Nervous Pooping (Not Written on a Toilet): A Concrete Poem

You Shall Find My Vanities Forespent: A Draft

You hold who I was, frozen in time. He is but a corpse no longer among the living. How far has he journeyed from you. How much more has he become.

O, how watchful have I been to see you unmoved. Settled like silt along the banks of fetid waters; deeply rooted like thorns underfoot.

Here we stand. Host of the dead and I. Bear you now your arms, for neither can live while the other yet draws breath. Come and find my vanities forespent.

The Dead Float Here

A bloated body
Floated gracefully by.
Swollen and buzzing,
Swarming with flies.

Its eyes like milk.
Its skin a mottled grey.
Adorned in silt
On a bright summer’s day.

Fertilized Wine and a Side of Genocide: My People Have Much to Atone For

Slurs are a slurry of swill.
Urine and feces
Served at wine tastings.
Their bottles are fermented.
Ours are fertilized.
Drink up.
It’s poison,
And we’re all gonna die.

Forgive all this white noise.
It’s just my religion.
A holy mission
To put women back in the kitchen.
Because I need a sandwich in this man’s world.
So break out the casseroles,
And there better be raisins
In that potato salad.

We conquered the world
Just to dump its spices into the ocean,
Like tea
On a balmy Bostonian day.
If we can’t handle it,
No one gets to have it.

White pride.
It’s a precursor to genocide.
We’ve shackled dark skinned bodies
And forced entire cultures to die.
Go ahead,
Write it down, it doesn’t matter,
We’re burning entire libraries alive—
With all the great works still inside.

So drink up—
To the new world we’ve civilized.
Or, colonized.
Shout out to Jesus Christ!

Ghost Stories: A Prose Poetry Exercise

The first time I saw a ghost, I was a small child lying in bed. Overhead in pitch darkness, her light drew near and retreated–drew near and retreated–in unnatural rhythm and pattern unrepeated. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d see some strange and inexplicable thing. Twenty years later, I’d reach out for disbelief to be shattered in the thrill of hearing, “Holy God, help me. Pray!” I have not yet shaken the chill, still riding my spine.

Where Were You: A Poem

Where were you when God lost his way? When his silence spurned debates over who to love and who to hate? Where were you when love we crucified, or when we throttled grace until it died? Premeditated murder in first degree. Even these, my hands, are bloody.

Death Rendering

She fell like rain.
Like a star.
Graceful
Up until the crash.
A lifetime of being there
Until one day she wasn’t.
Gone in an instant.
Erased from time.
Leaving behind
Only the smudge lines of her smile.

Therapy — A Poem by Michael Brewer

I wrote this poem a number of years ago. I come back to it often to remind myself how far I’ve come from where I started. I’m proud of this piece and wanted to share it here. I hope you enjoy it.