Michael Pacholski

Published: July 12th, 2015

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Michael was born on Jan 31, 1968 at 3:01 p.m. He began writing at 3:02, and it only took him that long to get started because the nurses and doctors were fussing over him. However, since then he has loved and enjoyed writing of all kinds and has been published in Comstock Review, Every Day Poets, Flash Fiction Online, karamu, and other fine publications.

The Urgency

      How can I write the poem
that so much wants birthed
when it speaks of your death?
And not of how I would mourn,
but of a girl I once knew who
arranged flowers for lovers, for grandmothers, for funerals like yours
how she once gave a candy cane to a random old man
who greeted this gesture with a mouthful of his dying.
How he walked on, his poison distributed, weakened within her
who was left still and pale with the burden of his loss.

                        (In my dream I woke to tell you this)

and you shut the door and walked away,
stunned that a dream about you
could star your total absence 

These things never happened,
they never happen but I think on them --
the people, their words, their lives
– as I dreamt the poem I read before sleep
the poem that  made me think of lost time
the years before the moment our eyes do open

                         (And you wake with me once again).

For once I am smart and say nothing
I do not tell you how once again I am thinking of writing
or of what
or how the urge sometimes chips away my smile
.
I point at the real sun, the real moon
so bright and cratered even in day
We embrace with every exhilarated sense
open, stretching
proclaiming what a beauty
a wakeful morning
with chamomile
and smiles and wine can be 

 "All our songs will be silenced... What of it? Go on singing! -- Orson Welles.