Author Archives: Mikels Skele

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About Mikels Skele

Poet. Explainer. Foreigner-at-large.

Diptych for Autumn

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                I

They say time is a river
You can never step in twice
In the same place
But I know you can
If you wait long enough
Between steps

If you wait until it’s unrecognizable
Until you step on a dry patch of grass
Crunching underfoot just so
Until you taste the clay the color of dreams
Until you feel the sweat making canyons
In the soil on your forearm
Under the seeping sun
Unfiltered by knowing

I say you can, by being still and listening
To the strangely placid screaming
Of cicadas
Dying away into the night

                II

Among the ghosts I saw
In a strange and fitful mirror

A young man, lean and early,
Sunlight stranded in his hair
Skin the color of baked earth
Heart like pierced leather
Eyes berserk with possibility

I saw myself, long ago

A very, very short sonnet

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A haiku this ain’t
Even though the syllables
Tumble properly

Cicada rhapsody

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Summer dies reluctantly
Last call for crickets
Singing halfheartedly

Certainty comes only of ignorance
In such wilderness as this
Each hand grasps another
Until it all tumbles in unison

Ah, the carnage
In the style of exiles
So self-consciously
We sail on the edge of winter

Caesar’s exile

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This is in response to WE DRINK BECAUSE WE’RE POETS Thursday Poetry Prompt #19: Alternative History.

So what if Caesar
Had a seizure
And stayed in Gaul
After all?

Would the Senate have awakened
And poor old Pompey have forsaken,
Or just knuckled under
The vicious boy wonder?

The Republic, I’m aware
Was on its way out of there
But perhaps there was a chance
For Cicero to dance,

Not on air, as was his fate,
But at Rome’s eternal gate,
As the choice of free elections
(oops, I forgot his predilections!)

The Word

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A Sunday morning meditation.

And Jesus said, “Eat me, and
In holy oneness I will reside in you.
I am your grisly lamb, which you have conjured
From your love of blood
And carnal loathing.

“Look, you can be called holy
Even in your cannibal lust.
You can turn love on its tail
And pour scorn from its spigots.

“For I am made in your image and likeness.
Did you not know me from my scent?
I have said it: I am the son of man.
I am your loving spawn.”