Once when her kisses were fire incarnate and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame, when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes, leaving me listlessly sighing her name . . .
Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling, as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist, when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me all the while as her lips did more wildly insist . . .
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant, I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing that I vowed all my former vows to recant . . .
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed― this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
If you come to San Miguel before the orchids fall, we might stroll through lengthening shadows those deserted streets where love first bloomed ...
You might buy the same cheap musk from that mud-spattered stall where with furtive eyes the vendor watched his fragrant wares perfume your breasts ...
Where lean men mend tattered nets, disgruntled sea gulls chide; we might find that cafetucho where through grimy panes sunset implodes ...
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads, the strange anhingas glide. Green brine laps splintered moorings, rusted iron chains grind, weighed and anchored in the past,
held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel? Let love decide.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Muddy River Poetry Review
Desire glides in on calico wings, a breath of a moth seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure, sullen, shy or demure, in the margins of night,
a soft blur.
With a frantic dry rattle of alien wings, it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns to the flame, its delight, as long as it burns.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
Safe Harbor by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
The sea at night seems an alembic of dreams― the moans of the gulls, the foghorns’ bawlings.
A century late to be melancholy, I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams to safe harbor again.
In the twilight she gleams with a festive light, done with her trawlings, ready to sleep . . .
Deep, deep, in delight glide the creatures of night, elusive and bright as the poet’s dreams.
Published by The Lyric, Grassroots Poetry, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Life & Times
White in the Shadows by Michael R. Burch
White in the shadows I see your face, unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace; tell Regret it is not so rare.
Our love is not here though you smile, full of sedulous grace.
Lost in darkness, I fear the past is our resting place.
Published by Carnelian, The Chained Muse, Poetry Life & Times, A-Poem-A-Day and in a YouTube video by Aurora G. with the titles “Ghost,” “White Goddess” and “White in the Shadows”
We breathe and so we write; the night hums softly its accompaniment. Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn leads onward, and we smile, content.
And what we mean we write to learn: the vowels of love, the consonants’ strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape― curved like the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass like singing voles curled in a maze of blank white space. We touch a face― long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere can love be found. Just shrieking air.
It’s better not to speculate "continually" on who is great. Though relentless awe’s a Célèbre Cause, please reserve some time for the contemplation of the perils of EXAGGERATION.
Published by The HyperTexts
Are You the Thief by Michael R. Burch
When I touch you now, O sweet lover, full of fire, melting like ice in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace, baring pale flesh, and your face is so close that I breathe your breath and your hair surrounds me like a wreath ...
tell me now, O sweet, sweet lover, in good faith: are you the thief who has stolen my heart?
don’t forget ... by Michael R. Burch
don’t forget to remember that Space is curved (like your Heart) and that even Light is bent by your Gravity.
The One and Only by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
If anyone ever loved me, It was you. If anyone ever cared beyond mere things declared; if anyone ever knew ... My darling, it was you.
If anyone ever touched my beating heart as it flew, it was you, and only you.
Chloe by Michael R. Burch
There were skies onyx at night... moons by day... lakes pale as her eyes... breathless winds undressing tall elms ... she would say that we’d loved, but I figured we'd sinned.
Soon impatiens too fiery to stay sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned; things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray... all the light of that world softly dimmed.
Where our feet were inclined, we would stray; there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed, distant mountains that loomed in our way, thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.
What I found, I found lost in her face while yielding all my virtue to her grace.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as "A Dying Fall"
Resemblance by Michael R. Burch
Take this geode with its rough exterior�" crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...
a diode of amethyst�"wild, electric; its sequined cavity�"parted, revealing.
Find in its fire all brittle passion, each jagged shard relentlessly aching.
Each spire inward�"a fission startled; in its shattered entrails�"fractured light,
the heart ice breaking.
Originally published by Poet Lore as “Geode”
Geode by Michael R. Burch
Love�"less than eternal, not quite true�" is still the best emotion man can muster. Through folds of peeling rind�"rough, scarred, crude-skinned�" she shines, all limpid brightness, coolly pale.
Crude-skinned though she may seem, still, brilliant-hearted, in her uneven fissures, glistening, glows that pale rose: like a flame, yet strangely brittle; dew-lustrous pearl streaks gaping mossback shell.
And yet, despite the raggedness of her luster, as she hints and shimmers, touching those who see, she is not without her uses or her meanings; in all her avid gleamings, Love bestows
the rare spark of her beauty to her bearer, till nothing flung to earth seems half so fair.
Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge
Ann Rutledge was Abraham Lincoln’s first love interest. Unfortunately, she was engaged to another man when they met, then died with typhoid fever at age 22. According to a friend, Isaac Cogdal, when asked if he had loved her, Lincoln replied: “It is true―true indeed, I did. I loved the woman dearly and soundly: She was a handsome girl―would have made a good, loving wife … I did honestly and truly love the girl and think often, often of her now.”
Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge by Michael R. Burch
Winter was not easy, nor would the spring return. I knew you by your absence, as men are wont to burn with strange indwelling fire �" such longings you inspire!
But winter was not easy, nor would the sun relent from sculpting virgin images and how could I repent? I left quaint offerings in the snow, more maiden than I care to know.
Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt by Michael R. Burch
based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie
I. Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art” till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged: strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost. (Her host kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.)
II. Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches as evidence love undermines men’s plans and women’s strictures (and a plethora of scriptures.)
III. But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains, for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s).
IV. Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed, Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest and mowed them back, revealing the spot of the Railsplitter’s joy and grief (and his hope and his disbelief).
V. For such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments. Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments. Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question �" perhaps the Answer? Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer.
VI. There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true? And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you.
What Goes Around, Comes by Michael R. Burch
This is a poem about loss so why do you toss your dark hair― unaccountably glowing?
How can you be sure of my heart when it’s beyond my own knowing?
Or is it love’s pheromones you trust, my eyes magnetized by your bust and the mysterious alchemies of lust?
Now I am truly lost!
Free Fall by Michael R. Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel where suns revolve around an axle star ... Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours. Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell? To see is not to know, but you can feel the tug sometimes―the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air― too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp. The stars invert, electric, everywhere. And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...
two beings pale, intent to fall forever around each other―fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
The Harvest of Roses by Michael R. Burch
for Harvey Stanbrough
I have not come for the harvest of roses― the poets' mad visions, their railing at rhyme ... for I have discerned what their writing discloses: weak words wanting meaning, beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer― images weak, too forced not to fail; gathered by poets who worship their luster, they shimmer, impendent, resplendently pale.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Step Into Starlight by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight, lovely and wild, lonely and longing, a woman, a child . . .
Throw back drawn curtains, enter the night, dream of his kiss as a comet ignites . . .
Then fall to your knees in a wind-fumbled cloud and shudder to hear oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path to where the snaking vine bends and withers and writhes as winter descends . . .
And learn that each season ends one vanished day, that each pregnant moon holds no spent tides in its sway . . .
For, as suns seek horizons― boys fall, men decline. As the grape sags with longing, remember―the wine!
Originally published by The Lyric
At Once by Michael R. Burch
Though she was fair, though she sent me the epistle of her love at once and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer, I did not love her at once.
Though she would dare pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once, the dark, haggard keeper of the lair, I did not love her at once.
Though she would share the all of her being, to heal me at once, yet more than her touch I was unable bear. I did not love her at once.
And yet she would care, and pour out her essence ... and yet―there was more! I awoke from long darkness,
and yet―she was there. I loved her the longer; I loved her the more because I did not love her at once.
Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly and Grassroots Poetry
An Obscenity Trial by Michael R. Burch
The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints against whom several critics cited numerous complaints. They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd," and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.
The prosecutor alleged himself most stylish and best-dressed; it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed. He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity; twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.
The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind, though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind. Clerics called him the "Hanging Judge" and the critics were his kin. Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.
The prosecutor began his case by spitting in the poet's face, knowing the trial would be a farce. "It is obscene," he screamed, "to expose the naked heart!" The recorder (bewildered Society) greeted this statement with applause.
"This man is no poet. Just look―his Hallmark shows it. Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar! He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine! He does not use recondite words or conjure ancient Latin verbs. This man is an imposter!
I ask that his sentence be the almost perceptible indignity of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster." The jury left in tears of joy, literally sequestered.
The defendant sighed in mild despair, "Please, let me answer to my peers." But how His Honor giggled then, seeing no poets were let in.
Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.
A well-known poet criticized this poem for being "journalistic." But then the poem is written from the point of view of a journalist who's covering the trial of a poet. The poem was completed by the end of my sophomore year in college.
a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .
I.
A final stereo fades into silence and now there is seldom a murmur to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched the passage of time―alone,
not untouched.
And I am as they were unsure for the days stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.
II.
