There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar, a rose like Sharon's, lovely as her name. The world forgot her, and is not the same. I still love her and enlist this sacred fire to keep her memory exalted flame unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.
On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles; they sleep alike―diminutive and tall, the innocent, the "surgeons." Sleeping, all.
Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals, if accidents of coloration, gall my heart no less. Amid thick weeds and muck there lies a rose man's crackling lightning struck: the only Rose I ever longed to pluck. Soon I'll bed there and bid the world "Good Luck."
The earth is full of rhythms so precise the octave of the crystal can produce a trillion oscillations, yet not lose a second's beat. The ear needs no device to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched by kisses, should the heart put back its watch and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance obey their numbers, what's been left to chance? Should poets be more lax―their circumstance as humble as it is?―or readers wince to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?
Originally published by The Eclectic Muse then by The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
The meter I had sought to find, perplexed, was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose. I found it in sheet music, in long rows of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed half-centuries by archivists, unscanned. I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed― why should such tattered artistry be banned?
I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads, the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ... A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks are all I’ve found this late to sell to those who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."
Originally published by The Chariton Review
The Forge by Michael R. Burch To at last be indestructible, a poem must first glow, almost flammable, upon a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,
then bend this way and that, and slowly cool at arms-length, something irreducible drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool
of water so contrary just a hiss escapes it―water instantly a mist. It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...
And then the driven hammer falls and falls. The horses prick their ears in nearby stalls. A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.
A sound of ancient import, with the ring of honest labor, sings of fashioning.
For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved ... and yet I hold her close within my thought. I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were one, and if I could ... I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact each feature, each impression. Love is such a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone before we recognize it. I would crush my lips to hers to hold their memory, if not more tightly, less elusively.
Whatever winds encountered soon resolved to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall. In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each dry leaf into its place and built a high, soft bastion against earth's gravitron― a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright impediment to fling ourselves upon.
And nothing in our laughter as we fell into those leaves was like the autumn's cry of also falling. Nothing meant to die could be so bright as we, so colorful― clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.
Through our long years of dreaming to be one we grew toward an enigmatic light that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun? We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite the lack of all sensation―all but one: we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.
To touch was all we knew, and how to bask. We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash, wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt. We felt returning light and could not ask its meaning, or if something was withheld more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.
At last the petal of me learned: unfold. And you were there, surrounding me. We touched. The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched, and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.
See how her hair has thinned: it doesn't seem like hair at all, but like the airy moult of emus who outraced the wind and left soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs, and deepens on itself, as though mirth took some comfort there and burrowed deeply in, outlasting winter. See how very thin her features are―that time has made more spare, so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.
For loveliness remains in her grave eyes, and courage in her still-delighted looks: each face presented like a picture book's. Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.
Originally published by Writer's Digest's: The Year's Best Writing 2003
In the whispering night, when the stars bend low till the hills ignite to a shining flame, when a shower of meteors streaks the sky, and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame, we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen, and gather our vigor, and all our intent. We must heave our bodies to some violent ocean and laugh as they shatter, and never repent. We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us, soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze: blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.
Published in Songs of Innocence,Romantics Quarterly and Poetry Life & Times. This is a poem I wrote for my favorite college English teacher, George King, about poetic kinship, brotherhood and romantic flights of fancy.
The Toast by Michael R. Burch
For longings warmed by tepid suns (brief lusts that animated clay), for passions wilted at the bud and skies grown desolate and gray, for stars that fell from tinseled heights and mountains bleak and scarred and lone, for seas reflecting distant suns and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown, for waltzes ending in a hush, for rhymes that fade as pages close, for flames' exhausted, drifting ash, and petals falling from the rose, ... I raise my cup before I drink, saluting ghosts of loves long dead, and silently propose a toast― to joys set free, and those I fled.
Second Sight (II) by Michael R. Burch
Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.
Wiser than we know, the newborn screams, red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means this close to death, amid the arctic glare of warmthless lights above. Beware! Beware!― encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts?
Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts― the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist. Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist― this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense. Why can he not float on, in dark suspense, and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?
