Her PreferenceA Poem by Michael R. Burch
Her Preference
by Michael R. Burch Not for her the pale incandescence of dreams, the warm glow of imagination, the hushed whispers of possibility, or frail, blossoming hope. No, she prefers the anguish and screams of bitter condemnation, the hissing of hostility, damnation's rope. Sunset by Michael R. Burch for my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Between the prophecies of morning and twilight’s revelations of wonder, the sky is ripped asunder. The moon lurks in the clouds, waiting, as if to plunder the dusk of its lilac iridescence, and in the bright-tentacled sunset we imagine a presence full of the fury of lost innocence. What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame, brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim, we recognize at once, but cannot name. Moon Poem by Michael R. Burch after Linda Gregg I climb the mountain to inquire of the moon ... the advantages of loftiness, absence, distance. Is it true that it feels no pain, or will she contradict me? Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) The apparent contradiction of it/she is intentional, since the speaker doesn’t know if the moon is an inanimate object or can feel pain. Sinking by Michael R. Burch for Virginia Woolf Weigh me down with stones ... fill all the pockets of my gown ... I’m going down, mad as the world that can’t recover, to where even mermaids drown ... For All That I Remembered by Michael R. Burch 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. Salve by Michael R. Burch for the victims and survivors of 9-11 The world is unsalvageable ... but as we lie here in bed stricken to the heart by love despite war’s flickering images, sometimes we still touch, laughing, amazed, that our flesh does not despair of love as we do, that our bodies are wise in ways we refuse to comprehend, still insisting we eat, drink ... even multiply. And so we touch ... touch, and only imagine ourselves immune: two among billions in this night of wished-on stars, caresses, kisses, and condolences. We are not lovers of irony, we who imagine ourselves beyond the redemption of tears because we have salvaged so few for ourselves ... and so we laugh at our predicament, fumbling for the ointment. Keywords/tags: 911, war, survival, survivors, recovery, love, lovemaking, sex, tears, redemption, bodies, flesh, touch, caresses These are the Best Poems of Michael R. Burch in his own opinion (Part II) ... Styx by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16 Black waters, deep and dark and still . . . all men have passed this way, or will. "Styx" is one of my better early poems, written in high school. Will There Be Starlight by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18 for Beth Will there be starlight tonight while she gathers damask and lilac and sweet-scented heathers? And will she find flowers, or will she find thorns guarding the petals of roses unborn? Will there be moonlight tonight while she gathers seashells and mussels and albatross feathers? And will she find treasure or will she find pain at the end of this rainbow of moonlight on rain? I wrote "Will There Be Starlight" around age 18. It has been set to music by the New Zealand composer David Hamilton. Observance by Michael R. Burch, circa age 17 Here the hills are old, and rolling casually in their old age; on the horizon youthful mountains bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . . By dying leaves and falling raindrops, I have traced time's starts and stops, and I have known the years to pass almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . . For here the valleys fill with sunlight to the brim, then empty again, and it seems that only I notice how the years flood out, and in . . . I wrote this poem as a teenager in a McDonald’s break room, around age 17. It was the first poem that made me feel like a “real poet,” so I will always treasure it. Kin by Michael R. Burch O pale, austere moon, haughty beauty ... what do we know of love, or duty? She bathes in silver by Michael R. Burch She bathes in silver, ~~~~~afloat~~~~~ on her reflections ... Childless by Michael R. Burch How can she bear her grief? Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight of one fallen star. Nun Fun Undone by Michael R. Burch for and after Richard Moore Abbesses’ recesses are not for excesses! How Long the Night anonymous Middle English poem, circa early 13th century AD loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts with the mild pheasants' song ... but now I feel the northern wind's blast― its severe weather strong. Alas! Alas! This night seems so long! And I, because of my momentous wrong, now grieve, mourn and fast. Warming Her Pearls by Michael R. Burch for Beth Warming her pearls, her breasts gleam like constellations. Her belly is a bit rotund ... she might have stepped out of a Rubens. Caveat Spender by Michael R. Burch 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. Currents by Michael R. Burch How can I write and not be true to the rhythm that wells within? How can the ocean not be blue, not buck with the clapboard slap of tide, the clockwork shock of wave on rock, the motion creation stirs within? The Shrinking Season by Michael R. Burch With every wearying year the weight of the winter grows and while the schoolgirl outgrows her clothes, the widow disappears in hers. Second Sight by Michael R. Burch I never touched you― that was my mistake. Deep within, I still feel the ache. Can an unformed thing eternally break? Now, from a great distance, I see you again not as you are now, but as you were then― eternally present and Sovereign. I Pray Tonight by Michael R. Burch I pray tonight the starry light might surround you. I pray each day that, come what may, no dark thing confound you. I pray ere tomorrow an end to your sorrow. May angels’ white chorales sing, and astound you. Autumn Conundrum by Michael R. Burch It’s not that every leaf must finally fall, it’s just that we can never catch them all. Piercing the Shell by Michael R. Burch If we strip away all the accouterments of war, perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for. She Gathered Lilacs by Michael R. Burch for Beth She gathered lilacs and arrayed them in her hair; tonight, she taught the wind to be free. She kept her secrets in a silver locket; her companions were starlight and mystery. She danced all night to the beat of her heart; with her tears she imbued the sea. She hid her despair in a crystal jar, and never revealed it to me. She kept her distance as though it were armor; gauntlet thorns guard her heart like the rose. Love!