POEMS BY
THREE MICHAEL BURKARD
Accidental Press 1997
1 MY VOICE You write me and say you miss my voice. I do not want to give you my voice; I do not even know if I have a voice to give. I did, at first, want to send you a simple note, saying, simply, “My voice is broken.” It would not have been such a simple note. The sea, I see a couple of you at the sea, I do not see myself among you. I do not hear my own voice.
2 THE HOUSE OF NECKTIES I can’t help it—in one dream my friend from the sea years ignored me. Day later he followed me in a yellow car. But no one was driving when I looked. And my looks told me I would wind up in a very small space, with not enough breath for so many
people. Now I take care of the house of neckties for a few days. It’s a family house. But neckties make up various kinds of art—paintings, collages, unlikeCornell boxes with miniature of scissored neatly neckties within the boxes. A boy is spelling himself to sleep the night before. I help. But more importantly I do not help. I am not by the sea. I am not walking my dog. I am not telling the truth. The rain may as well have three or four 1’s in its name. It is that hard to tell. Hard to fall also. I see your face for the thousandth time since leaving you. Or did you leave me? Or did neither of us never leave the other?
3 WINDOW OVERLOOKING OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES for Todd
You’re on a world, and there is only one sea, and it’s small—it’s a small sea. And you’re there and there is one boat on the sea, and it’s a lost boat, no, wait a second, grasshopper, it wouldn’t be lost, it wouldn’t be lost at all. One boat on the sea. You’re there.