He frowns at them―small gnomish frowns, all doubt― and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!, re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.
(bookmark XXIV)
Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”) by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We cannot know the beheaded god nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will emanates dynamism. Otherwise the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us, nor the centering loins make us smile at the thought of their generative animus. Otherwise the stone might seem deficient, unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards, unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within like an inchoate star―demanding our belief. You must change your life.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This is a poem about a major resolution: changing the very nature of one's life. While it is only my personal interpretation of the poem above, I believe Rilke was saying to himself: "I must change my life." Why? Perhaps because he wanted to be a real artist, and when confronted with real, dynamic, living and breathing art of Rodin, he realized that he had to inject similar vitality, energy and muscularity into his poetry. Michelangelo said that he saw the angel in a block of marble, then freed it. Perhaps Rilke had to find the dynamic image of Apollo, the God of Poetry, in his materials, which were paper, ink and his imagination.―Michael R. Burch
Komm, Du (“Come, You”) by Ranier Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.
Come, you―the last one I acknowledge; return―
incurable pain searing this physical mesh. As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.
This wood that long resisted your embrace now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage― uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.
Completely free, no longer future’s pawn, I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain, certain I’d never return―my heart’s reserves gone―
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.
Now all I ever was must be denied. I left my memories of my past elsewhere. That life―my former life―remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.
Der Panther ("The Panther") by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars, his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion. His world is not our world. It has no stars. No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond. Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride, he circles, his small orbit tightening, an electron losing power. Paralyzed, soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing. Only at times the pupils' curtains rise silently, and then an image enters, descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.
Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”) by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours? How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone? Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate. There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice. Whose instrument are we becoming together? Whose, the hands that excite us? Ah, sweet song!
Sweet Rose of Virtue by William Dunbar [1460-1525] loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness, delightful lily of youthful wantonness, richest in bounty and in beauty clear and in every virtue that is held most dear― except only that you are merciless. Into your garden, today, I followed you; there I saw flowers of freshest hue, both white and red, delightful to see, and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently― yet everywhere, no odor but bitter rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast, whose piteous death does my heart such pain that, if I could, I would compose her roots again― so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
Ebb Tide by Michael R. Burch
Massive, gray, these leaden waves bear their unchanging burden― the sameness of each day to day
while the wind seems to struggle to say something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.
Now collapsing dull waves drain away from the unenticing land; shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray― whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand. Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.
Originally published by Southwest Review
Water and Gold by Michael R. Burch
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert when every flower springs to life at once, but joy's a wan illusion to the expert: the Bedouin has learned how not to want.
You came to me as riches to a miser when all is gold, or so his heart believes, until he dies much thinner and much wiser, his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.
You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly; I could not take it in; it was too much. I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly. I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.
I dreamed you gave me water of your lips, then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.
Originally published by The Lyric
The City Is a Garment by Michael R. Burch
A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,― the city is a garment stretched so thin her festive colors bleed into the night, and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,
cascade their brilliant contents out like coins on motorways and esplanades; bead cars come tumbling down long highways; at her groin a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks;
her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull themselves into the semblance of a barge.
When night becomes too chill, she softly dons great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn.
Originally published by The Lyric
The Folly of Wisdom by Michael R. Burch
She is wise in the way that children are wise, looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand.
We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, so I smile, and I follow ...
And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves that flutter above us, and what she believes― I can almost remember―goes something like this: the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.
She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
The Communion of Sighs by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment without the sound of trumpets or a shining light, but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist felt more than seen. I was eighteen, my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist. Expectation hung like a cry in the night, and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant . . . without words, but with a deeper communion, as clothing first, then inhibitions fell; liquidly our lips met ―feverish, wet― forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell, in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . . when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise, and the only sound, the communion of sighs.
This is one of my early poems but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.
Abide by Michael R. Burch
after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"
It is hard to understand or accept mortality― such an alien concept: not to be. Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion, or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle. Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . . even in life, staring out across that dark brink. And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink, it is best not to drink (or, drinking, certainly not to think).