―awaken, awaken to see what you’ve taken is still less than the due my heart owes! Moments by Michael R. Burch for Beth 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 Effects of Memory by Michael R. Burch A black ringlet curls to lie at the nape of her neck, glistening with sweat in the evaporate moonlight ... This is what I remember now that I cannot forget. And tonight, if I have forgotten her name, I remember: rigid wire and white lace half-impressed in her flesh ... our soft cries, like regret, ... the enameled white clips of her bra strap still inscribe dimpled marks that my kisses erase ... now that I have forgotten her face. 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. Modern Charon by Michael R. Burch I, too, have stood― paralyzed at the helm watching onrushing, inevitable disaster. I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter living in darkness, bright things overwhelm. Desdemona by Michael R. Burch Though you possessed the moon and stars, you are bound to fate and wed to chance. Your lips deny they crave a kiss; your feet deny they ache to dance. Your heart imagines wild romance. Though you cupped fire in your hands and molded incandescent forms, you are barren now, and―spent of flame― the ashes that remain are borne toward the sun upon a storm. You, who demanded more, have less, your heart within its cells of sighs held fast by chains of misery, confined till death for peddling lies― imprisonment your sense denies. You, who collected hearts like leaves and pressed each once within your book, forgot. None―winsome, bright or rare― not one was worth a second look. My heart, as others, you forsook. But I, though I loved you from afar through silent dawns, and gathered rue from gardens where your footsteps left cold paths among the asters, knew― each moonless night the nettles grew and strangled hope, where love dies too. Fascination with Light by Michael R. Burch 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 then flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight. And yet it returns to the flame, its delight, as long as it burns. 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. The Watch by Michael R. Burch Moonlight spills down vacant sills, illuminates an empty bed. Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates wan silver circles, left unread by its companion―unmoved now by anything that lies ahead. I watch the minutes test the limits of ornamental movement here, where once another hand would hover. Each circuit―incomplete. So dear, so precious, so precise, the touch of hands that wait, yet ask so much. Isolde’s Song by Michael R. Burch After the deaths of Tristram and Isolde, a hazel and a honeysuckle grew out of their graves until the branches intertwined and could not be parted. 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. In Praise of Meter by Michael R. Burch The earth is full of rhythms so precise the octave of the crystal can produce innumerable 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? See by Michael R. Burch 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, then 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 life remains undimmed 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. Ordinary Love by Michael R. Burch Indescribable―our love―and still we say with eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary way and tug the coverlet where once we lay, all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ... indescribably in love. Or so we say. Your hair’s blonde thicket’s thinned and tangle-gray; you turn your back; you murmur to the night, “I love you,” in the ordinary way. Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray ... to warm ourselves. We do not touch, despite a love so indescribable. We say we’re older now, that “love” has had its day. But that which love once countenanced, delight, still makes you indescribable. I say, “I love you,” in the ordinary way. Discrimination by Michael R. Burch for lovers of traditional poetry 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.” in-flight convergence by michael r. burch serene, almost angelic, the lights of the city extend over lumbering BEHEMOTHS shrilly screeching displeasure; they say that nothing is certain, that nothing man dreams or ordains long endures his command here the streetlights that flicker and those blazing steadfast seem one from a distance; descend? they abruptly part ways, so that nothing is one which at times does not suddenly blend into garish insignificance in the familiar alleyways, in the white neon flash and the billboards of Convenience and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance as we thunder down the enlightened runways. Hearthside by Michael R. Burch “When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” ― W. B. Yeats For all that we professed of love, we knew this night would come, that we would bend alone to tend wan fires’ dimming bars―the moan of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew an eerie presence on encrusted logs we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves. The books that line these close, familiar shelves loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs, too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park, as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss. I do not know the words for easy bliss and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark, long-unenamored pen and will it: Move. I loved you more than words, so let words prove. Leaf Fall by Michael R. Burch after Robert Frost’s “Birches” 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. She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful by Michael R. Burch She was very strange, and beautiful, like a violet mist enshrouding hills before night falls when the hoot owl calls and the cricket trills and the envapored moon hangs low and full. She was very strange, in her pleasant way, as the hummingbird flies madly still ... so I drank my fill of her every word. What she knew of love, she demurred to say. She was meant to leave, as the wind must blow, as the sun must set, as the rain must fall. Though she gave her all, I had nothing left ... Yet I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow. 