Michael Mira - Two Poems

Coffee After Dark

Jazz notes linger in the air
like a hangover on
Sunday mornings.

I keep my eyes transfixed
on the axis of the Earth
through Ray Ban sunglasses,
hoping to figure out the
mechanics of life and death.

But the answers aren't always
as obvious as the razor blade notes
coming from a trumpet solo.

My coffee is slowly vanishing,
the laughter turn into whispers
and I sit still in the middle
of it all, hoping that by pretending
that the globe revolved around
my chair, I would find my definition.



Shattered Glass Windows

I can hear him silently screaming
like a tree falling in the forest
and everyone pretends not to hear it.

They say,
I was never there--
the same words uttered by the
man who slit your throat.

It reminds me of the time
I saw Burkman on Commerce Street
throwing rocks at the windows
of abandoned warehouses.

I asked him,
Why are you doing that?
He said it was okay,
no one needs the building.

The battered face of homeless war heroes
resembled the building Burkman stoned to death:
shattered glass windows and deep hollow souls.

He said it was okay.



Michael Mira is a freelance photojournalist, a vagabond and a street food sophisticate. His poems and micro fiction has been published in Identity Theory and Six Sentences. His daily musings and rants can be found at www.michaelmira.blogspot.com.