Originally published by Light Quarterly
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
Once by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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.
Originally published by The Lyric
At Once by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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.
Originally published by The Lyric
Moments by Michael R. Burch
There were moments full of promise, like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring, when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty full of pale unearthly twilight―how the cold stars stare!―
when to be without you is a dark enchantment the night and I share.
The Harvest of Roses by Michael R. Burch
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
Distances by Michael R. Burch
Moonbeams on water― the reflected light of a halcyon star now drowning in night ... So your memories are.
Footprints on beaches now flooding with water; the small, broken ribcage of some primitive slaughter ... So near, yet so far.
NOTE: In the first stanza the "halcyon star" is the sun, which has dropped below the horizon and is thus "drowning in night." But its light strikes the moon, creating moonbeams which are reflected by the water. Sometimes memories seem that distant, that faint, that elusive. Footprints are being washed away, a heart is missing from its ribcage, and even things close at hand can seem infinitely beyond our reach.
A Surfeit of Light by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence. You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world― a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race, raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s. Yours was an antique grace―Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure, of your trillium-and-platinum diadem, of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night―your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more. The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold. You were this fool’s gold.
Songstress by Michael R. Burch
for Nadia Anjuman
Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart must flutter wildly, O, and always sing against the pressing darkness: all it knows until at last it feels the numbing sting of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes, imposing night on one who clearly saw. Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw― envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing! But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren! Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.
A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world finally robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave the world, thus bereaving the world of herself and her song?
Come Down by Michael R. Burch
for Harold Bloom
Come down, O, come down from your high mountain tower. How coldly the wind blows, how late this chill hour ...
and I cannot wait for a meteor shower to show you the time must be now, or not ever.
Come down, O, come down from the high mountain heather now brittle and brown as fierce northern gales sever.
Come down, or your heart will grow cold as the weather when winter devours and spring returns never.
NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.
Plastic Art, or, Night Stand by Michael R. Burch
Disclaimer: This is a poem about artificial poetry, not love dolls! The victim is the Muse.
We never questioned why “love” seemed less real the more we touched her, and forgot her face. Absorbed in molestation’s sticky feel, we failed to see her staring into space, her doll-like features frozen in a smile. She held us in her marionette’s embrace, her plastic flesh grown wet and slick and vile. We groaned to feel our urgent fingers trace her undemanding body. All the while, she lay and gaily bore her brief disgrace. We loved her echoed passion’s squeaky air, her tongueless kisses’ artificial taste, the way she matched, then raised our reckless pace, the heart that seemed to pound, but was not there.
Such Tenderness by Michael R. Burch
for the mothers of Gaza and loving, compassionate mothers everywhere
There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has, when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing and coos to them softly, unable to sing.
What songs long forgotten occur to you now― a babe at each breast? What terrible vow ripped from your throat like the thunder that day can never hold severing lightnings at bay?
Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ... and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―
what is the source, whence comes the desire of a woman to love as no God may require?
In this Ordinary Swoon by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon as I pass from life to death, I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon; I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came, I do not know; nor does it matter. The end of every man’s the same and every god’s as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go; I only fear the clinging on to hope when there’s no hope, although I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity of the wilder inferno within me.
Mare Clausum by Michael R. Burch
These are the narrows of my soul― dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams. And these uncharted islands bleakly home wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.
Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs. For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.
Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost; then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust. This sea is not for sailors, but the damned who lingered long past morning, till they learned
why it is named: Mare Clausum.
Originally published by Penny Dreadful
NOTE: Mare Clausum is Latin for "Closed Sea." I wrote the first version of this poem as a teenager.
Redolence by Michael R. Burch
Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway; and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray; the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.
Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills, all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares; mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.
And now the pact of night is made complete; the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time, the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.
Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
Fountainhead by Michael R. Burch
I did not delight in love so much as in a kiss like linnets' wings, the flutterings of a pulse so soft the heart remembers, as it sings: to bathe there was its transport, brushed by marble lips, or porcelain,― one liquid kiss, one cool outburst from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...
to float awhirl on minute tides within the compass of your eyes, to feel your alabaster bust grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs seem hisses now; your eyes, serene, reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
Pan by Michael R. Burch
... Among the shadows of the groaning elms, amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...
