Michael Gardner
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CALIFORNIA ROMANTICA
next time we meet
let’s keep our clothes on
what am I the dalai lama
if they’ll cheat on someone else for you
they’ll cheat on you for someone else
we are the animals that paint themselves
polyrhythmic manifestations
a conjurer came to town
mustached
collecting the rubbings of my eraser
imagine the inorganic
mineral elements forming new rumors
but where is dystopia anymore
with a surplus of choices
desire or narcotics
even if you’re dead it’ll
still kill you
just watch the horizon line
so you won’t get sick
at sea
I dreamt of animal-made art
cézanne was fond of
crested macaques
and of a place where
merely painting horses meant power
OFTEN DRINK TEA
the black cows
on the brown grass
in a way that is true to life
it’s a time of Tennyson
and sober up
realism’s a noun
and prevention and treatment
of sugar water
shamble along behind
a dawning age of poetry
poems of Bogan
where the body
is the shadow’s prison
the web of life
officially stationed
in the Expo
regarded as a kind of
one million copies sold
between a scattering of jades
and a semi-precious
often drink tea
Biographical Statement
Michael Gardner lives and writes in Santa Barbara, California. He is the author of two chapbooks, Opening Out, and Acoustic Shadows. He considers his work to be of the West.