Author Archives: Mikels Skele

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About Mikels Skele

Poet. Explainer. Foreigner-at-large.

The idler in Riga

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Yesterday I nearly wept
To hear the ancient tongue
Cascade around my ears
Sublimely ordinary
Plain as a sandy dune
Carved by endless dark winters
Intense like an eternal
Too short summer
So unbearably sweet

The rythms cradled me
The voices called my soul’s name
In tongues yet older
All slung across helplessly

I wept for all that’s gone
All that’s lost
All that’s rediscovered
Ragged by grieving
But still sound still standing
Still

In the fathomless geography of the heart
Are journeys as yet untaken
Rivers yet unrafted to seas
Unstilled by weathering

Winter

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Looking back in the midst of a difficult Spring. This started out as a pair of quasi-haiku.

Tree reaching for sky
Arms wide open
Embracing a winter moon

Winter’s killing freeze
Falls equally on all things
The white crocus waits

On art

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Some artists want to own it,
To license the use of it
On their terms, revocable on a whim,
As if the sweet blood that pours out
To rejoin the soil from which it sprang

Could ever be unmingled,
Could be redistilled if the dirt
Were deemed unfit for cohabitation
With such lofty stuff.

As if the close, heavy air
That squeezed out the dewdrop
Was itself unworthy
Of such holy moisture.

All of art is collaboration.
What good is a pot
With nothing to fill it?
What good is a mirror
With no reflection?

Spinoff

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Well, the Unscrubbed Mirror posts have been threatening to take over Exiles Child, so I’ve created a new blog just for them, which I’ve called the unscrubbed mirror, oddly enough.  There you’ll find all the existing poems and pictures in that group, plus any new ones that crop up.  Exiles child will continue without them, of course!  Have a look.

Prayer

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You say you embrace God
Your arms entwine emptiness
That distorting mirror
You call God

While you pray
Waiting only for your echo
Longing only for your immortal self
To come out of hiding

The stars are exploding
Forever