Spotlight series #106 : Micah Ballard
Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
Statement: I write poems, live with them, live it out, and do what they tell me to do, hopefully without a hand in them. They are the supreme agency of imagination and soul-making. I am adherent to their various magickal possibilities and it’s pretty much all I think and care about besides the immediate demands of the world — which I also adhere to and they show me how to exist within it, in every way that’s conceviencably available in these expanding universes.
THREE POEMS
USED TO
I used to be me but now I’m free
I used to please everybody but who cares
I used to skate but got too many vertigo concussions
I used to sprain my ankle but still always do
I used to go out a lot but now I’m a hermit
I used to care about working but have to forever
I used to be very horny but can’t stop that
I used to have a landline but now it’s a stupid cellphone
I used to be very outgoing but it remains
I used to print books but now we’re broke
I used to be a voracious reader but now skim
I used to go to bookstores but now it’s the free public library
I used to cut everyone’s hair for beer but don’t anymore
I used to build ramps but hand saws were scary
I used to have long blonde hair but now suffer a widow’s peak
I used to have a license but it expired in 2002
I used to think I was tough but really just sensitive
I used to wear gold watches but that turned into gold rings
I used to paint my nails black but switched to another polish
I used to be a lot of things but still am
INHALE AT WILL
In my luxury space balloon
Enough terrain to ensure a lifetime of glory
Cheap nicotine and screaming urethane
Awaiting the symphony of destruction
Above the medieval façades
& ancient aqueducts
It feels like a utopian past
Visiting a dystopian future
I finally have my own bathroom
& bidet to wash my face
Everyone the star of their own reality show
Babushkas nimbly walking around
Cigarettes hanging on friendly smiles
Unfazed from alien activity
A feisty bunch of scrappers
A truce is made and you move on
Time to permeate the algorithms
GOON SQUAD
Not waving
drowning another
seeking rescue from venture capitalists
who walk San Francisco
flip flops and Patagonia vests
oh, I guess it’s “you people”
who don’t say hello back
or even look you in the eye
I thought you left due to Covid
or no more avocado toast
Now back raising prices
& catching your tour bus to work
you can find me anytime
at Golden Gate and Fillmore
y’all don’t walk around there
everyone is too hood
& totally nice
for Joanne Kyger
Micah Ballard is the author of over a dozen books of poetry including Waifs and Strays (City Lights Books), Afterlives (Bootstrap Press), The Michaux Notebook (FMSBW), Parish Krewes (Bootstrap Press), Selected Prose, 2008–19 (Blue Press), Evangeline Downs (Ugly Duckling Presse), Daily Vigs (Bird & Beckett Books), Vesper Chimes (Gas Meter), Busy Secret (first ed. above/ground press; second ed. FMSBW) and Negative Capability in the Verse of John Wieners (Bootstrap Press). He lives in San Francisco with poet Sunnylyn Thibodeaux and their daughter Lorca.
