds of the lord,
Who have no sheep,
But lots of dough
Though not phyllo-dough.
The Evangelists,
The “Say a prayer, hallelujah, hoop holler and amen,
Give me a dollar” evangelists.
Glad I am not an Evangelist.
Glad I am not a Kennedy.
Posthumously maybe I would.
But if I keep talking nonsense,
I’ll have nothing to say
To those little boys
Who want to hang me.
So he hung.
(The Salvador Dali View)
A tart.
A tit.
A piece of ass.
Orange marmalade.
Then the cock crows.
Vanilla.
Sleep.
Links:
[1] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/Michael-DeAloia
[2] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/Fundraiser-for-Meet-the-Bloggers
[3] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/node/2938
[4] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/poet-of-the-day