... Once there were paths that led to coracles that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...
... where we cannot return, because we lost the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...
... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...
... that led up to the Fortress in the trees will not support our weight, but on our knees ...
... we still might fit inside those splendid hours of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...
... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
The Endeavors of Lips by Michael R. Burch
How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak: for there is no illusion like love ...
Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days, for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways that curled to the towers of Yesterdays where She braided illusions of love ...
"O, let down your hair!"―we might call and call, to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ... but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl like a spidery illusion. For love ...
was never as real as that first kiss seemed when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly (USA) and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)
Loose Knit by Michael R. Burch
She blesses the needle, fetches fine red stitches, criss-crossing, embroidering dreams in the delicate fabric.
And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits, she tells herself reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...
that a little more darning may gather loose seams.
She weaves an unraveling tapestry of fatigue and remorse and pain; ... only the nervously pecking needle pricks her to motion, again and again.
Published by The Chariton Review as “The Knitter,” then by Penumbra, Black Bear Review and Triplopia
If You Come to San Miguel by Michael R. Burch
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.
A Vain Word by Michael R. Burch
Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining to the minions of autumn, how swiftly life goes as I fled before love ... Now, through leaves trodden black, shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.
I discerned in one season all eternities of grief, the specter of death sprawled out under the rose, the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf, the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.
O, where are you now?―I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.
Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review
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 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”
Aflutter by Michael R. Burch
This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.―Yahweh
You are gentle now, and in your failing hour how like the child you were, you seem again, and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?) who held the sparrow with the mangled wing close to her heart. It marveled at your power but would not mend. And so the world renews old vows it seemed to make: false promises spring whispers, as if nothing perishes that does not resurrect to wilder hues like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend but cannot fail to keep. Now in your eyes I see the end of life that only dies and does not care for bright, translucent lies. Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend together, as before, then lay to rest these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.
This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a Bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly.
To Flower by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know― you and I, all our petals incurled, till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow. Is there love anywhere in this strange world? The Agave knows best when it's time to die and rages to life with such rapturous leaves her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high, she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes in love at all, she has left it behind to flower, to flower. When darkness falls she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls: beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind, she never adored it, nor watches it go. Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Flight 93 by Michael R. Burch
I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked why existence felt so small, so purposeless, like a minnow wriggling feebly in my grasp ...
vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch to OFF ... I heard the klaxon-shrill alarms
like vultures’ shriekings ... earthward, in a stall ... we floated ... earthward ... wings outstretched, aghast like Icarus ... as through the void we fell ...
till nothing was so beautiful, so blue ... so vivid as that moment ... and I held an image of your face, and dreamed I flew
into your arms. The earth rushed up. I knew such comfort, in that moment, loving you.
Originally published by The Lyric
Oasis by Michael R. Burch
I want tears to form again in the shriveled glands of these eyes dried all these long years by too much heated knowing.
I want tears to course down these parched cheeks, to star these cracked lips like an improbable dew
in the heart of a desert.
I want words to burble up like happiness, like the thought of love, like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you
to a nomad who has only known drought.
Melting by Michael R. Burch
Entirely, as spring consumes the snow, the thought of you consumes me: I am found in rivulets, dissolved to what I know of former winters’ passions. Underground, perhaps one slender icicle remains of what I was before, in some dark cave― a stalactite, long calcified, now drains to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves the colder rock, thus washing something clean that never saw the light, that never knew the crust could break above, that light could stream: so luminous, so bright, so beautiful ... I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed, and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.
Afterglow by Michael R. Burch
The night is full of stars. Which still exist? Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know. For now I hold your fingers to my lips and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...
once slow to match this reckless spark in me, this moon in ceaseless orbit I became, compelled by wilder gravity to flee night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...
for one pale flame that seemed to signify the Zodiac of all, the meaning of love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie in dawning recognition is enough ...
enough each night to bask in you, to know the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.
