New Poem - "Affront"

Here's another poem that was performed at the last Raving Poets series that I'm finally getting around to posting. I think this one is more in my loveable scumbag mode of writing. It's called "Affront." Enjoy.

Affront
It had to be said.
It had to be whispered
how much I wanted to fuck you
while we sat in church
at your nephew’s christening

because I didn’t want to disturb
the rest of your family
with the sudden rush of blood to the wrong head.

You looked at me
like I was Lucifer himself,
whoever he is,
and angrily whispered back,
“You can’t talk like that in church.”

And to be honest
I got a bit mad too
because I saw it
as more of an affront to God
that he could read my thoughts
and know what I was thinking,
but he couldn’t hear me
speak honestly about what I was thinking
because that was just wrong somehow.

And to be honest,
what I was thinking
was a lot more graphic
than anything that I had just whispered
and God could see it all.

This church was his house.
My house where I always talk dirty to you
was his house.
My own skull was his house too.

I think he would prefer that I tone it down
and omit details like the misplaced banana,
the feather duster, confectioner’s sugar,
and the jar of honey.

As opposed to just
putting it out there.
Every detail
frankly vocalized.
I was doing him a favor in his house
with this minor bit of censorship.
But it had to be said.
It had to be whispered.

-Michael Appleby
May, 2007

New Poem - "Spark"

Sorry that I haven't been posting very much lately. I've been a busy boy of late. Lots of living life away from my keyboard. It's not that I haven't been writing, but I've been really distracted from getting to my beloved blogging. Here's a poem that I actually performed a while back in the "Rapture" series with the Raving Poets. You'll notice that it's dated for July and that's because I just did some revising to it and it feels like a busier poem to me now, a little more dynamic than its first draft. Oh, and I've learned how to indent text using html. I never bothered to learn that before, so yay for me! I suggest reading this out loud while listening to the song "A Tender History In Rust" by Do Make Say Think. That's the song I was listening to when I first drafted this poem and I think it makes a great soundtrack. It was meant as a sort of companion piece to "Lamp Men Of Midnight" in that I was going with that same nocturnal feel. I love the night. I love it. Anyway, enjoy it. Feel free to leave feedback or just tell me how much of a pretentious boob I am. It's all welcome.

Spark
Nocturnes after midnight and I am looking for a spark in a square mile of darkness.

X-Rays of the Man In The Moon came back negative. Nothing is broken. Not a lunar banana bone is out of place.

All us creeps and sidewalk crawlers walking in the Black-Out City, no electricity the media will say, “crippling,”

all us sullen solipsists and recreational somnambulists are children again, barefooted, open-eyed, jaws yawned in awe of the suddenly apparent spectacle of night, pinholes in black construction paper appearance of night, diamonds on witch’s cat’s ass.

Milling from lit candlewick to tea light to tiki torch, matches in hand, flames as bees on pollen bends,

drunk on boxed win, remembrances of the last great time we heard a Billie Holiday record, incandescent light bulb light

and sodium glow in our neighborhoods after dark.

I am holding your hand.

Your name is on my sleeve along with my heart and your name is in the roots of my hair and the tip of my tongue, at the foundation of 27 different marriage proposals that find comfortable silence beneath the shelter of my breath—

vespers at best.

Just waiting for the moment to be right,

the breeze to part your hair a certain way,

or headlights reflecting halogen crystals in the whites of your eyes.

And the city, turned a bible in and ink well is silent enough that the choruses and choirs humble themselves

to whispers and whistles of songs we recognize, but not quite recognize

or muted bits of laughter cobwebbed between intimate friends

the way you laugh when I hold up a lighter, waving it back and forth, quietly calling out:

Freebird! Freebird!

Somewhere Van Gogh is sighing. His Starry Night is alive in concrete, bronze statues of men on horses, workmen on city benches treating themselves to immortalized lunches, bicycles launched perpetually over the fountains in front of city hall frozen on a time line, cyclists always amazed.

And I’m sighing. You’re sighing. We’re sighing,

sinking down easy on park lawn over riverbanks, waves of hazy navy blue and purples that border of pitch.