Ah, faithless lover― that I had never touched your breast, nor felt the stirrings of my heart, which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration of a heart that has vaulted the Pinnacle of Love, and the result of each such infatuation― the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.
III.
A solitary clock chimes the hour from far above the campus, but my peers, returning from their dances, heed it not.
And so it is that we seldom gauge Time’s speed because He moves so unobtrusively about His task.
Still, when at last we reckon His mark upon our lives, we may well be surprised at His thoroughness.
IV.
Ungentle maiden― when Time has etched His little lines so carelessly across your brow, perhaps I will love you less than now.
And when cruel Time has stolen your youth, as He certainly shall in course, perhaps you will wish you had taken me along with my broken heart, even as He will take you with yours.
V.
A measureless rhythm rules the night― few have heard it, but I have shared it, and its secret is mine.
To put it into words is as to extract the sweetness from honey and must be done as gently as a butterfly cleans its wings.
But when it is captured, it is gone again; its usefulness is only that it lulls to sleep.
VI.
So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night, to the moans of the moonlit hills' bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills.
But I will not sleep this night, nor any . . . how can I―when my dreams
are always of your perfect face ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace, framed by your perfect pillowcase?
VII.
If I had been born when knights roamed the earth and mad kings ruled savage lands, I might have turned to the ministry, to the solitude of a monastery.
But there are no monks or hermits today― theirs is a lost occupation carried on, if at all, merely for sake of tradition.
For today man abhors solitude― he craves companions, song and drink, seldom seeking a quiet moment, to sit alone, by himself, to think.
VIII.
And so I cannot shut myself off from the rest of the world, to spend my days in philosophy and my nights in tears of self-sympathy.
No, I must continue as best I can, and learn to keep my thoughts away from those glorious, uproarious moments of youth, centuries past though lost but a day.
IX.
Yes, I must discipline myself and adjust to these lackluster days when men display no chivalry and romance is the "old-fashioned" way.
X.
A single stereo flares into song and the first faint light of morning has pierced the sky's black awning once again.
XI.
This is a sacred place, for those who leave, leave better than they came.
But those who stay, while they are here, add, with their sleepless nights and tears, quaint sprigs of ivy to the walls of these hallowed halls.
something of sunshine attracted my i as it lazed on the afternoon sky, golden, splashed on the easel of god . . .
what, i thought, could this elfin stuff be, to, phantomlike, flit through tall trees on fall days, such as these?
and the breeze whispered a dirge to the vanishing light; enchoired with the evening, it sang; its voice enchantedly rang chanting “Night!” . . .
till all the bright light retired, expired.
This poem appeared in my high school literary journal, the Lantern, so I was no older than 18 when I wrote it, probably younger. I will guess around 16 or 17. It was titled "Something of Sunshine" at the time. The first half of the poem is largely the same but the second half is probably the most revised in this collection. The three closing lines were written around 45 years later, at age 61. There was a companion poem, also published in the Lantern, called "As Time Walked By."
The pain of love is this: the parting after the kiss;
the train steaming from the station whistling abnegation;
each interstate’s bleak white bar that vanishes under your car;
every hour and flower and friend that cannot be saved in the end;
dear things of immeasurable cost ... now all irretrievably lost.
The title “The Pain of Love” was suggested by Little Richard, then eighty years old, in an interview with Rolling Stone. Little Richard said someone should create a song called “The Pain of Love.” How could I not obey a living legend? I have always found the departure platforms of railway stations and the vanishing broken white bars of highway dividing lines to be depressing, so they were natural images for my poem. Perhaps someone can set the lyrics to music and fulfill the Great Commission!
Since I first set my lips to your full cup, Since my pallid face first nested in your hands, Since I sensed your soul and every bloom lit up― Till those rare perfumes were lost to deepening sands;
Since I was once allowed those pleasures deep― To hear your heart speak mysteries, divine; Since I have seen you smile, have watched you weep, Your lips pressed to my lips, your eyes on mine;
Since I have sensed above my thoughts the gleam Of a ray, a single ray, of your bright star (If sometimes veiled), and felt light falling stream, Like one rose petal plucked from high, afar;
I now can say to time's swift-changing hours: Pass, pass upon your way, for you grow old; Flee to the dark abyss with your drear flowers, but one unmarred within my heart I hold.
Your flapping wings may jar but cannot spill The cup fulfilled of love, from which I drink; My heart has fires your frosts can never chill, My soul more love to fly than you can sink.
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