All Afterglow byMichael R. Burch
Something remarkable, perhaps ... the color of her eyes ... though I forget the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair the way it blew about ... I do not know just what it was about her that has kept her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow that lasted till July would be less rare, clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’ and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond the freezing point which keeps all things the same ... till what remains is fragile and unlike the world above, where melted snows and rains form rivulets that, inundate with sun, evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream remake the world again ... I do not know that we can be remade―all afterglow.
These Hallowed Halls byMichael R. Burch
a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .
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.
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 leapt every pinnacle of Love, and the result of all such infatuations― the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.
Come! by Michael R. Burch Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder, in the season of lightning, the season of thunder, when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth that I have no girth?
When my womb has conformed to the chastity your anemic Messiah envisioned for me, will you finally be pleased that my sex was thus rendered unpalatable, disengendered?
And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow with the approval of God that I ended a maid― thanks to a spade?
And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder, in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?
Erin by Michael R. Burch
All that’s left of Ireland is her hair― bright carrot―and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair, her train of children―some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin, gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!
How can men look upon her and not spin like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air? They buy. They grope to pat her nyloned shin, to share her elevated, pale Despair ... to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.
All that’s left of Ireland is the Care, her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.
The Composition of Shadows by Michael R. Burch
“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”―W. B. Yeats
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.
The Composition of Shadows (II) by Michael R. Burch
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, the blood’s debate within the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass against bright glass, within the white Labyrinthian maze.
Through simple grace, I touch your face, ah words! And I would gaze
the night’s dark length in waning strength to find the words to feel
such light again. O, for a pen to spell love so ethereal.
To Please The Poet by Michael R. Burch
To please the poet, words must dance― staccato, brisk, a two-step: so! Or waltz in elegance to time of music mild, adagio.
To please the poet, words must chance emotion in catharsis― flame. Or splash into salt seas, descend in sheets of silver-shining rain.
To please the poet, words must prance and gallop, gambol, revel, rail. Or muse upon a moment, mute, obscure, unsure, imperfect, pale.
To please the poet, words must sing, or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.
The First Christmas by Michael R. Burch
’Twas in a land so long ago . . . the lambs lay blanketed in snow and little children everywhere sat and watched warm embers glow and dreamed (of what, we do not know).
And THEN―a star appeared on high,
The brightest man had ever seen! It made the children whisper low in puzzled awe (what did it mean?). It made the wooly lambkins cry.
For far away a new-born lay, warm-blanketed in straw and hay, a lowly manger for his crib. The cattle mooed, distraught and low, to see the child. They did not know
it now was Christmas day!
This is a poem in which I tried to capture the mystery and magic of the first Christmas day. If you like my poem, you are welcome to share it, but please cite me as the author, which you can do by including the title and subheading.
The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart by Michael R. Burch
There is a silence― the last unspoken moment before death,
when the moon, cratered and broken, is all madness and light,
when the breath comes low and complaining, and the heart is a ruin of emptiness and night.
There is a grief― the grief of a lover's embrace while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...
There is no emptier time, nor place, while the faint glimmer of life is ours that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears
beyond this: seeing its own stricken face in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.
Lozenge by Michael R. Burch
When I was closest to love, it did not seem real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness it might dissolve in my mouth like a lozenge of sugar.
When I held you in my arms, I did not feel our lack of completeness, knowing how easy it was for us to cling to each other.
And there were nights when the clouds sped across the moon’s face, exposing such rarified brightness we did not witness
so much as embrace love’s human appearance.
Originally published by The HyperTexts
The Princess and the Pauper by Michael R. Burch
for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June Kysilko Kraeft
Here was a woman bright, intent on life, who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye and drew him, powerless, into her spell of wanting her himself, so much the lie that she was meant for him―obscene illusion!―
made him seem a monarch throned like God on high, when he was less than nothing; when to die meant many stultifying, pained embraces.
She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces that tied her to the earth: then she was his. Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness― her ghost beyond perfection―for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.
Album by Michael R. Burch
I caress them―trapped in brittle cellophane―
and I see how young they were, and how unwise; and I remember their first flight―an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...
