Captive Audience

Mike Stone

Raanana, December 21, 2016

I watch you through the cage bars,
Stupid creatures pointing, throwing popcorn,
Pulling faces and taunting
From distances you think are safe,
If you think at all.
We are a captive audience,
I am the captive
And you are the audience,
But sometimes I imagine
I am also the audience.
At night after the Parc Zoologique de Paris is closed,
My imagination slips through the bars,
Floods over the iron entrance gate,
Walks through the empty Avenue Daumesnil
To the Rue de Seine and looks through
The windows of the Alcazar
Where you sit daintily cutting a slice of meat
With your little finger poised heavenward
Your teeth too dull and weak to tear the flesh apart.
No wonder you’re afraid of me –
You know my spirit can’t be caged.
Only one of you imagines me
Walking in your empty streets at night
And he sits alone at a small table
By the smudged glass window
With a pen and dog-eared notebook,
Only he imagines me un-caged.
Toward dawn I tire of you and your empty streets.
I slip back over the iron gates
Through the bars and close myself
In the dreamless sleep of tigers burning bright.

Come the Morrow

Mike Stone

Raanana, January 22, 2017

I hear it ere I see it,
The world comes in the
Guise of seven o’clock news.
One eye surmises it is morning,
The other confirms it.
Just to make sure the world exists
I shuffle to the window,
Turn a slat but slightly
And look out.
I listen to my wife’s breathing
And watch the quilt over her shoulder
Rise and fall so imperceptibly.
I walk into the bomb shelter
And hold my breath
Listening to Daisy snoring softly
And find her dark outline
In the darkness.
Met, are my conditions of existence,
Another day much like the one before
But God knows whether there will be
Another like it come the morrow.

The Loveless Came

Mike Stone

Raanana, February 11, 2017

In the beginning was the world.
There always was a world
Since times forgotten.
It wasn’t much of a world
Since it couldn’t breathe
So it planted some trees
And the trees’ roots reached down
Deep into the loamy earth
And feeding on that love
Grew sky high and breathed a love so tender
It wrapped itself around the world.
The world loved the trees
For standing by their loyalty
And the world also promised its fealty.
The days and nights seemed endless
And the world wanted something more.
Unable to decide exactly what
It tried an endless number of things,
Things small and large with arms and legs
Some things had fins and some had wings
Until the days and nights shattered into small shards.
Then came the storytellers,
Strange things with big heads and frail bodies,
They told stories that made the world spin round
And stories that made time sometimes crawl
And sometimes fly,
Stories that made the future and past gargantuan,
Stories that made the world weep because
There was a greater love somewhere else.
Then when the world was not looking
The loveless came and killed the storytellers
Who were busy with their stories
And ate the things large and small,
Some with fins and some with wings,
Some with legs and arms,
And turned the night against the day
And day against the night.
They cut down all the trees
To make room for their minions
And the world took its last breath
In the long time of forgetting.
In the end was the world
But it wasn’t much of a world.

Three Haiku

Mike Stone

Raanana, March 2-4, 2017

1.
A small blood drop on
My uncle’s Samurai sword
Reflects the moon’s face.

2.
City far away
The brook burbles, the fish swim,
And nothing happens.

3.
A tear drop falls on
The old man’s mother’s death poem
Staining the brush strokes.

Mike Stone

Mike Stone was born in Columbus Ohio, USA, and graduated from Ohio State University with a BA in Psychology. Since 1978, he has lived in Raanana. He served in both the US Army and the Israeli Defense Forces. He has been writing poetry since studying at OSU. He reports that he supports his writing habit by working as a computer networking security consultant.

Mike Stone on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play
 Hiding Under Desks
 Fog Poems
 An Idea for a Short Story
 Dreams and Memories

Read more of his work at Uncollectedworks.