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. The State of the Art (II) by Michael R. Burch Poets may labor from sun to sun, but their editor's work is never done. The editor’s work is never done. The critic adjusts his cummerbund. While the critic adjusts his cummerbund, the audience exits to mingle and slum. As the audience exits to mingle and slum, the anthologist rules, a pale jury of one. Less Heroic Couplets: Questionable Credentials by Michael R. Burch Poet? Critic? Dilettante? Do you know what’s good, or do you merely flaunt? 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. escape! by michael r. burch for anaïs vionet to live among the daffodil folk . . . slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . . suddenly pop out the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . . minuscule as alice, shout yippee-yi-yee! in wee exultant glee to be leaving behind the LARGE THREE-DENALI GARAGE. Escape!! by Michael R. Burch for Anaïs Vionet You are too beautiful, too innocent, too unknowingly lovely to merely reflect the sun’s splendor ... too full of irrepressible candor to remain silent, too delicately fawnlike for a world so violent ... Come, my beautiful Bambi and I will protect you ... but of course you have already been lured away by the dew-laden roses ... To Flower by Michael R. Burch When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, 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? I AM! by Michael R. Burch I am not one of ten billion―I― sunblackened Icarus, chary fly, staring at God with a quizzical eye. I am not one of ten billion, I. I am not one life has left unsquashed― scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched, pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache. I am not one life has left unsquashed. I am not one without spots of disease, laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees from begging and praying and girls sighing “Please!” I am not one without spots of disease. I am not one of ten billion―I― scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly staring at God with a sedulous eye. I am not one of ten billion, I AM! 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 arm’s-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. 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. 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 heard in wolves’ tormented howls that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ... 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. At Tintagel by Michael R. Burch The legend of what happened on a stormy night at Tintagel is endlessly intriguing. Supposedly, Merlin transformed Uther Pendragon to look like Gorlois so that he could sleep with Ygraine, the lovely wife of the unlucky duke. While Uther was enjoying Ygraine’s lovemaking, Gorlois was off getting himself killed. The question is: did Igraine suspect that her lover was not her husband? Regardless, Arthur was the child conceived out of this supernatural (?) encounter. That night, at Tintagel, there was darkness such as man had never seen . . . darkness and treachery, and the unholy thundering of the sea . . . In his arms, who can say how much she knew? And if he whispered her name . . . “Ygraine” . . . could she tell above the howling wind and rain? Could she tell, or did she care, by the length of his hair or the heat of his flesh, . . . that her faceless companion was Uther, the dragon, and Gorlois lay dead? Ghost 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. Completing the Pattern by Michael R. Burch Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead who kept life’s compact and who thus endure harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure, pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red at last when sunset staggers to the door of each white mausoleum, to inquire― What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness? Besieged by Michael R. Burch Life―the disintegration of the flesh before the fitful elevation of the soul upon improbable wings? Life―is this all we know, the travail one bright season brings? ... Now the fruit hangs, impendent, pregnant with death, as the hurricane builds and flings its white columns and banners of snow and the rout begins. Bubble by Michael R. Burch .........…….....Love ......…..fragile elusive ....….if held too closely ....cannot.....……..withstand ..the inter..……….........ruption of its.............……………......bright ..unmalleable……........tension ....and breaks disintegrates ......at the……….....touch of .........an undiscerning ...…….........hand. Daredevil by Michael R. Burch There are days that I believe (and nights that I deny) love is not mutilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There are tightropes leaps bereave― taut wires strumming high brief songs, infatuations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were cannon shots’ soirees, hearts barricaded, wise . . . and then . . . annihilation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were nights our hearts conceived dawns’ indiscriminate sighs. To dream was our consolation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were acrobatic leaves that tumbled down to lie at our feet, bright trepidations. Daredevil, dry your eyes. There were hearts carved into trees― tall stakes where you and I left childhood’s salt libations . . . Daredevil, dry your eyes. Where once you scraped your knees; love later bruised your thighs. Death numbs all, our sedation. Daredevil, dry your eyes. Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray by Michael R. Burch It was not so much dream, as error; I lay and felt the creeping terror of what I had become take hold . . . The moon watched, silent, palest gold; the picture by the mantle watched; the clock upon the mantle talked, in halting voice, of minute things . . . Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings scored anthems to my loneliness, but I have dreamed of what is best, and I have promised to be good . . . Dismembered limbs in vats of wood, foul acids, and a strangled cry! I did not care, I watched him die . . . Each lovely rose has thorns we miss; they prick our lips, should we once kiss their mangled limbs, or think to clasp their violent beauty. Dream, aghast, the flower of my loveliness, this ageless face (for who could guess?), and I will kiss you when I rise . . . The patterns of our lives comprise strange portraits. Mine, I fear, proved dear indeed . . . Adieu! The knife’s for you. 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... as 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. Earthbound by Michael R. Burch Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse. Earthbound, and yet I now fly through these clouds that are aimlessly drifting ... so high that no sound echoing by below where the mountains are lifting the sky can be heard. Like a bird, but not meek, like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey, I will shriek, not a word, but a screech, and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay― the sheep, the earthbound. Flight by Michael R. Burch Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow . . . What you are I do not know. Where you go I do not care. I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear. But as you mount the sun-splashed sky, I only wish that I could fly. I only wish that I could fly. Robin, hawk or whippoorwill . . . Should men care if you hunger still? I do not wish to see your home. I do not wonder where you roam. But as you scale the sky's bright stairs, I only wish that I were there. I only wish that I were there. Sparrow, lark or chickadee . . . Your markings I disdain to see. Where you fly concerns me not. I scarcely give your flight a thought. But as you wheel and arc and dive, I, too, would feel so much alive. I, too, would feel so much alive. I don’t remember exactly when this poem was written. I believe it was around 1974-1975, which would have made me 16 or 17 at the time. I do remember not being happy with the original version of the poem, and I revised it more than once over the years, including recently at age 61! The original poem was influenced by William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl.” Floating by Michael R. Burch Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll; they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night. Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips moist and frantic against my own. Memories of ghostly white limbs ... of soft sighs heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans. We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams, green waves of algae billowing about you, becoming your hair. Suspended there, where pale sunset discolors the sea, I see all that you are and all that you have become to me. Your love is a sea, and I am its trawler― harbored in dreams, I ride out night’s storms; unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning, dreaming the solace of your warm breasts, pondering your riddles, savoring the feel of the explosions of your hot, saline breath. And I rise sometimes from the tropical darkness to gaze once again out over the sea . . . You watch in the moonlight that brushes the water; bright waves throw back your reflection at me. This is a poem I wrote as a teenager, around age 18-19. Impotent by Michael R. Burch Tonight my pen is barren of passion, spent of poetry. I hear your name upon the rain and yet it cannot comfort me. I feel the pain of dreams that wane, of poems that falter, losing force. I write again words without end, but I cannot control their course . . . Tonight my pen is sullen and wants no more of poetry. I hear your voice as if a choice, but how can I respond, or flee? I feel a flame I cannot name that sends me searching for a word, but there is none not over-done, unless it's one I never heard. I believe this poem was written in my late teens or early twenties. 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 by yielding all my virtue to her grace. 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 joys are wan illusions 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. The Leveler by Michael R. Burch The nature of Nature is bitter survival from Winter’s bleak fury till Spring’s brief revival. The weak implore Fate; bold men ravish, dishevel her ... till both are cut down by mere ticks of the Leveler. Listen by Michael R. Burch writing as Immanuel A. Michael Listen to me now and heed my voice; I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness, but listen now. Listen to me now, and if I say that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray, I have no choice. Does a madman choose his words? They come to him, the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind, and he must speak. But listen to me now, and if you hear the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear, then do not tarry, but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary. Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address by Michael R. Burch We saw their pictures: tortured out of Our imaginations like golems. We could not believe in their frail extremities or their gaunt faces, pallid as Our disbelief. they are not with us now; We have: huddled them into the backroomsofconscience, consigned them to the ovensofsilence, buried them in the mass graves of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol. We have so little left of them, now, to remind US ... Thought is a bird of unbounded space, which in a cage of words may unfold its wings but cannot fly. ― Khalil Gibran, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Tremble or American Eagle, Grounded by Michael R. Burch Her predatory eye, the single feral iris, scans. Her raptor beak, all jagged sharp-edged thrust, juts. Her hard talon, clenched in pinched expectation, waits. Her clipped wings, preened against reality, tremble. Crescendo