Michael Igoe – Fevers of the Mind

2 new poems from Michael Igoe: Funhouse and Timeline

Funhouse

Where I can easily grasp the will behind the deed. In the trick mirror: the figure reflects in pleated baggies. The nervous player the novelty shooter aims a breach load. At the steel blue ducks across a manmade lake. Where I lingered with a same whorl show on my finger. They tell me abracadabra they tell me hocus pocus. The rules only fall away after the paint’s chipped. Once I had a house once I had to laugh. Withdrawal from enmity is rocks and hard places. Copies of that substance smarten up a dead mind. It was early next it’s late. Walking Woodlawn Cemetery in the midst of another grave.

Timeline

It’s the time of rising tide this time of day, tide rises. Have the time of your life during the rise of the tides. While I was much younger time came as a curved line. How a body adds on time Tim is a kind of world the world always sees. The only thing in the world that the world is sure to see. Loving as crooked, comely as unusual. Feeling best described, whenever you stalled. Goes hand in hand, with respect to age These are the entities whose tones of voice, go straight to the bone. They provide the opportunity for an argument with instinct.
II For the most part, it’s been expected, he will live longer. For lacking appetite any life can’t go on. Back to the wall, reaping the fruit of his neighbors. As ten commandments don’t cover everything. As the way he thinks pertains to his needs. Holding out the hope,
for things less sacred he wants you to give whatever he wanted. If you dare to accuse him he’ll get busy protesting, the last eclipse of the sun.

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.

A Prose Story by Michael Igoe “Venetian Blind”

Venetian Blind

Listen to me closely. Something is going to happen. Soon, something will happen to me. I can’t say exactly what for sure. It’s an old story you’d recognize immediately. Strange to think, it has no end or beginning, its details are practically forced on memory. Etched. They’re related to legal matters. At intervals, I visit memory in many clusters. Without apparent reason. At times I do this to avoid arguments...Or in the midst of one. In the presence of a constant anomie. It overtakes me. But as far as I’m concerned, these are incidents best forgotten. Relegated to a junk heap. Leave them well enough alone. Caught up in the sequence of events, I can’t help but wonder if they’ll ever mean anything to anyone. I’ve been called a pissant, taking pains with everything to the point of extreme annoyance. Maybe that’s the nature of my recollection. Just maybe.
Given the nature of confinement, recollection is the window on lifetimes. And windows often serve well as makeshift mirrors. Woe is me. When a sad song plays, I think about my brazen approach to some things. Things that gratify the senses, the belly, the eyes, or sexual heat.. In other things, I'm not so brazen. Like warm relations, tenderness, accepting praise and giving. In these things I am reluctant.
What preceded the Now often bores me. Don’t imagine what comes after won’t be more of the same. In these hazy words there’s meaning-but it’s almost impossible to detect. Involving others, of course, but more of me. For what that’s worth. Are you still listening? I can’t be sure. It might be your time to listen. As long as you’re here, might as well. If there was something more important, you’d be occupied. You wouldn’t be here in the first place.

2 poems from Michael Igoe: “Intermittent” & “Cast in Another Life”

New poems from Michael Igoe

2 poems from Michael Igoe: “Intermittent” & “Cast in Another Life”

photo from pixabay

Intermittent

I'm sure the main distraction                                                                                                                           is the fan blades gentle whir.                                                                                                                       They always seem much faster                                                                                                                                                                if you stab your finger through.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Eventually in empty gray skies,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      it’s high time we show promise.                                                                                                                  At times we are warmer                                                                                                                other times in wet snow.                                                                                                                                                                         We were eating just a little,                                                                                                                                                                            but now we eat much more.                                                                                                                    The smells of cooked fish                                                                                                                    assaulting me after I wake.                                                                                                              It’s in the pan without a handle,                                                                                                                                assumed by a grip of her finger.                                                                                                              In the house like a cave                                                                                                                                              with a roof full of holes                                                                                                                                          time passes in a lullaby.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 We’re looking to regain                                                                                                                                                a mostly serious magic,                                                                                                                                          in all its sundry brands.

Cast in Another Life

Things will never be better than the way they are now. We’ll see no better
dizzy from the sun, than it’s panoramas. It has its impossible obligations, at high noon shirked and denied.
Because it’s unbearable, the wait for bright light, when you lose eyesight. As desperate compensation, there’s redness in both feet, and more redness in hands. More from frost, than warm coals. Charred coals like cat's eyes fiery to touch. The touch like a gladhand from estranged neighbors.

2 new poems from Michael Igoe

photo from unsplash.com

Sold as Whisper

At that time I found I could never defeat whatever you joined. Becoming reckless, I treated the disease with other diseases. When you fall down keeping up the pace, you are a conqueror; you seem sure footed like the braying mule. It's more than strange, that in a time of dying. Mementos stay in places meant for broken vessels. But they’re easily brooked, in a room filled with vapor. As a delicate offer seeking your trust.

Bix Beiderbecke Played Here

As the guy wires tighten the assembled say plenty about their easy way out. En guard they sing a tenor it rings like brushed armor. Life as a thing ongoing seems a thing non stop, masking the symptoms in desire’s flaccid arms. Hearing the bone sound, you walked on the ramp on the side of a ballfield, and saw blazing arclight. Full of the summer drink in your fading housedress smiling at an end of night. Though it’s only bestowed, to show up in trick mirrors. Necessary lessons learned, buckshot lovers take over. Opening tins of biscuit, cans of ale out of reach. Both arms are curving, in an awkward embrace

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.

Poetry from Michael Igoe – January 2023

Socrates Said He Fled Sex

We may have known the familiar erasures. Of frog carcasses rendered at sport. We've been found, knee deep in envy witlessly imagined for crying out loud. It’s the loss of power that oddly overcomes in a distant homeland. He had sought the power, speaking from one cheek thought himself thwarted.

Stretch of Imagination

Our pecan inlaid table on the parquet squares behind a derelict piano. Competing in infancy in a manner of stages. Forgiving the mess about they brought the dime store items same as in the Bible, purloined on purpose completely breaking in the backyard mud. They dug with hidden claws at most all their Gethsemani. Yes, I walk gently, but in giant strides gifted by grinning through every age. A song you hear from the throat, one not of the spirit but the flesh. A phone forever rings I’m sure I waste water when I sweep a basin.

2 new poems by Michael Igoe (October 2022)

New poems from Michael Igoe