MICHAEL WHELAN - POEMS

Whelan won first prize for poetry in the juried Leitrim Guardian 2012 Literary Awards. Whelan’s collection After God,a free-verse memoir of his lifelong quarrel with God, was published in 2014.  A set of Whelan poems on the prominent late Irish poet and novelist Dermot Healy appeared in the 2016 spring edition of éirways magazine. Whelan’s Clay Feet was included in the Martin Stannard August 2013 Collection, featured on The Best American Poetry blog. In 2017 OpEd News ran a profile of Whelan as poet in its Arts section. 

His work has also appeared in The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Coachella Review, The Washington Post,The Elegant Atheist, The Healing Muse, Little Patuxent Review, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe.

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WHEN SNOWBIRDS PACK TO FLY TO FLORIDA
For  Jupiter John & Eileen Fleck & Syracuse McGovern
​

​There comes the bite of fright in the air. 
The light of morning in increments turns
Colder thinner. The mist-mellow-fruitfulness
Morphs. The trees are gone gray.
 
How awful.  Depressives plug in their light boxes. 
Moneyed snowbirds pack to fly to Florida.
But hold on. Some birds
savor winter. 
 
Nutty ones see it as a grace of season.
A mystery that expands you out of you
Swaddles you in ecosystem
Immerses you in universe.
 
Cold comfort on a cold day, you say.
And wry rightly so 
May you say no
To such mystery.
 
But oh 
What you expanded-wintered-out-of you
 
May be!
 
 
 

​WHATEVUH

​It's a word that shrugs its
Shoulders throws the whole shebang
Overboard yet doesn't actually abandon ship 
Tolerates a stupidity by dethroning it
Knows what doesn't really matter
And so it carries pins to prick
Pompous balloons and
When told they don't
Serve wry bread 
Rolls its eyes
And sighs
 
What-evuh
 
 

​YESTERDAY 

​I wrote an elegy yesterday   it was   to and for
A man who was once a child.  I made
It warm and healing.  Somehow I
Know
             How to do
     That.
He was
       An odd boy when I was
An odd boy. But we were odd In
Ways different from each other's odd. You
Might call his the odd of the social simpleton.
Like: banging on our apartment door
When we got our first TV
And announcing My
Mom says I can watch your
TV for an hour – Even though he had
No invite
From us to join us.  His was
An odd odd also because he was
smart too:
He knew we’d
let him
In.
I had not seen nor been
In contact with this
Man-once-boy
Since I was
An odd boy a few
Years older than he was.
My odd was social too. I was
Afraid of girls. And was slowly drawn
To boys. And I would secretly fling small
Marbles from a high of our fourth floor window aiming them
To land near boys hanging out across the street
Who wondered what asshole was
Flinging goddam marbles among them
Who would not
Consider me
One
Of them. The boy-
Man who died had married
Fathered three children and worked
At a job I heard he did not like in Social
Security from which he had only just retired
With Social Security. His wife found him dead
In their pool. Heart attack? He was not a suicide
Type.  Whereas I alive am the suicide type.
And have no children. Never had a
Wife. Nor a husband, which
Latter is now socially OK
With normal people.
News of his death came as an in-
Terruption   call during a phone conversation
I was having with my brother, who had kept up
A kind of distant contact with him
So
When his caller ID popped
Up
On my brother's
Call
Waiting, my brother remarked
It must be bad news waiting because the man- Once-boy rarely if
Ever called. My bother's intuition
Was right. It was a call
Waiting to announce
The boy-man's
Death.