Words & Music

by Mike Power

latest

  • Listening to Janis on my way home

    I They tore down the mountains and crushed them into pathways where souls wander and flash and shine their eyes at me on my way home. The pieces of plastic inside my skull bring me the sound of the bluest voice in the world. Yours. A voice that cuts through sirens and breaks more than… Read more

  • I Should Have

    I I should have walked over the water to the island where first contact was made with the alien people. I should have put plastic into my skull and listened to copper and larynx and air. Instead I found answers that had been all used up, incapable now of any meaning. The answers I found… Read more

  • Stuyvesant Square

    I We walked around Stuyvesant Square in the shadows of the Seventeenth Century to a room with a wound that we watched become worse, consuming its host, bloody, raw, and hopeless. We asked a man we met there about instruments for burning things that grow and die and live again inside of us. We looked… Read more

  • In The Morning

    “In the morning when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present – I am rising to the work of a human being. Why wouldn’t I be satisfied to do the things I exist for and for which I was brought into the world?  Or was I made for this, to lie in bed and… Read more

  • Sometimes A Candle

      Sometimes a candle Can be a torch I’ll carry this one through the storm Sometimes a candle Is the only thing left When nothing else can keep me warm Sometimes a candle Lights the way forward On an ever-darkening path Sometimes a candle Lights the face of a lover With a softness that nothing… Read more

  • Seventy Seven Words

    There are no comfortable positions in the bed they used to share.  He flips at regular intervals, both the hamburger and the spatula.  With the morning slouching toward him, he stares dimly at the spot on the wall where he knows the calendar hangs.  There is not enough light in the sky yet to see… Read more