Maybe the right moment never arrives,

but I’m at ease with the waiting and the pacing, bellows breath, almost asleep, time and welcomed darkness,

meandering the way that people might or riverbanks do,

realizing that sometimes no spark at all

is all the spark you’ll ever need.

-Michael Appleby
July, 2007

New Poem - "Lamp Men Of Midnight"

Okay, not exactly new, but a poem that all but six people have seen in some manner of print. I just thought I would post it finally. I wrote it back in April and performed it at one of the Raving Poets nights pretty much right after writing it. I really like writing these sort of noctunal type poems. Enjoy.

Lamp Men Of Midnight
I

am

home

among the lamp men of midnight, the
shadowed faces cutting headlight eclipses,
silhouettes of the broad-shouldered, chisel-jawed
sucking cherries at the tips of their black cigarettes,

behind the backlit curtains

over street lights,

over the gaudy strips, neon-sign-tin-can-and
candy-stripe alleyways,

over pyrotechnic downtown towers and

over the moon.

We are drinking tea out of eggshell cups with
deft fingers surgeon-like in dexterity (they
play pianos in contemporary speak-easy’s and
carve pornographic legends from scores of sexual
conquests in anonymous doorways and elevators), and
are counting down the finite moments before dawn on
clumsy face watches, infinite estimating, Stephen
Hawking debates that pull intellectual cards never-ending,

making ourselves the extinguishing breed of romantic.

Resigning always, each apex of the morning sun to the
grimness with grimaces that all our hearts calcify
just a little,
we will cease to be musicians, painters, and poets,
Ernest Hemingways or Ernest Borgnines, raunchy
Jesuses and peyote Jim Morrisons,
we will dawn simian suits and
troglodytic postures,
slough our compassionate smiles and arm ourselves
against a sea of disinterest with
stainless steel briefcases and I Hate Mondays oversized coffee mugs.

And

this

is

when you come into the picture, the soft
lips from last night that say until later, mon chere on a
brandy breath that I could hold a lighter to for a torch and
read you Neruda by it, the wisps of hair
that frame a face sinuously, gracefully, echoes from
riverbanks, stirs dreams of velvet Elvises and
being the last loon on a darkened lake,

into daydreams

into the idleness of these balances,

into Hotdogstandia, mall-kiosk-LED-light-keychain-and-
grand-land-of-malcontents pedways,

into pyrotechnic downtown towers and

into the sun.

We were drinking tea out of eggshell cups and the
remembrances of your fingers pulling ghosts out of my skin carefully (they
were regrets accumulated in past lives, jaunts with the chupacabra, the
pig men, the dog men, hash marks on the bed posts where lost loves
were lost, never to be heard from again), and I fell to my knees,
clean, hoping to elicit kisses from your mouth and closure of
your eyes to futility; time was not on our side. It
was clumsy and inaccurate, had to be measured and debated,
had to be quantified instead of qualified,

made ourselves the extinguishing breed of romantic.

Cyclic nature is cyclic nature and the sun goes down as
steadfast as it rises, French kisses the horizon, draws tower-tops in,
puts the factory steams to its belly in billowing clouds before cosmic
fellatio, swallowed whole by the turning of the earth, and these
stuffed collar types, these button-down morning-ham-and-eggers, TPS
report sluggers, walking manilla folder fuckers, well,
they’re all renewed of their romances, given leather devil wings for
another go at immortality, lamp men of midnight, and

your brandy-candy,

pillow-mint mouth of breath is

free

to be mine all over again.

-Michael Appleby
April, 2007

New Poem - "Loneliness"

This week's installment of the Raving Poets' series "Rapture" was one of the best poetry shows I can remember in a long, long time. We had a theme night, the theme being the blues. So for every poet who took a turn behind the microphone the band would play a blues song. What it led to, then, was quite a variety of interpretations on the part of the 16 poets as to how their poems would work around the theme for the night. There were even a few poets who bridged the gap between poetry and actual blues music resulting in some amazing pieces. I was the first poet of the evening and the poem I presented was completely new and it's one that I will share with you right now.