And I touch them here through leaves which―tattered, frayed―
are also wings, but wings that never flew: like insects’ wings―pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never changed, remaining two ...
And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens or in shadows where It crept on feral claws as It scratched Its way into their hearts, depends on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...
and slavers for Its meat―those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies, clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.
Because You Came to Me by Michael R. Burch
Because you came to me with sweet compassion and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair, I do not love you after any fashion, but wildly, in despair.
Because you came to me in my black torment and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment they melt, I am undone.
Because I am undone, you have remade me as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me and bower me, somehow.
Break Time by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel; add artificial sweeteners to conceal the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak: of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance. The TV drones oeuvres of high romance in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal, its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel toward some dark conclusion? Disappear to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here? I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
911 Carousel by Michael R. Burch
“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats
They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why the reeling azure fixture of the sky grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”
They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize, and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud. The voice of terror thunders from a cloud that darkens over children adult-wise,
far less inclined to error, when a step in any wrong direction is to fall a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call, their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . .
Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide, as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.
At Cædmon’s Grave by Michael R. Burch
“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.
At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,
while the wind and time blew all around, I paced those dusk-enamored grounds and thought I heard the steps resound
of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede who walked there, too, their spirits freed ―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―
to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember, scorched tongues of flame words still engender.
Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet. I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.
Originally published by The Lyric
Radiance by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
The poet delves earth’s detritus―hard toil―
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet; each syllable his pen excretes―dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.
The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning― the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame that leashes and excites its turgid surface ... then squanders years imagining love’s the same.
Belatedly he turns to what lies broken― the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts, among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking one element that scorches and uplifts.
Huntress by Michael R. Burch
after Baudelaire
Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep across a crevice dropping deep into a dark and doomed domain. Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane. Rain falls upon your path, and pain pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause and heed the oft-lamented laws which bid you not begin again till night returns. You wail like wind, the sighing of a soul for sin, and give up hunting for a heart. Till sunset falls again, depart, though hate and hunger urge you―"On!"
Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn.
Published by The HyperTexts, Dracula and His Kin and Sonnetto Poesia (Canada)
Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad) by Michael R. Burch
He did not think of love of Her at all frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads (nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small at last to be invisible. He smiled (the fables erred so curiously), and thought bemusedly of being reconciled to human flesh, because his heart was not incapable of love, but, being cursed a second time, could only love a toad’s . . . and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . . and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted, his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.
Because She Craved the Very Best by Michael R. Burch
Because she craved the very best, he took her East, he took her West; he took her where there were no wars and brought her bright bouquets of stars, the blush and fragrances of roses, the hush an evening sky imposes, moonbeams pale and garlands rare, and golden combs to match her hair, a nightingale to sing all night, white wings, to let her soul take flight ...
She stabbed him with a poisoned sting and as he lay there dying, she screamed, "I wanted everything!" and started crying.
Caveat by Michael R. Burch
If only we were not so eloquent, we might sing, and only sing, not to impress, but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.
We might inundate the earth with thankfulness for light, although it dies, and make a song of night descending on the earth like bliss,
with other lights beyond―not to be known―
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed, before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...
as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face and find it beautiful for emptiness of all but joy. There is no thought to love
but love itself. How senseless to redress, in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .
Originally published by Clementine Unbound
To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering byMichael R. Burch
The anachronism in your poetry is that it lacks a future history. The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell, tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell of insignificance, of eerie shoals, of voices underwater. Lichen grows to mute the lips of those men paid no heed, and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed, there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped, have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost. The argosy of all your toil is rust.
The anchor that you flung did not take hold in any harbor where repair is sold.
Originally published by Ironwood
Wonderland byMichael R. Burch
We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test the beatific anthems of the blessed, the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s sincere religion. Magnified, the lens shot back absurd reflections of each face― a carnival-like mirror. In the space between the silver backing and the glass, we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key. We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung. In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.
Day, and Night by Michael R. Burch
The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters; her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms. And we who rise each day to grind a living, dream each scented night of such perfumes as drew us to the window, to the moonlight, when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue, like an eerie vase of achromatic flowers bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.
