Mike James- Three Poems

Andy Warhol

The wig got itchy under runway lights. The great thing about a runway is everyone can feel deeply superficial or sexy or feel like a machine which is almost like bliss since a machine feels nothing at all.  Some people forget emotions and never remember them again.  They think that’s ordinary and maybe it is because so many people do that.  Maybe that’s the most ordinary thing.  A plastic cup is ordinary and almost no one notices it.  Look at anything long enough and all the meaning falls away. 

Dream With Sinclair Lewis

                                                for Karen Paul Holmes

He drinks straight gin and runs his left hand through his hair.  And he sweats and sweats as if that’s his only job. 

The notebook he carried across two continents and at least one state is gone.  Now he is out of ideas.  He’s sure there were still good ideas in his notebook, but he can’t remember where he left it.

This is awful, he says.  Awful, awful, awful, awful.  Then he looks at me and cocks his head and takes that left hand down from his hair.

And why couldn’t you at least be a pretty blonde, he asks.

I know, I say.  I’ve asked my father the same thing.

Karl Marx

Beards are the fashion or they are not.  A long beard equals commitment.  It is like lifelong smoking without the cough.  Beards grow and grow and mostly turn grey if they last long enough.  There are theories about where the best whiskers are made. If the air is better for them in England, Paris, Belgium or Germany.  To go through all the theories would take commitment and many years.