A Super Deluxe Poetry Showcase for Michael Igoe (early-mid 2021)

Bio: Michael Igoe, neurodiverse city boy, Chicago now Boston, recovery staff at Boston University Center For Psych Rehab. Many works appear in journals online and print. Recent: Spare Change News(Cambridge MA), thebluenib.com, minerallit.com. Avalanches In Poetry Anthology@amazon.com. National Library Of Poetry Editor’s Choice For 1997. Twitter: MichaelIgoe5. poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com. Urban Realism, Surrealism. I like the Night.

The Way of A Hero

Certain castes tend to agree to own a certain anonymity. Though its lessons may sag it continues outlining plans. It no longer ages, it plays all things closer to the vest. Not extreme, nor exuberant. They got that spirit of cautious departure from an ill lit corridor.

Tunnel Vision

Using glass eyes you fill the roles of missing eyes. Both will be judged by rhythmic method in older swan songs. Songs of Adam, those from Eve. One precedes another in two separate gardens. We made a decision completely dead set against their slander.

Human Intervention

As you entered, you were saying, “We carry baggage from the living years.” It’s the meaning of living in sin. You know I am the one who gave you a cornet. But it’s been ages since you played it. You stored in a crate with the grease guns. Marked as property of the Christ Child. Its later posed in secret alongside a steel guitar.

Think Of it as Fire

In an everyday season, I am the everready one to foster blank children. Made out of spare parts: Venus as the little coach who fashions them in mist. The sense of dread descends when they continue thriving.

Part 2
I'm past a barnyard,
that place of slaying.
I will greet there,
blanked children
who all too often
with eyes crossed
fashion phantoms
out of spare parts.
They live certainly
to thrive elsewhere.
A tiny venus as coach
working through mist.

Subdue

A rise insea level provides the clue to what I missed. A routine discovery, serving weightlessly as due compensation. For an angry era spent in squalor cutting new teeth. Badness lends meaning, to events an angel incurs. Laughing, falling, failing, in courageous retaliation.

The Stellar Marine

I'm having much trouble
weeding out streets unfit to walk.
I tread slowly through the snows
of a recent nor'easterner.
as the recent customer
of a bottle of milk, and a dime newspaper.
I see fit to change paths,
past master of the clutch
a recent jamboree of poses behind me.
In a city that boldly confronts the sea
I stop for the traffic's beat
love letters roast in searing flame
outside the radius of wind and shore
stretching to New Bedford.
There, nor'easterners, I guess,
cease in sumps.
I wake up with your presence on me.
I turn over in the starry wind.
To feel my hands, tongue, and feet hush.
They report through lifelines and sinew,
extremities guide them,
to recesses and removes.
They chalk up casualties.
Drink in each other's frames,
bound in a spiral,
we see the gust tamed
find ourselves without a rancor.
Gusts across water and sky,
equal to the stellar marine.
We cater to friends, they share
the same downward spiral:
to swap proofs and secret messages.

Highly Visible

We live it out in an era
with ferris wheel tickets.
We stand under viaducts,
paused in our grim march
toward that other Mayday.
A hope continues
for the secret vial
full of evidence
we look hard for.
Every biblical figure,
smashed to smithereens
roams under arches.
They plant a warm horror
on a rebel girl sunbathing.

A Portrait of Ray

Seems like you touched someone,
right near the heart of the Hun.
Those guesses of yours,
as you entertained crowds;
in vogue, lucky, to entertain half price.
You tame them all to start, downtown;
hypnotized crowds, they all wonder
if they're flesheaters, just like you.
They kept a record: an electric image,
of your smiling shattered teeth
the death' head tattoo you got
one day before you shipped out.
You never look at it closely,
instead you collect tin foil wrappers
from under chrome bumpers
to stage your lavish midway spectacle.
Next time I saw you, same as before,
You had long since confessed to eating flesh
it was the color of the rouge on faces
of women who claimed to love you.
Your eyes, also red, both of us knowing,
the hand really is quicker than the eye.
We're so wary of the moves it takes
to heal scar tissue from wounds in the corridor.
And I rifle through the boxes you left
to slip further along the empty aisles.

Rage Between Equals

Do you remember
all what you said:
the electric guitar
is soon to replace
an automatic rifle.
Interlopers clinched
in the heat of battle,
they find out blindly
about greasy bullets.
Success as the fuse
to sites of extinction.
They saw everything
through rose glasses.
Only beleaguered
by the five senses.
The sound of a note
amplifies on strings
representing itself
as a whiz vibration.
It's faster than
a speeding bullet.

In Certain Climates

Right over there there are infants darkly fondled, roaring mothers roll on their sides. Trying to console, but seem sunless, drinking together balanced droughts of dynamic violence. It’s a sped up version of an empty landscape.

Elliptical

Rumors stymied dreams of dying. Panic laid to rest, through mourning. Over barren fields slight brown hands grasp at their allies. Only when unbound they sweat and suffer stripped of vision they agreed to beg. They talk it over at off brand meals. They joined the ranks, of a blackened captain who believes tobacco, is a cleansing penance. They go rent rooms they’re shared with former hairdressers
retired safecrackers.

Inborn

Underneath a chassis,
a white glove touches
greasy stacks of boxes.
The bullets inside them
spill out on cold ground.
A file of sultry generals
assembles in a building.
In the shape of a Basilica.
Scarved girls
at work within
are busy washing
their china dishes.
To find themselves
not quite so lonely
when dishwashing.

Funeral Lilies

Necessary arrangements
are taking up more time.
Following rigid orders ,
we pick those flowers that bloom in skeletons.
Straightening creases,
ones real or imagined.
We read the rumors,
in the gossip column
we put them all down
to a misunderstanding.
Thanks to St. Jude,
for favors granted.
He’s close to the kin,
who perish among us.
But ones assembled,
give him due respect.
It seemed odd,
to think it's sad,
achieving a thrill.
Using only one word
that soothes our soul.
At a hot dog pit
south of 95th
we will arrive
at his funeral.
We meet brazen kings making no mistakes
about power wielded
A Kansas City woman
calls a broom a rocket.
To match things up
she took a chance
to stand in line
so she can shake
the mayor’s hand.
She sure hoped he’d die
when he stole the election.
They both sit in the grandstands,
between the one eyed vagabonds.

A Quick-9 Interview with Michael Igoe

Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?

Michael: I started writing at about 15 or 16. I had little interest until then, I was encouraged by a musician buddy to do this. What I was reading was mostly trashy detective stories and horror, sci-fi.

Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?

Michael: A lot of what I see and hear is contemporary work- Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown. I still revere the beat poets, especially Corso and Ginberg. Surrealism, Dada, and Symbolists are about as far back as I go. I've heard that "an artist is true to the times." So be it.

Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?

Michael: I grew up on the South Side of Chicago which is a pretty fabled place for childhood. It definitely had a great influence, at one point I spent a lot of time portraying neighborhoods and people in them.

Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you've done creatively so far?

Michael: I have a few favorites from my own work. One of them is in that great anthology, Avalanches in Poetry

Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Michael: I think because of the way I was brought up I shied away from identifying myself as an artist. It happened by default.

Q6: Favorite activities to relax?

Michael: I study Tai Chi and it has aided me immensely.

Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects you'd like to promote?

Michael: No! I send out submissions; that's all. I write for the people I'm with.

Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from one of your poems or others/Favorite artwork?

Michael: "Nighthawks" the Hopper painting. I had a reproduction on the wall at college.

Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?

Michael: I have to say the late Allen Ginsberg. I corresponded with him for 2 years. I showed up at his Institute in Boulder and met up with him again when he read at Harvard.