Di Mackey

Di Mackey is a wonderfully talented professional photographer, originally from New Zealand and living in Belgium. She has been encouraging my writing since she stumbled onto my blog in late 2006. She recently interviewd me for her new website. Please feel free to read the interview, and check out some examples of Di's amazing work.

Michael Schiller, Poet - DiMackey.com

A Thing Like October

Please visit my new vanity site.

Salvage

I was going to buy an old crate for $50.
It said DYNAMITE on the side
And I was going to place it in my bathroom
To hold magazines.
But a minute later I forgot why it was a good idea.
The chairs were better to look at.
They winced and complained when sat on,
As if it were your idea.
But everything was beautiful because it was old,
Because the paint had long since abandoned it's claim
And the handles had yielded their shape
To the intruding fingers;
The table tops polished and scarred and polished
By the same wandering hands,
By dishes, books, pocket change.
A great mottled cabinet stood sturdy and proud,
But whined and grunted as I opened it,
As if I had woken it from much-needed sleep
And called on it to perform.
I know, cabinet, I thought.
We're not so different.
I'm not as strong as a I look either.
You'll stand unmolested in my kitchen.
We'll get along; we'll lie for each other.
I looked at the price and walked away,
Forgetting it needed me.
I can't afford that much history.
It's all better anyway, because it's old,
All differently, separately old.
I wanted to remain,
To volunteer my atoms into the dust,
Submit my consciousness to other times
And try pieces of them all.
It's not right that we can remember just one.
I could enroll my own history in this school,
Brush off the unpracticed lessons
Under lamps that wait tangled in corners.
In the end I bought a narrow cabinet, mostly green,
Pretending to be ancient and feigning purpose.
It leans away from my window, ashamed.

Morning Glory

I don't want to write about the world.
How could I write meaningful phrases
About a place I hardly know?
I've sailed across oceans, sure.
I've visited the greatest cities built.
But the world?
I see people who have been there.
They exit as I enter;
Their days begin at the end of mine.
They sit near me at the cafe, in groups,
With things to say.
They speak to others in the world;
That's the difference.
They connect to each other with words,
Sentences stretching out like elastic strings,
Or gravitational membranes
Bending in space and drawing back pieces
That they can keep, suck in like smoke,
Then breathe into others they know.
Nothing I do is like that.
They have energy and memory.
They remember laughter
And the remembering revives it,
Renewed like morning glories.
I think that's what the world is.
I think that's what I mean.

The Window and the Burning Church

Here take the breath from me
Come take my chance away
Help make the peace be gone
Push all my pillars down
I’ll walk a thousand miles
I'll splinter record time
Stop short a mile from home
Turn back and lose my way
And I’ll follow homeless gods
And I’ll pray for ends of things
Talking to missionaries
Of lost land and halted hopes
So why wait for answers here?
And why take a path that’s worn?
I’ll climb down a ropeless hole
I'll measure hell in hours
Then point my brain at clouds
Till I find the sun again
O make me to give a damn
Bend me to setting goals
I’ll turn the rivers back
And great lakes anew will form
Don’t ask for sense from me
You won’t find it in my clothes
Lean back to see the sky
Back, back till all goes dark.