Michelle Bitting                                                Poet

                                                                                               

820 Bienveneda Avenue
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

ph: 310-454-5478
fax: 310-454-5478
alt: 310-350-0155

Selected Poems

Endurance

         “…more important than truth.”— C. Bukowski

You will rise. You will walk from the kitchen

of your demon-scorched dreams,

hear the cool song of larks trilling. Though

the night was a dagger—blood-lusty, twisted—

here is the dawn breaking a sweat

across your pillow, a long yellow massage

for your litany of wounds. Get up. Breathe.

Adorn thy radiant self and consider

the barista on your street, how he brightens

at your face, familiar and wise. Maybe it comes down

to this: a nugget of kindness fished

from misery’s stream, a sweet steaming cup

in your hands without asking. And as you wander

the day drinking each new pain,

your tired eyes bent to the boldest print:

mothers wailing - a distant village

where mud has buried a school; more politicians

with their fat pockets, feeble hearts -

now this homeless here

and his one dead eye

begging change from a blanket

he swears is magic, will deliver him someday

to the lap of God

he says, so crazy

you might as well believe him.

 

 

Good Friday Kiss 

The choir door left open, we slithered in.

Moving through the musky stacks

of bibles and unlaundered cassocks

we lay down behind the altar—

our bodies an awkward tangle on polished wood,

a snake with clothes on,

when he pulled me close, whispering his love.

Still, it wasn’t the airless sanctuary

or the dead I could hear humming

inside the church’s empty pews.

No, it was Adam’s hands that made me cringe

the first time his lips touched mine—

twelve years old and asthma sickly,

the dry, scabbed flesh and little cloth gloves

he wore to cover pink ointments

that oozed in a line down his wrists.

I looked up and saw the cross floating overhead,

draped in black chiffon for today’s Good Friday

like a negligee or widow’s grieving veil,

and suddenly revolted by the cotton-coated touch

of his fingers brushing my cheek,

I rolled away from him, forever. 

What did I know of suffering?  The flesh

pulled taut and stapled, the human canvas

rubbed to transparency?

How my taunts would come to crucify this boy,

my young heart shifting in gusts

so fast from like to loathe—

the art of betrayal I was already learning to perfect.

 

820 Bienveneda Avenue
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

ph: 310-454-5478
fax: 310-454-5478
alt: 310-350-0155