Michael Anthony Adams Jr.'s Blog, page 6

Sunday Afternoon

Originally posted on this blog on June 8, 2021.
Originally written in New York City on Sunday, October 14, 2001.

Pan de Bare

Sunday Afternoon

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
from his poetry collection, The Tree Outside My Window.

Believe me when I say that
I have seen the stars of night
sparkle in the light
of a woman’s sight.

I have forgotten more visions
of mirages on sand
than grains of that same sand
ever slipped through my hands.

I have lost more lives
than have ever been stolen
from a cat on the prowl
or a family in war.

I have stared at myself
until I grew roots
and cut those roots
to move downstream

and stare again.

I have fought and cried so many times,
and never once did I believe
a single scream could not be heard
until the day I met the day
when every scream’s cacophony
tore through my dream, leaving me
shaking and sweating, wringing my hands:
bloody, drenched, and licked so clean
by tongues…

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Of Dragons and Unicorns

For Valentine’s Day, a poem I wrote for my partner the first Christmas after we were married. We didn’t have much money (and still don’t), but I knew I could reveal my feelings for her more completely in a poem than with any other gift I could give.

Of Dragons and Unicorns
By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
from his collection, We Are the Underground

I imagine we knew one another
in a life long passed, a dream I shared
once upon a time with only myself.

Though, now, you’ve shared it with me…

As I sat alone in that diner
all those many years ago
mourning everything I believed
I’d lost, I never imagined you
were real in time, in space. But
now, you’re here. In love

with me who has become one with you.

For, you were there that day in spirit.
Though, I never could have known
at the time. Every poem I ever wrote…

Of dragons and unicorns, creatures
from Pythagorean dreams, we’re
creating all we have ever desired.
Together as fire and earth, the forest
and moon. The masculine and
feminine bound for all eternity.

To become one in the future,
we are beings born of each.
Our relationship is the flesh

creating a world yet to arrive.

To engender more than fantastic beasts,
my love, we’ve become suns, shooting
stars, Pluto and Venus orbiting the
void of time and space on distant
paths to join one another here,
together. On this earth and beyond

as winter turns to spring, you’ve shared

everything with me, who is with you
in body, in spirit, in mind. All that will be is us.
Our love. We cleave – a story unto Herself.

For more poems from We Are the Underground, click here.

Thumbnail: Domenichino, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

LIVE Tonight at 8 PM

Tonight, 2/9, at 8:00 pm EST, I’ll be appearing LIVE on YouBro ZO’s PolkaDotRabbit podcast. We’ll be talking about everything from mental health and race relations to writing, art, music, and anything else that comes up. Hope to see you all there. Tune in here!

Fearful Synteny

In honor of the Year of the Tiger…

Fearful Synteny
By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection We Are the Underground.

You are my rival –
a representation of matter
against my spirit, turning
white when the Emperor rules
with absolute virtue.

A senseless creature
symbolizing anger, you are
a near deity, a king upon
whose skin the Great God
Himself sits astride.

[Disappearing in a flash of light, you
return impregnated by an alien species
seeking to rebuild their own Ark out of
the remnants of this scorched earth,
the Lamb’s sister. You represent duality
between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity,
but in order to see one, the hand that made
Him must also make your fearful cemetery:
the physical symmetry for two main characters,
identical twins whose organs mirror one another’s…]

Nearly two million
years ago, your fossils appear,
not understood until today to be
you – a deadly, speeding arrow
launched at prey.

Charismatic, you are
the spokesperson for an entire
ecosystem at war with humanity,
needing protection, no longer able to defend itself.

Header image: Hokusai, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For more poems from We Are the Underground, please click here.

PRESALE STARTS NOW!!!

As many of you know… I’ve been publishing under the pen name Israfel Sivad for almost a decade now. But on 2/2/22, I’ll be rereleasing my entire catalog under my own name, Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.

All my books are now available to preorder on ebook! That includes two novels, five collections of stories, seven collections of poetry, and a memoir.

If you’ve ever been interested in my writing, now’s the time to check it out. Or if you’d prefer to wait, paperbacks will be available 2/2/22 as well.

My entire catalog is available for presale on ebook here: https://michaelanthonyadamsjr.com/bookstore

On the Edge of a Child’s Bed

I just saw a tweet that asked if any writers had worked on their manuscripts yet this year. I responded: “Nope. But I wrote a poem.” So, I thought I’d share that poem with all of you.

Here it is, my first poem of 2022:

On the Edge of a Child’s Bed
By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.

“Is it midnight yet?” the boy whispers to
himself. I don’t know what to say as I
sit on the edge of a child’s bed. He lays
awake, staring at the night, asking for
his mother to come sing him a lullaby.

But she’s asleep in the other room. She’s
tired. The days are long. The nights are longer.
He’ll awake before the dawn. His pitter-
patter feet will creep into her room. He’ll
whisper to his mother, “Are you awake?”

