The Poetry of
Michael G. Khmelnitsky

today my thoughts are not my own
I wake up almost as usual
and walk up davie street to get the truck

the truck is hard to drive
a machine unwieldy and dangerous
but I go through with it anyway


at home  nothing is packed
she walks amongst the rashly wrapp'd
ruins of her own things (and ours

words are thrown
shards are strewn on the red rug
the air full of pained acrimony


but the things get moved somehow
first to the elevator
then to the truck

I get her keys to my apartment
I get my grandmother's wedding ring
I drive


when I pack the new elevator
shoes tumble out of colourful boxes
in mounds and piles

the words fly by me
burberry  ferragamo  prada
sam edelman  steve madden


she shrieks
a mirror breaks
it begins to rain

I finish unloading
we argue one last time
the rhetoric empty and cruel


I return the truck
and drive home in the wet
summer decidedly done

I absentmindedly unload my food
on the conveyor belt down at the store
in a thematic fashion

i hardly think of  "person shaped  clichés
my intellectual friends had lobbed at me
all week


on monday I buy groceries
I get vegetables and fruit
and meat and cleaning supplies

I listen to jazz
I clean out the fridge
I clean behind the fridge


sometimes I find you
in drawers and between pages
I cry (or not  or imagine you crying (or not

in our respective worlds
I move  I work
I tack a few more lines onto this poem


I fill the holes
I sand the holes
I paint the holes

I paint the insides of closets
I vacuum
I dust


I sleep and I think
of the disintegration
of our mythology

on tuesday I bury my grandfather
I paint spots in the bedroom
over and over and over

I bleach the walls
I spackle the walls
I paint the walls


I clean out the hallway closet
and paint it inside
I do the same to the laundry cabinet

and to the toilet sink
all shiny and clean
all in its place


I throw away
the donald j. trump
signature collection tie

my mother gave me
for my birthday
many years ago


it used to be red and beautiful
I throw out
bag after bag of trash

on wednesday
just after midnight
I clean the kitchen

on thursday
I get a haircut
and trim my beard


I season the meat on the stove
I climb in the closet wholesale
and paint it  paint it white

I clean the hallway
and sort my books
and reminisce

on friday
I go through my papers
then collapse  and sleep

on saturday
I get an electric shock
adjusting a power socket


I paint the living room
I clean my office
thinking not once

of the time we danced
on the highway to calgary
with traffic stopped for miles

on sunday
I go for a walk
my own self proof positive

you can't ever break something
just to have something
to look forward to


i think of picking blueberries
and the sour taste that signalled
that you'd eaten a bug

i think of the things left
of all the things you left me
a hat  a mug  a knife


of the moon  freakishly cut in half
of the fish and the desk stayed behind
of the things that I still needed to buy

(if I were a harbour seal
I'd be dead already
splayed on the rocks with a smile


how i should have sprung
my fantastic stochastic world
made my thoughts opaque

withered all else with one touch
i wanted to say so much
i thought of witty titles for this


like "departurition  or something dramatic
like "the sundering
but instead i ended up with