A couple of things before I delve into the new poem. Next Wednesday I have been asked to take over the hosting duties normally performed by Mike Gravel because he has another engagement to attend to. So if you're going to the Raving Poets show and you're wondering why the host next week is soooo lame... Now you know.

Also, I got a couple of poem published in the latest issue of the Blood Ink Literary Journal. Yay! Thank you to all parties responsible for me taking that important step.

Now onto the poem.

"Loneliness" was written over a couple of weeks. That's a bit misleading for me to say, actually, since I wrote half of it one week, almost forgot that I wrote that part of a poem for about a week, looked through my notebook, found that fragment, and said, "Oh shit, I totally forgot about this one." It looks at how loneliness can lead people to desperate measures, but it also tries to look at how a person can really become desensitized to an inundation of sexuality. The voice in the poem talks to a phone sex operator so much that he soons finds getting her speaking on any topic other than sex the sexiest thing she can do. I guess I'm trying to say that the whole woman is sexier than the sum of the parts, verbal or otherwise. Maybe the voice in that poem is coming to that conclusion.

For now enjoy "Loneliness." See you on Wednesday.

Loneliness
Desperate now, how it
came to pass that Cheryl, an
operator at
1-900-ASS-SLUT,
found her way onto my speed dial.

---And not just
Speed Dial 8 or
Speed Dial 9, but
Speed Dial 1. An
ass-slut who knocked my
mom down a digit on my Speed Dial list and
charges me $3.95/minute for her time.

Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl.

Cheryl who would describe
giving me a rim job so succinctly that
I could feel
her tongue making ringlets on the
insides of my eyelids.

Cheryl who through words
would go
ass-to-mouth-to-cunt-to-
ass-to-hand-to-mouth-to-
tits-to-ear-to-navel-to-
mouth-to-ass- to-ear-to-
ear-to-ass-to-mouth and
then hit her filthiest monologues
only after saying,
“Whew! That was a hell of a warm-up, stud!
Let’s get things started proper now!”

And I thought I hadn’t lived
until I heard Cheryl
telling me to put it in her ear.

The closest thing to a significant other,
a girlfriend,
a wife,
confidant,
I have
boasts she would gladly floss
with my pubic hair,
you know,
if that was my thing.

Maybe that was my thing
once upon a time.
Maybe there were days
in my past
when a watermelon with
just the right size of a hole cut into it and a
face shot of some supermodel
stapled into its husk
was my thing.

Desperate days.
Days a guy could wake up and
not even be able to fathom a
woman’s presence, a woman’s touch,
days when a woman might as well be a
unicorn, a jackalope, or a chupacabra,
just tighten your fist and let you imagination go ape-shit.

But it gets to be too much.

Listen to a verbal blow job enough,
listen to her scripted moans, her
$3.95/minute coos, and
it will all start to lose its effect.

Cheryl might describe licking sweat off my nuts,
but now, for her, for these late night pillow talk,
garbage bag talk, sessions,
hearing her evoke a tongue on my scrotum
is as tame as hearing other people’s
“Hello. How are you?”

Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl.

And lately, the challenge for me
has been to get Cheryl to talk about anything else.
You learn that all the dirtiest things you could think of,
it’s all just a shield to keep from falling for a filthy animal,
a man who would put 1-900-ASS-SLUT on speed dial.

She might greet me with a rusty trombone or ask for an angry dragon,
use her, abuse her,
but that’s not what she wants, what she really wants, and

that’s the challenge:

getting her talk about anything but sex now.

That’s the sexiest thing she can do for me now.

I call, and
try to steer the conversation to what she had for breakfast,
the last movie she watched,
her favorite book,
if she has a view of the ocean from where she’s sitting,

anything.

Nothing significant.

Just anything.

Desperate now, how it
came to pass that Cheryl, an
operator at
1-900-ASS-SLUT
found her way onto my speed dial

and the only way I get excited anymore
is if I’m paying her $3.95/minute
to hear her

talk about the weather.

