By: Mike Seid
The Tyrant
The tyrant in the lighthouse of desire
Who once commanded every inch of ship
Struggles now to tie the laces of his shoes
Then at dawn a strap of the tefillin snaps
As you go to tether it around your head
As you have done each day for thirty years
Over breakfast you receive a photograph
Of a man beside his love from twenty years ago
What happened to us he asks what happened
You and your brother plant a peach tree
Shoveling the dirt already in your mid-forties
When suddenly you are just two boys again
The Lake
There is this lake inside you now
The water of it neither silent nor deep
And not the lake you dreamt it was
Billy the Kid polished his revolvers
With gathered petals of wild daisies
Which looked to him like angels on the wing
Your uncle cannot walk out of his home
Overfull of old saddles and Navajo rugs
Wristwatches in the sinks and pantry
Learning how to tune your cowardice
Not as a hernia that bulges into you
But always you striving toward dry land
The Water
Reemerged from beneath Jordan waters
Jesus saw skies above rip out in schism
Then heard a voice that said he was beloved
At seventeen on palisades above a nighttime sea
Christina Michelle placed your arms around her once
Her spine like of a bluebird and also there was music
Summer much later on the banks of the Charles
Maja unfurled like an ancient cello you baked bread
Made pots of lentils and she never married
The custom to toss breadcrumbs on the sea
Throw them out to relinquish what you were
They recede on splintered waves ever gazing up
Mike Seid grew up in and continues to write from Los Angeles. He studied the Classics at Harvard.
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