The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise― adagio, the music she now hears; and we who in the sunlight slave for succor, dreaming, seek communion with the spheres. And all around the night is in crescendo, and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form, and here we hear the sweet incriminations of lovers we had once to keep us warm.
And also here we find, like bled carnations, red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies, that touched us once with fierce incantations and taught us love was prettier than wise.
130 Refuted by Michael R. Burch
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; ―Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
Seas that sparkle in the sun without its light would have no beauty; but the light within your eyes is theirs alone; it owes no duty. And their kindled flame, not half as bright, is meant for me, and brings delight.
Coral formed beneath the sea, though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me; while your lips, not half so red, just touching mine, at once inflame me. And the searing flames your lips arouse fathomless oceans fail to douse.
Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared when winter comes, will wither quickly. Your cheeks, though paler when compared with them?―more lasting, never prickly.
And your cheeks, though wan, so dear and warm, far vaster treasures, need no thorns.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
Love Sonnet LXVI by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I love you only because I love you; I am torn between loving and not loving you, between apathy and desire. My heart vacillates between ice and fire.
I love you only because you’re the one I love; I hate you deeply, but hatred makes me implore you all the more so that in my inconstancy I do not see you, but love you blindly.
Perhaps January’s frigid light will consume my heart with its cruel rays, robbing me of the key to contentment.
In this tragic plot, I murder myself and I will die loveless because I love you, because I love you, my Love, in fire and in blood.
Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. I stalk the streets, silent and starving. Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.
I long for your liquid laughter, for your sunburned hands like savage harvests. I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles. I want to devour your breasts like almonds, whole.
I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty, to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face, to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.
I pursue you, snuffing the shadows, seeking your heart's scorching heat like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.
Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I do not love you like coral or topaz, or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame; I love you as obscure things are embraced in the dark ... secretly, in shadows, unguessed & unnamed.
I love you like shrubs that refuse to blossom while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers; now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance lives dimly in my body’s odors.
I love you without knowing―how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care; I love you this way because I know no other.
Here, where “I” no longer exists ... so it seems ... so close that your hand on my chest is my own, so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.
Sonnet XLV by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because― how can I explain? A day is too long ... and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station where the trains all stand motionless.
Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because― then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together, and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.
Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf; may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance. Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because then you'll have gone far too far and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth: Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?
Twice by Michael R. Burch
Now twice she has left me and twice I have listened and taken her back, remembering days
when love lay upon us and sparkled and glistened with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.
But twice she has left me to start my life over, and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:
rekindle a fire from ash, soot and cinder and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.
Originally published by The Lyric
Imperfect Sonnet by Michael R. Burch
A word before the light is doused: the night is something wriggling through an unclean mind, as rats creep through a tenement. And loss is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss like lipstick through the infinite, to show love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.
We have not learned love yet, except to cleave. I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ... was of another century ... and now ... I have the urge to love, but not the strength.
Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length, lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ... and masturbating limply, screams and screams.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
Mayflies by Michael R. Burch
These standing stones have stood the test of time but who are you and what are you and why?
As brief as mist, as transient, as pale ... Inconsequential mayfly!
Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope? Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see? Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?
Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars regret the glowworm’s stellar mimicry the day it dies? Does not the world grind on as if it’s no great matter, not to be?
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose. And yet somehow you’re everything to me.
Originally published by Clementine Unbound
Artificial Smile by Michael R. Burch
I’m waiting for my artificial teeth to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.
Mine must be art-official―zenlike Art―
a disembodied, white-enameled grin of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part, the human smile becomes mock porcelain.
Till in the end, the smile alone remains: titanium-based alloys undestroyed with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed
us most about the corpses rectified to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.
Modern Appetite by Michael R. Burch
It grumbled low, insisting it would feast on blood and flesh, etcetera, at least three times a day. With soft lubricious grease
and pale salacious oils, it would ease its way through life. Each day―an aperitif.
Each night―a frothy bromide, for relief.