“Come here, child,” she’ll say to him. She’ll roll over. 
He clings to her ribs and drifts back to sleep,
secure in his mother’s embrace. While I
snore away, dreaming of the day when I
awaken on the edge of a child’s bed.

If you liked this, check out my new website here.

3 AM (January, the Second)

3 AM (January, the Second)

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
from his collection, Recipe for a Future Theogony.

I can’t relate to what
the troubadours have to say:

Stories of loves lost,
unrequited; dreams
of memories past.

They sing their songs
to harmonica, guitar.

Tunes that bring peace
to the mind, quiet to
the soul. I wish…

(At church last Sunday, you
prayed to Mary Magdalene,
asked forgiveness for Mother
Mary, cursed the Sun and
made love to His Father.)

You tried playing their thoughts
for me; their lives tried on me

as I rubbed your back (so sweet,
so painful) in your satin kimono:
red like the blood of my soul.

My brain is a sponge
filled of psychology,

philosophy, mythology,
science, math: art. It hurts
even when I caress your flesh.

(Two weird sisters sat on
the right hand of God:
vixens, jewels for the crown
surveying its domain,
a dowry: flesh for fantasy.)

I’m a drunk. I’m insane.
I’m an addict addicted…

Your body; your mind;
this concoction –
chemicals, fermentation.

I can’t write my life,
embarrassed at what you’ll find,

embarrassed at what I’ve
already discovered, what’s
never been understood.

(Madness leads to madness,
insanity to insanity, another
course, another vein, another
drink, another thing to explain
to the therapist – understand?)

Beautiful, I still smell
Asian currents on European

skin, but your scent can’t
be touched; can’t touch me.
I need to feel – Pangaea.

I want nothing, to die
tonight in my sleep.

My brain is my pain.
My mind is my loneliness.
My soul does not exist.

(None of this is real…
there are no words after
their formation, but even
in such an embryonic state,
I still can’t get to the truth.)

2 AM, my hotel light
burned on… 3 AM,

my nightstand overflows
with cigarette butts, trash,
books, notepads… alarm!

I can’t relate to what
the troubadours have to say:

My love never came to be,
requited by nobody since
I cut down the tree of life.

Header Image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Not as Crazy as They All Think I Am

Not as Crazy as They All Think I Am

ByBy Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.

from his short story collection, The American Apocalypse.

My family thinks I’m insane. Drinking a virgin daiquiri, I’m sitting on a veranda of a villa in Costa Rica that my grandmother rented for us for a Christmas vacation. I could do with the rum, but I don’t really need it. Besides, I’m trying to make a good impression, trying to prove that I’m not as crazy as they all think I am.

The hills and mountains rise across from a bay that in a few days I plan to go snorkeling in. I’ve been reading Hemingway’s stories of the Spanish Civil War. How inspiring. How disheartening. My life’s more like Bukowski’s. But I’m on vacation, vacation from my unemployment. I will return to the States to nothing. Iguanas sun themselves on the railing. I wish I was more like them, consciously garnering my existence from the nuclear reaction that keeps us alive.

Header Image: Proudcostarican, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday Afternoon

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
from his poetry collection, The Tree Outside My Window.

Believe me when I say that
I have seen the stars of night
sparkle in the light
of a woman’s sight.

I have forgotten more visions
of mirages on sand
than grains of that same sand
ever slipped through my hands.

I have lost more lives
than have ever been stolen
from a cat on the prowl
or a family in war.

I have stared at myself
until I grew roots
and cut those roots
to move downstream

and stare again.

I have fought and cried so many times,
and never once did I believe
a single scream could not be heard
until the day I met the day
when every scream’s cacophony
tore through my dream, leaving me
shaking and sweating, wringing my hands:
bloody, drenched, and licked so clean
by tongues of whores who torture me,
forcing me, gasping and drowning,
buried and choking,
beneath the sullen,
sandy sea.

Header image: John Thomson (1778–1840), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Click here for more poems from The Tree Outside My Window.

BCS LIVE 2019

In the mid-1990s, I played in a political hardcore band called Broken Chains of Segregation. On November 30, 2019, that band and five other bands from the Richmond Hardcore Scene in the mid-90s got together to play a reunion show at Richmond Music Hall. To all of our surprise, we sold out the venue!

Today, on the 1-year anniversary of that show, OVOLR! Records has released our audio from that show as a LIVE album: St. Edward Reunion Show 2019. We called it the St. Edward Reunion Show because that was a church basement on the Southside of RVA that allowed all of our bands to book shows there. It was a special time in many of our lives.

Today, I want to invite you to share the magic of that time and that night with our new album, BCS LIVE 2019, available here: https://open.spotify.com/album/6A9gGSDcsEjkrlnefyoj8s?si=ks23W8x4RSSAO-X6HfEXJw