MICHAEL GRIFFITH - POEMS

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, Stanzic Stylings, Degenerate Literature, NY Literary Magazine, and Wild Words. He teaches and resides near Princeton, NJ.          

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Bone

​The bone exposed
 
broken
 
too close to the surface
 
Wound too deep
 
Fragments of white move in muscle
carried by blood.
 
They will be removed
 
then discarded
 
Once part of me
 
now lost
 
Metal on bone
Knots in flesh
hold me together
define what I am now
 
Patient
valid
in the care of others
some who don't care
 
Mending takes time
Time melting slowly
 
Nurses doctors aides
Forms and faxes
Pills injections IVs and tubes
Words I will never remember
names I could never spell
 
Define me
this defective me
 
In a bed not my own
 
Deficient
in
 
Patient
in
 
Valid
in
 
the care of others
and my own
 
The poem "Bone" first appeared in Dual Coast Magazine

Glass Woman's House
​

The glass woman,
seen whole only in reflections of others,

there in her glass house of shrinking windows
and growing shoulds,
a stone's throw away from being revealed.

Shines in her sorrows,
shimmers in her fears,
shakes in her solitude.

Throw that stone, boy,
hurl the brick,
but aim away from the glass woman.


Hit her sorrows and fears,
strike the solitude and break                                                                                                                
hose panes of should;
take up a mallet and ruin her house of oughts and wishes.       

Let her shine and shimmer in the light                                                                                                 
found reflecting from strength she never knew she had.
Then help her build a new house not so fragile.
 
 

Tempt Me
​

​Oh, you’ve still got it:
a face to launch a thousand dream ships,
a look in your eyes to turn me to cinder.
 
Your playful smile or that sexy I-can-catch-any-damn-canary-I-want-to-
                                          (and I want you)
                                                    smile…
 
Sublime in ways I can’t even name,
and maybe only half-realize,
your voice, more than any words spoken,
slithers into me
and strokes me like Eden’s uninvited tempter.
 
Tempt me, tease me, take me, but never leave.
Never leave a man starving when just your crumbs
could feed him
forever. 

Bloodline
​

​Line of blood spills out like syrup
a split instant following the surgeon's scalpel
just under my wife's swollen belly.
 
She lies there in dozen-hour labor stupor
arms stretched out on the operating room's crucifix table.
 
Small inverted Christmas tree angel of a woman,
saintly, delirious, and prayerful.
 
I don't look down at her face –
the blood and what follows hold my eyes wide open.
 
Our daughter is lifted from the wet cavity cut across my wife.
 
No blood on her -
it is all on her mother.
 
Sound swirls around us,
many voices loudly in a hurry to be heard.
Numbers and words thick
with terminology
 
My daughter, in given statistics,
a weight and a rating,
by these loud people.
 
A miracle to me,
a procedure to them.

A Species of Two
 

Affectations not fully your own
may have impressed the high school boys,
but to us college men
you just seemed pretty and petty.
 
Lean, tall, blonde and blondish;
a species of two -
twin cigarettes, long and lingering
 
Sharp glances, sly voices, slick expressions,
all from some favorite movie or TV show.
 
Your effect on us so profound, so profane.
We named you “The Theater Bitches”
in that freshman acing class.
 
Once I impressed you from the stage,
then twice, that second time even
drawing smiles and compliments,
real flashes of surprise.
 
(I want to think you were being genuine then.)
 
Did you ever make it to a city or a coast
not attached to a lake? Arrive
at a view not fully your own?

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