Two Poems by Michael H. Brownstein

 

I Need to Learn Who is in Charge of My Life

 

Lightning struck the old oak,

a jagged scar across its façade,

an ember of fire at its base,

then silence. What hides

in the briar patch? Insanity?

Farrow hogs? Bobcats? A swamp

of Gila monsters? I count down

from a hundred by nines--

91. 82, 73, 64, 45,,,take a hundred

into twos and fours, fifties and ones.

No one crosses over to assist me,

yet the rain falls in wind and shadow,

bone chips and slivers of hail.

Even my hands curled into small fists

feel incomplete as if they too 

lack the substance of granite and pica.

 

 

OPERA W/ WIND AND CLOUD

 

dawn woke the sky

ugly,

a gnashing of teeth,

sheets of saliva,

a conflict within clouds

territorial

and then the wind 

a frenzy of dance

the horn section erupting,

saxophones in counterpoint

and out of nowhere,

the drumming of tubas--

and then the eye of a hurricane

silence.

a blue boundary broke through the clouds,

a ray of sunlight,

and day began the way day needs to begin--

peaceful and ready to collaborate

Michael H. Brownstein's latest volumes of poetry, A Slipknot to Somewhere Else (2018) and How Do We Create Love (2019) were both published by Cholla Needles Press.