Three Poems By Michael A. Griffith

Michael Griffith began writing poetry to help his mind and spirit become healthy as his body recovered from a life-changing injury. His works have recently appeared both online and in print in The Good Men Project, the Starving Poets Tour anthology book, Dual Coast Poetry, Degenerate Literature, NY Literary Magazine, and Wild Words. He teaches and resides near Princeton, NJ.

Exterminator

Rats' nest hair,

the exterminator was here again today, mumbling,

grinning like he'd sniffed his own pheromones

or killed the neighbor kid's dog.

Handed me a Watchtower and receipt,

blessed me in Jehovah's true name,

and thanked me for the sunshine.

Took his hoses, took his tank,

tossed them in his white van,

and rumbled off to his next stop,

gangsta reggae low-dub bass

pumping hard.

Ten minutes later the roaches and ants held me at bay

and I couldn't get safely to the toilet or the sink.

Could be I'm not a believer in one true name,

a meme of the rapture waiting to happen.

Dark

Them dark pines out back,
as tall as they is dark.
They hide what they won’t show;
dark at noon, dark at midnight.

They hide a bit of me
and good bit of you.
They hide what I don’t want known:
dark secrets from our dark hearts.

There among the tall dark pines

bones green with moss and leaf-fall.
They lay there, hid, overgrown;
roots tangled 'round bones half-buried.

Those pines sway only on dark winds,
winds that blow like that sawblade time
when you tried to go from me, to go to him.

Dark words met dark mind

met dark heart met dark

blood met the dark dirt.

Three years gone now,

they feed on your dark

and on my dark.

Three dark anniversaries gone.

Your bones there, cold, hid,

but I can still feel that hot sin.

Alligators of Abilene

Alligators of Abilene take the mall's escalators

up to the dude ranch diner

where bulls eat fat dictators ala carte blanche.

Marmalade, the farmer's daughter,

heaves like an avalanche as those alligators

race up the promenade for her virginal lemonade.

Their teeth tickle her lemon patch's hair.

Ticker-tape falls from her quaking face and

her squeals alert Daddy's piggies that it's time

to eat again.