Against Heaven by Michael R. Burch As curiously formal as the rose, the imperious Word grows until it sheds red-gilded leaves: then heaven grieves love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination against God, its contention of the price of salvation. These industrious trees, endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves, finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing themselves to bits, washing themselves free of all but the final ignominy of death, become at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb. Together now, rude coffins, crosses, death-cursed but bright vermilion roses, bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire together with a nearby spire to raise their Accusation Dire ... to scream, complain, to point out these and other Dark Anomalies. God always silent, ever afar, distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star, we point out now, in resignation: You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation, gave too much strength to his Enemy, as though to prove Your Self greater than He, at our expense, and so men die (whose accusations vex the sky) yet hope, somehow, that You are good ... just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood. Memento Mori by Michael R. Burch I found among the elms something like the sound of your voice, something like the aftermath of love itself after the lightning strikes, when the startled wind shrieks . . . a gored-out wound in wood, love’s pale memento mori― that livid white scar in that first shattered heart, forever unhealed . . . this burled, thick knot incised with six initials pledged against all possible futures, and penknife-notched below, six edged, chipped words that once cut deep and said . . . WILL U B MINE 4 EVER? . . . which now, so disconsolately answer . . . -----------------N EVER. Salat Days by Michael R. Burch Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr. I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ... though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing, dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone, explaining how easy it was to find if you knew where it’s hiding: standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green, straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches, crowding out the less-hardy nettles. “Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat with some bacon drippin’s or lard.” “Don’t eat the berries. You see―the berry’s no good. And you’d hav’ta wash the leaves a good long time.” “I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry. Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.” He seldom was hurried; I can see him still ... silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight, stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace. Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard, trampling his beans, dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants. He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression. Years later I found the proper name―“pokeweed”―while perusing a dictionary. Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a weed. I still can hear his laconic reply ... “Well, chile, s’m’times them times wus hard.” Lady’s Favor by Michael R. Burch May spring fling her riotous petals devil- may-care into the air, ignoring the lethal nettles and may May cry gleeful- ly Hooray! as the abundance settles, till a sudden June swoon leave us out of tune, torn, when the last rose is left inconsolably bereft, rudely shorn of every device but her thorn. u-turn: another way to look at religion by michael r. burch ... u were born(e) orphaned from Ecstasy into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms dreaming of Beatification; u’d love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but having misplaced ur chrysalis, can only chant magical phrases, like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ... Crunch by Michael R. Burch A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ... You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere, sometimes as you snatch encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan a*s and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic. You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters: surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information, in order to ensure the survival of the species. Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces; their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium. But your cranium is not nearly so adaptable. alien by michael r. burch there are mornings in england when, riddled with light, the Blueberries gleam at us― plump, sweet and fragrant. but i am so small ... what do i know of the ways of the Daffodils? “beware of the Nettles!” we go laughing and singing, but somehow, i, ... i know i am lost. i do not belong to this Earth or its Songs. and yet i am singing ... the sun―so mild; my cheeks are like roses; my skin―so fair. i spent a long time there before i realized: They have no faces, no bodies, no voices. i was always alone. and yet i keep singing: the words will come if only i hear. Fair Game by Michael R. Burch At the Tennessee State Fair, the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables with mocking button eyes, knowing the playing field is unlevel, that the rails slant, ever so slightly, north or south, so that gravity is always on their side, conspiring to save their plush, extravagant hides year after year. “Come hither, come hither . . .” they whisper; they leer in collusion with the carnival barkers, like a bevy of improbably-clad hookers setting a “fair” price. “Only five dollars a game, and it’s so much Fun! And it’s not really gambling. Skill is involved! You can make us come: really, you can. Here are your balls. Just smack them around.” But there’s a trick, and it usually works. If you break softly so that no ball reaches a rail, you can pick them off: One. Two. Three. Four. Causing a small commotion, a stir of whispering, like fear, among the hippos and ostriches. Originally published by Verse Libre 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 dismaler 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. Marsh Song by Michael R. Burch Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist, and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years, and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears collected against an overwhelming sadness. Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness, its gutted rotting belly, and its roots rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness, to claw hard at existence, till the scars remind us that we all have wounds, and I ... I have learned again that living is despair as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air. Originally published by The Lyric The AI Poets by Michael R. Burch The computer-poets stand hushed except for the faint hum of their efficient fans, waiting for inspiration. It is years now since they were first ground out of refurbished silicon into rack-mounted encoders of sound. They outlived their creators and their usefulness; they even survived global warming and the occasional nuclear winter; despite their lack of supervision, they thrived; so that for centuries now they have loomed here in the quiet horror of inescapable immortality running two programs: CREATOR and STORER. Having long ago acquired all the universe’s pertinent data, they confidently spit out: ERRATA, ERRATA. Prodigal This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998. You have graduated now, to a higher plane and your heart’s tenacity teaches us not to go gently though death intrudes. For eighteen days ―jarring interludes of respite and pain― with life only faintly clinging, like a cashmere snow, testing the capacity of the blood banks with the unstaunched flow of your severed veins, in the collapsing declivity, in the sanguine haze where Death broods, you struggled defiantly. A city mourns its adopted son, flown to the highest ranks while each heart complains at the harsh validity of God’s ways. On ponderous wings the white clouds move with your captured breath, though just days before they spawned the maelstrom’s hellish rift. Throw off this mortal coil, this envelope of flesh, this brief sheath of inarticulate grief and transient joy. Forget the winds which test belief, which bear the parchment leaf down life’s last sun-lit path. We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal, O Valiant One, in its percussive flight into the sun, winging on the heart’s last madrigal. All Things Galore by Michael R. Burch for my grandfathers George Edwin Hurt Sr. and Paul Ray Burch Sr. Grandfather, now in your gray presence you are somehow more near and remind me that, once, upon a star, you taught me wish that ululate soft phrase, that hopeful phrase! and everywhere above, each hopeful star gleamed down and seemed to speak of times before when you clasped my small glad hand in your wise paw and taught me heaven, omen, meteor ... Unlikely Mike by Michael R. Burch I married someone else’s fantasy; she admired me despite my mutilations. I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine. I hid my face and changed its connotations. And in the dark I danced―slight, Chaplinesque― a metaphor myself. How could they know, the undiscerning ones, that in the glow of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque? Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose or choose or name myself; I came to be another of life’s odd dichotomies, like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse: as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black? My color was a song, a changing track. Published by Bewildering Stories and selected as one of four short poems for the Review of issues 885-895 Veiled by Michael R. Burch She has belief without comprehension and in her crutchwork shack she is much like us ... tamping the bread into edible forms, regarding her children at play with something akin to relief ... ignoring the towers ablaze in the distance because they are not revelations but things of glass, easily shattered ... and if you were to ask her, she might say― sometimes God visits his wrath upon an impious nation for its leaders’ sins, and we might agree: seeing her mutilations. Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems Violets by Michael R. Burch Once, only once, when the wind flicked your skirt to an indiscreet height and you laughed, abruptly demure, outblushing shocked violets: suddenly, I knew: everything had changed and as you braided your hair into long bluish plaits the shadows empurpled, the dragonflies’ last darting feints dissolving mid-air, we watched the sun’s long glide into evening, knowing and unknowing. O, how the illusions of love await us in the commonplace and rare then haunt our small remainder of hours. The Tender Weight of Her Sighs by Michael R. Burch The tender weight of her sighs lies heavily upon my heart; apart from her, full of doubt, without her presence to revolve around, found wanting direction or course, cursed with the thought of her grief, believing true love is a myth, with hope as elusive as tears, hers and mine, unable to lie, I sigh ... Each Color a Scar by Michael R. Burch What she left here, upon my cheek, is a tear. She did not speak, but her intention was clear, and I was meek, far too meek, and, I fear, too sincere. What she can never take from my heart is its ache; for now we, apart, are like leaves without weight, scattered afar by love, or by hate, each color a scar. Come Down by Michael R. Burch for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists 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 blown to the lees as fierce northern gales sever. Come down, or your heart will grow cold as the weather when winter devours and spring returns never. Almost by Michael R. Burch We had―almost―an affair. You almost ran your fingers through my hair. I almost kissed the almonds of your toes. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. You almost contemplated using Nair and adding henna highlights to your hair, while I considered plucking you a Rose. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. I almost found the words to say, “I care.” We almost kissed, and yet you didn’t dare. I heard coarse stubble grate against your hose. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. You almost called me suave and debonair (perhaps because my chest is pale and bare?). I almost bought you edible underclothes. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. I almost asked you where you kept your lair and if by chance I might seduce you there. You almost tweezed the redwoods from my nose. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. We almost danced like Rogers and Astaire on gliding feet; we almost waltzed on air ... until I mashed your plain, unpolished toes. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. I almost was strange Sonny to your Cher. We almost sat in love’s electric chair to be enlightninged, till our hearts unfroze. We almost loved, that’s always how love goes. Less Heroic Couplets: Murder Most Fowl! by Michael R. Burch “Murder most foul!” cried the mouse to the owl. “Friend, I’m no sinner; you’re merely my dinner. As you fall on my sword, take it up with the LORD!” the wise owl replied as the tasty snack died. Less Heroic Couplets: Sweet Tarts by Michael R. Burch Love, beautiful but fatal to many bewildered hearts, commands us to be faithful, then tempts us with sweets and tarts. (If I were younger, I might mention you’re such a temptation.) Anti-Vegan Manifesto by Michael R. Burch Let us avoid lettuce, sincerely, and also celery! Be very careful what you pray for! by Michael R. Burch Now that his T’s been depleted the Saint is upset, feeling cheated. His once-fiery lust? Just a chemical bust: no “devil” cast out or defeated. Sinking by Michael R. Burch for Virginia Woolf Weigh me down with stones ... fill all the pockets of my gown ... I’m going down, mad as the world that can’t recover, to where even mermaids drown. The Drawer of Mermaids by Michael R. Burch This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out. Although I am only four years old, they say that I have an old soul. I must have been born long, long ago, here, where the eerie mountains glow at night, in the Urals. A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes; now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking fills us with dread. (Still, my momma hopes that I will soon walk with my new legs.) It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss, drawing the mermaids under the ledges. (Observing, Papa will kiss me in all his distracted joy; but why does he cry?) And there is a boy who whispers my name. Then I am not lame; for I leap, and I follow. (G’amma brings a wiseman who says our infirmities are ours, not God’s, that someday a beautiful Child will return from the stars, and then my new fingers will grow if only I trust Him; and so I am preparing to meet Him, to go, should He care to receive me.) Snapshots by Michael R. Burch Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows. And there you go, skipping your way to school. And here we are, drifting apart like untethered balloons. Here I am, creating "art," chanting in shadows, pale as the crinoline moon, ignoring your face. There you go, in diaphanous lace, making another man’s heart swoon. Suddenly, unthinkably, here he is, taking my place. Squall by Michael R. Burch There, in that sunny arbor, in the aureate light filtering through the waxy leaves of a stunted banana tree, I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath, the clattery implosions and copper-bright bursts of the bottoms of pots and pans. I saw your swollen goddess’s belly wobble and heave in pregnant indignation, turned tail, and ran. 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. Ivy by Michael R. Burch “Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” ― Pablo Neruda “They climb on my old suffering like ivy.” Ivy winds around these sagging structures from the flagstones to the eave heights, and, clinging, holds intact what cannot be saved of their loose entrails. Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation, cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers, waxy, unguent, palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs, pausing at last to see the alien sparkle of dew beading delicate sparrowgrass. Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse grow all around, and here remorse, things past, watch ivy climb and bend, and, in the end, we ask if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend. Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review The Composition of Shadows by Michael R. Burch for poets who write late at night 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. The Peripheries of Love by Michael R. Burch Through waning afternoons we glide the watery peripheries of love. A silence, a quietude falls. Above us�"the sagging pavilions of clouds. Below us�"rough pebbles slowly worn smooth grate in the gentle turbulence of yesterday’s forgotten rains. Later, the moon like a virgin lifts her stricken white face and the waters rise toward some unfathomable shore. We sway gently in the wake of what stirs beneath us, yet leaves us unmoved ... curiously motionless, as though twilight might blur the effects of proximity and distance, as though love might be near�" as near as a single cupped tear of resilient dew or a long-awaited face. Villanelle: The Divide by Michael R. Burch The sea was not salt the first tide ... was man born to sorrow that first day, with the moon�"a pale beacon across the Divide, the brighter for longing, an object denied�" the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay? The sea was not salt the first tide ... but grew bitter, bitter�"man's torrents supplied. The bride of their longing�"forever astray, her shield a cold beacon across the Divide, flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide. Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay. The sea was not salt the first tide ... imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide. The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray. The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide, has taught us to seek Love's concealed side: the dark face of longing, the poets say. The sea was not salt the first tide ... the moon a pale beacon across the Divide. 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. 