-Michael Appleby
May, 2007

Classic Michael Appleby

Tonight I'm posting a rerun. Many of you out there probably haven't read this one so it might not actually be a rerun for you. Some of you have read or heard it before so I welcome you to amuse yourself in the archives somewhere. Actually, I was going to post my Bottom Ten for April, but my browser crashed as I was drafting it and I'm too frustrated to start drafting it all over again tonight. I'll get the Bottom Ten up soon, though.

The poem is inspired by Alex Grey's artwork actually. I wanted to create something that was very focused on the human body and to just stick with that.

Knot Garden
Bodies interlocked in grapple.

Start at the fingertips.
Feel the ridges of prints
like skin tumblers
and rolling into the knots
that knuckles make
before palms are pressed
to palms
and the long chutes of digits
lock to form skinny, bony gates.
Fleshy webs
that transcend,
become intricate vines at wrists,
become intersecting channels,
become, become, become.
And the crossovers at elbows
that aspire to blushing,
freckled x’s
with the narrowest of hinges,
flexing and reflexing apexes,
where four biceps
sinew this pair.

This is more than
the gesture of a kiss.

This exceeds the limits
of any embrace.

This isn’t sex
and it isn’t war.

Shoulders conspire
and the proximity of faces
practically makes them
the mirror folded in on itself.
Hair sweeps from one head to another.
Where ribs are,
they make for calcium rich walls,
walls of marrow:
anastomosis of bones,
perfect pearly xylophones.
Pumping hearts attain synchronicity;
melodies ebb
in the laying back and rolling.
Neck becomes neck.
One skin hybridizes another,
reaches to be a chameleon.
Legs wrap around a waist
or a waist falls into the hold
and feet dive between knees.
Body odors absorb each other,
become more than the sum of their parts.

When we twist,
we maintain this tightening knot,
it’s fibres kept in tact.
The act of tying
isn’t so much of an act of aggression
as it is
an act of compression.
What we learn from Greco-Roman wrestlers
are more than ways in which to brutalize each other.
We find ways to merge.

I discover new nearnesses to you.
You find ways to become a part of me.

-Michael Appleby
May, 2004

No Threat

No Threat
#1 A prop telephone for
my brilliant one-man skits
involving telephone conversations.

#13 A somewhat surprisingly sturdy
hammer
with a grip that is velvety smooth,
and easy on my calluses.

#20 An impromptu piece
of exercise equipment,
the bending back and forth.
I can feel the burn in my chest
that may or may not heartache.

Yes.
I have found twenty uses for your dildo
since you stormed out in a fit of rage
yesterday afternoon.

You used to reassure me
that it posed no threat to my manhood
and for the first time
I can actually see that it doesn’t.

Quite the contrary.

#21 A prosthetic hand
to scare away solicitors,
girl guides and jehovah’s witnesses
that misguide themselves
toward our door.

What you meant to say
was that I, too, would derive enjoyment
from such a trifle.
No threat at all, but rather a utensil.

And yesterday,
our latest fight.
No matter how many nails I hammer
with this rubber dong,
how many
“Oh my god it’s the President”
telephone conversations
I have with myself
(he’s usually asking me
to save the world from terrorists,
nasty, nasty terrorists),
I can’t get your monologue
out of my mind.

Twenty-four hours later
I think you may have been right.
I’m not going anywhere.
I’m not doing anything.
Look at me,
I’m trying to scratch my back
with an eight-inch factory-built cock
for Christ’s sake.
A university degree will hang on the wall,
but goddamn if I’m going to let

#22 A veiny dick-shaped snake
that springs forth out of the gutted peanut can.
Surprise!

go to waste.

Every job interview ended infamously.
Every resume written cynically.

And look at me.
Thirty-years-old,

#23 The sexiest flyswatter you have ever seen

firmly in hand,
like some boring hippo
sits in a mudhole
and tries to swat at flies.
I just sit there.
That’s my problem.

You were right.

And now I feel bad.

I want you back and
it’s scary to admit it
because I have my pride and
it takes a lot,
a lot to admit that I was wrong.

But here I am.

And baby,
if you come back,
you can have a new dildo,
no threat to me,
bigger, better than this dildo,
which I would given back to you
except

#24 The implement to Ron Jeremy out stubborn toilet clogs.

But, please, come back.

-Michael Appleby
March, 2007