It lived on TV fare, wore pinafores, slurped sugar-coated gumballs, gobbled S’mores. When gas ensued, it burped and farted. ’Course,
it thought aloud, my wife will leave me. W****s are not so damn particular. Divorce is certainly a settlement, toujours!
A Tums a day will keep the shrink away, recalcify old bones, keep gas at bay. If Simon says, etcetera, Mother, may
I have my hit of calcium today?
Mother of Cowards by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"
So unlike the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land, Spread-eagled, showering gold, a strumpet stands: A much-used trollop with a torch, whose flame Has long since been extinguished. And her name? "Mother of Cowards!" From her enervate hand Soft ash descends. Her furtive eyes demand Allegiance to her Pimp's repulsive game.
"Keep, ancient lands, your wretched poor!" cries she With scarlet lips. "Give me your hale, your whole, Your huddled tycoons, yearning to be pleased! The wretched refuse of your toilet hole? Oh, never send one unwashed child to me! I await Trump's pleasure by the gilded bowl!"
Originally published by Light
Premonition by Michael R. Burch
Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ... we stand in the doorway and watch as they go― each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.
They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go, though we know their warm laughter’s the wine ... then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows endlessly on toward Zion ...
and they kiss one another as though they were friends, and they promise to meet again “soon” ... but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end, and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...
and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines, and the crickets chirp on out of tune ... and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight, seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.
And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time, that their hearts are unreadable runes to be wiped clean, like slate, by the dark hand of fate when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...
You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss as though it were something you loved, and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light of the stars winking gently above ...
Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside; if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while." And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.
I rather vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time.
I cannot understand a word you’ve said (and this despite an adequate I.Q.); it must be some exotic new haiku combined with Latin suddenly undead.
It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek. Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned? Perhaps you wrote it on the pot, so stoned you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.
I think you’re very funny, so, “Yuk! Yuk!” I know you must be kidding; didn’t we write crap like this and call it “poetry,” a form of verbal exercise, P.E., in kindergarten, when we ran “amuck?”
Oh, sorry, I forgot to “make it new.” Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two from someone tres original, like you.
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard to populate your web-site; not to mention cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards can liven up dull sermons, [zing some fire]; your drives need added Zip; you must discard your balky paternosters: Sex!!! Desire!!! these are the watchwords, catholic; you must as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust :) if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust of centuries of sameness; lameness SUCKS; your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.
Published by: Ironwood, Triplopia and Nisqually Delta Review
This poem pokes fun at various stages of religion, all tied however elliptically to T. S. Eliot's "Fire Sermon: (1) The Celts believed that the health of the land was tied to the health of its king. The Fisher King's land was in peril because he had a physical infirmity. One bad harvest and it was the king's fault for displeasing the gods. A religious icon (the Grail) could somehow rescue him. Strange logic! (2) The next stage brings us the saints, the Catholic church, etc. Millions are slaughtered, tortured and enslaved in the name of religion. Strange logic! (3) The next stage brings us to Darwin, modernism and "The Waste Land.” Religion is dead. God is dead. Man is a glorified fungus! We'll evolve into something better adapted to life on Earth, someday, if we don’t destroy it. But billions continue to believe in and worship ancient “gods.” Strange logic! (4) The current stage of religion is summed up by this e-mail: the only way religion can compete today is as a form of flashy entertainment. Erect a website before it's too late. Hire some sexy supermodels and put the evangelists on the Internet!
The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch
Has rhyme lost all its reason and rhythm, renascence? Are sonnets out of season and poems but poor pretense?
Are poets lacking fire, their words too trite and forced? What happened to desire? Has passion been coerced?
Shall poetry fade slowly, like Latin, to past tense? Are the bards too high and holy, or their readers merely dense?
Alien Nation by Michael R. Burch
for J. S. S., a "Christian" poet who believes in “hell”
On a lonely outpost on Mars the astronaut practices “speech” as alien to primates below as mute stars winking high, out of reach.
And his words fall as bright and as chill as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro― far colder than Jesus’s words over the “fortunate” sparrow.
And I understand how gentle Emily felt, when all comfort had flown, gazing into those inhuman eyes, feeling zero at the bone.
Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought? For if he is human, I am not.
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