Spring 2008, Volume 4

Poetry by Michael Harper


(humanity)

Sidewalks glide sifted drifters
down streaming next to
oversized achievements built
to ejaculate against the sky like
pneumonia cough, rooting childhood asthma:
we breathe in our excess
and ignore that fact,
like breath ignores drowning

The Human Race - a relay
selfish runners avoiding the hand off to the
next in line for the finish, slipping on blackened blood from one
behemoth humming the tune of the human condition:
I can name it in one hydrogen powered
note, but one's not enough
to succeed at the human
race to an eternity that
you can breathe in like Los Angeles air.

inhale the sky before it's exhausted,
walk the dirt road before it's tired,
face the wind without a shield,
search for something more without an engine
space your life out
(without using the word “my”) look at someone new
in the mirror (perhaps the real you)


BIO:  (about this possible poetaster, yet hopefully no creator of complete doggerel)
A fledgling poet harboured in the confines of the sprawl of suburbia, careening through the steady streets of Fullerton, California, my diction effuses in carefully placed spilled ink in the pages of my journal. My poetry aims to concoct in the reader's mind some thought regarding the quotidian minutiae of humanity and existence, while commenting on those small things which we might hopefully disregard for the sake of their unimportance. With the mindset of an expatriate, I try to better my surroundings (while I still reside here) by avoiding automobiles and absorbing my community on daily bicycle rides and actual (face to face, cup of tea to cup of tea) human interaction.