Evan Myquest (Mikey West)
facing the music
product of life
product of stress
product of sun and weather
i like to think i earned the artist’s work
i like to think it’s not punishment for surviving
i like to think it’s character not aging or disease
not happy to be the object of lost youth’s palette in store
of warts lesions scars wrinkles or worse—and more
like blotches discolorations and melanomes
the list is endless according to derma-tomes
ah my youthful face once undiminish'd
my mirror shows the artist of aging’s now nearly finish'd
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a thousand & one
they marched &
they marched
wherever these knights
of the world went
they left rivers of fever behind
their contagion never denied
villages & cities became voids
the intention was
to bring enlightenment
but as intentions often go
what was brought
was less than what was there
in the first
these knights were
without footprints
the knights arrived on killing winds
from their far off homeland
conscripted by the glowing fire
to bathe in far off fountains
their message in a begging bowl
know yourself
free yourself
eat the apple
drink the pure
find oblivion
find yourself
dance dizzy circles
the knights
became the destroyers
of all they touched
looters of the flesh
they harvested
in their name
on their return
to their homeland
their aged selves
were blessed & anointed
paraded & held aloft
as more than had left
so long ago
more so in the new
contagion they brought home
which turned
home & world to windy dust
for the ages
all that was new was old
all that was old was dead
left behind
for the new explorers to find
in past rivers
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sport
___________________
sport
the system is competition
testosterone warfare
insidious dueling up ladders
of status & money
gladiatorial supremacy
top doggedness
but i witness the cooperation
agreeing on rules
training in groups at agreed upon times & methods
from youth to seniorhood
how much sacrifice
to build coliseums & arenas with common revenues
that could go to feed the hungry
take all the teams & designer uniforms
follow every statistic
but see the lines to enter the stadia
ant lines up eighty or more rows
college alumni with canes will climb
such narrow steps in the rain
witness the cooperation in feeding the crowds
with their fondest desires for frenzy
a president takes a seat on the fifty yard line
while the rich view from glass boxes
how competitive it is to get these rewards
after the cooperation reaches its point of no return
in my old age i am drawn less & less to
the competitive system
so i look for the cooperation involved
in competing across continents
it is there
but it has its limits
who would pay to see cooperative sports
eighty or a hundred thousand in the stands to watch
as their captains go out on to the field
toss a coin
shake hands
then go home
Mikey West (with Bill Gainer) at The Book Collector
—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis
figments
adam to eve
to turn over that leaf
how unfair this garden we must leave
eve to adam
just wait a season
for what happens every autumn
and while it greens every spring
a bit of breathly steam can cure any static cling
____________________
small bang theory
small hope in a locked box mystery
where does it all come from
the mystery of origins
the something from nothing magic
tiny somethings add up
to large karmic constructs
trust me on this
it gets weird from here
the constructs float through the cosmos
free floating multicolored energy balls of trust & love
become concrete in a hubble picture way
clouds of cosmic matter coalescing via unimaginable spin forces
one small bang &
dinner is served on the periodic table
a bored teenager looks out a bus window
cellphone to her ear
as she makes a last ditch call
to save a friend a wait on a corner
bang
that puts another planet on the map
multiply that call
times a cosmic billion
bored busriders
& the world would need a space telescope to begin to comprehend
its own expanding universe
bang
feel that new gravity
in the locked box mystery
where it all comes from
maybe if you were on a trampoline
on top of the reigning tallest building
& were getting some radical air with each bounce
while texting
in the distance
you would see it shimmer a bit
& then in a few moments you would feel it
over the skyscrapers
bang
but a small one
that will puzzle its future citizens no end
___________________
Today's LittleNip:
bas relief to alto relief
chizzle chizzle
no relief for the frustrated sculptress
from a loveless union
then she did her classic david
such a well endowed statue
now his’ll his’ll
and that’s some shizzle
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Thanks to Mikey for today's Kitchen fare! Evan “mikey” Myquest (Mikey West) lives in retirement from being a ‘numbers guy’ with his wife Eva in Rancho Murieta, CA. He has been published and cover featured in the Sacramento News & Review, Blue Fur, Primal Urge, Poems-For-All, Medusa's Kitchen, and WTF. He has a poem in the Sacramento Anthology of Poetry 2012. He is a 1974 alum of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy writers workshop. He tells people his influences are Brecht, Rimbaud and Calvino when he really is a total product of Edgar Poe, Shel Silverstein, Ogden Nash and some nameless guy from Nantucket. If he had to pick a section of the bookstore for his poetry, he says it would be in the “weird” section under the leg of a table to keep it from wobbling. Mikey is an avid attender of poetry readings but does not take the stage himself. He says it gets him home that much earlier. His pen name, Evan Myquest, is a combination of that of his wife and inspiration, Eva West, and his own name. Evan Myquest—get it?
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—Medusa
Mikey