These poems by Michael Wells have previously been published as acknowledged.
Sport Utility Poem
Let me shove this in your face
Guzzle up words in excess
Burn high octane adjectives
Belch superlatives your way
My verbs are bigger than yours
Because that is how I want them
Need has nothing to do with it
I could compact or subcompact
But why, when I can take my poem
Where I want- through the fucking mud
Off the page and around couplets and haikus
Into places your creampuff iambic pentameter can’t go
And I’ll leave you in my oxymoronic dust
Passing everything on the road
Except a dictionary- cause a guy’s gotta refuel
And I don’t mind that- economy is not my thing
There’s an endless supply of words
So I charge ahead with my bumper
Raised high as my ego- flipping off orthodoxy
* First appeared in Rockhurst Annual Fine Arts Review.
Give Me Some Everyday Religion
“Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.” – Anne Sexton
So esoteric, you
Accommodate me at times,
Without foundation
That I should roll snake-eyes
Or pick a winning number
With no grounds and not a “thank you”
For my part to be the blest bastard. But then
To be trumped by every stoplight
Or fathom a turn of hard-luck so
Lethal, I squirm in the puddles of
Self pity and moan of the great
Injustice of this world like I understand
It all so well. Ha!
Deal me in … I say.
Let me play with the big boys.
Let me smoke my luck and drink my advantage
Like my supply of chips at the bank is unending.
Are you looking over my shoulder god?
* First appeared in Park University Scribe
Her Ancestors Lived Deep Within the Crack of Vanity
Her ancestors lived deep within the crack of vanity
That spread across a brash smirk.
She could keep that face in a vice
And utter nothing for hours,
The reflection saying everything it needed.
You simply looked back in a paralyzed brand
That had been the trademark of others
Stuck between her and the cosmos.
Women like her truncate the societal model
Setting man back pre-Paleo-Indian period
In a juggernaut of psycho surreal smoke screens
Vexing and injurious to the nuclear core.
I found her enchantingly visceral
Yet, intellectually hard and the mother
Of all intuitive design. Straddling the sum
Of the cumulative gender gorge of all time.
The greatest Sunday tabloid perplex ever.
The answer but a dusting of pulp powder
And molten India ink, to mess the palm of my hand.
*First appeared in The Flask Review.
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