Wrestling, names, and shipwrecks
Any passage (metaphorically or literally) contains within it its messengers, its struggles, its need for wrestling.
13 Line Experiment (2009)
In the developing neuro-network, gaia, quantum determinism
unfolds into refracted realities, glimmering sparks, momentum
of free will…
Winter window—a poem with art
Winter window Outside the opportune window one pink head survives above geranium leaves blowing in the winter wind, covered with cold rain dropped from dimmed desire. The basil released its hope in the face of the war— forces of December and January— mere stalks rising above the window box, darkly silhouetted, […]
Three (a poem)
Three One lies restless in the small hours, the dead of night— three in the morning and worried about medical motorcycles whizzing past a wife on her way home from work this evening— distressed about tear gas and bullets fired into Gazans at the border fence West Bank rioters— hounded […]
The Woman with a Beard Again
She’s slept for a couple of years, nearly, but the woman with a beard has asked to return, and I have obliged her and the toad whose garden she sometimes tends. They can be most insistent. If you have not read some of her history, you can search […]
Landscape (poem)
I wrote the first draft of this poem twenty years ago, give or take a few months. Although I have sent it out many times, it never seems to have caught an editor’s attention. So, time to let it fly on its own here. Perhaps you will see […]
Lately (a poem)
“Lately I’ve been waiting for the FBI to arrest me as a fraud,
or the CIA to hire me to spy on the inner lives of fools and idiots.”
Summer—prose poem with frogs
Summer Summer prattles on like a chorus of croaking frogs about all of its deep pleasures with open desire, while winter indulgently listens, knowing the strength of her own secrets. Parties all unfold this way. Spring tries to enchant, while fall quietly stands by, his eyes glinting with […]
War Surrounds Us
“Michael Dickel’s new book is an explosive tour de force. From Breaking News to all that shivers beneath the surface, it takes us on a visceral ride as the rockets are falling through screaming surfaces, tunnels cease fires and death tolls; rocketing all night through missiles, mortars, sensors, sirens, […]
3 poems, in English, on Margutte
3 poems, in English, on Margutte: Non-rivista online di letteratura e altro. http://ow.ly/Nh14f
Some poems of mine translated into Italian
Some poems of mine have just been posted, translated into Italian, on Margutte: Non-rivista online di letteratura e altro. Thank you to Silvia Pio, editor and translator. http://ow.ly/Nh08Y
Poem: Fun-house mirror universe
Fun-house mirror universe i Today they accidentally warped space, bent it faster than light-speed— our future joy-ride mirrors the past in a reflecting universe from the omega-alpha. Mirror-time runs from the future. We scurry from the past, dance in some now to big-bang tunes. ii Big-bang music plays, […]
My free poetry book (a poem)
This is my free poetry book for those who ask… So many things to say so many bargain books, books online, bookshops turning into used books, book store-chic nostalgia as the textbooks […]
This is not a poem
This is not a poem; it’s a fake.
Someone else’s words, images, metaphors
creeping on cat’s feet into my mind,
clawing their way to the top of my consciousness
as though they were mine, mined
Two Ekphratic Poems
Two poems to go with paintings of Greenland. Art by Judith Appleton, poems by Michael Dickel.
Yesterday—a poem of remembrance
Yesterday in Pansy Bradshaw’s memory, may it be for a blessing for gary, as he grieves Parents of an infant girl prayed in thanks at the Kotel after so many years believing they “didn’t merit” a child— the weather nice, reasonably warm for October. At the light rail stop […]
Poem: It wasn’t the sharks
It wasn’t the sharks I lost myself, drowning in waves of sunshine and fear. During stormy weather and when it was clear, I dove underwater to stay out of sight—that is, until sharks came that one lonely night. They struck at my legs and I knew […]
Leonard Cohen turns 80
Aviva and I were married in June, 2007, in Jerusalem. I began this poem a week after the wedding, although it still perhaps is not yet finished. On the occasion of Leonard Cohen’s 80th birthday and the release of his latest album, Popular Problems, though, I am posting the […]
Meta/ Phor(e) /Play 