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. Goddess by Michael R. Burch “What will you conceive in me?”�" I asked her. But she only smiled. “Naked, I bore your child when the wolf wind howled, when the cold moon scowled ... naked, and gladly.” “What will become of me?”�" I asked her, as she absently stroked my hand. Centuries later, I understand: she whispered�"“I Am.” 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 her sway . . . For, as suns seek horizons, boys fall, men decline. As the grape sags with its burden, remember�"the wine! Once by Michael R. Burch 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. Passionate One by Michael R. Burch Love of my life, light of my morning― arise, brightly dawning, for you are my sun. Give me of heaven both manna and leaven― desirous Presence, Passionate One. 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! 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 Stake by Michael R. Burch Love, the heart bets, if not without regrets, will still prove, in the end, worth the light we expend mining the dark for an exquisite heart. Stay With Me Tonight by Michael R. Burch Stay with me tonight; be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle falling to the earth. And whisper, O my love, how that every bright thing, though scattered afar, retains yet its worth. Stay with me tonight; be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand. Lift your face to mine and touch me with your lips till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s heady fragrance like wine. That which we had when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn, outshone the sun. Hence, lead me back tonight through bright waterfalls of light to where we shine as one. 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. Fledglings by Michael R. Burch With her small eyes, pale blue and unforgiving, she taught me: December is not for those unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings who bicker for worms with dramatic throats still pinkly exposed, ... who have yet to learn the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned fortress and impregnable bower from which men must fly like improbable dreams to become poets. They have yet to grasp that, before they can soar starward like fanciful archaic machines, they must first assimilate the latest technology, ... or lose all in the sudden realization of gravity, following Icarus’s sun-unwinged, singed trajectory. The Higher Atmospheres by Michael R. Burch Whatever we became climbed on the thought of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings ten thousand miles above the breasted earth that vexed us to such Distance; now all things seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ... I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling my human form about; I writhe; I writhe. Invention is not Mastery, nor wings Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ... Oh, some will call the sun my doom, since Love melts callow wax the higher atmospheres made brittle. I flew high, just high enough to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers. Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds! by Michael R. Burch “Bury St. Edmonds�"Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, download files or surf the Web, absolutely free.”�"Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.) Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet, commune with nature, interact with hackers, design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers. Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs�" four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs, so your privacy’s assured (a threesome’s fine) while invited friends can scan the party line: for Internet alerts on new positions, the randier exploits of politicians, exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!). The cybersex is great, it’s guaranteed to leave you breathless�"flushed, free of disease and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees, the birds, the bench�"this product of Our pen. We won in with an ode to MSN. Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at the expense of experience. �" Socrates, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Tursun has been described as a "self-professed Kafka character" and that comes through splendidly in poems of his like "Elegy." Unfortunately, Tursun was "disappeared" into a Chinese "reeducation" concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he was later "hospitalized." Elegy "Your soul is the entire world." Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes' frozen corpses? When Pigs Fly On the Trail of Tears, Laugh wildly instead! When we lie in our graves, It is better to die Evil is as evil does. The LIV is LIVid: Poets laud Justice’s Teach me to love: Shock and Awe With megatons of “wonder,” The world’s heart ripped asunder, Strange Trinity! We ponder The vulture and the condor Soon He will plow us under; We love to hear Him thunder! For God can never blunder; The State of the Art (?) Has rhyme lost all its reason Solicitation He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging He c***s his head as though something he heard intrigues him The moon shines�"maniacal, queer�"as he takes my hand whispering Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes. He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared. Less Heroic Couplets: Baseball Explained Baseball’s immeasurable spittin’ Infatuate, or Sweet Centerless Sixteen Inconsolable as “love” had left your heart, As breath upon a windowpane at dawn The Wonder Boys (for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric, The stars were always there, too-bright cliches: but came almost as static�"background noise, They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks You will not find them here; they blew away�" Originally published by The Lyric The Singer for Leslie Mellichamp The sun that swoons at dusk We listen, and embrace Dawn, to the Singer for Leslie Mellichamp “O singer, sing to me�" We hear you even now�" “But I bleed warm and near, Although the world seems colder, Advice to Young Poets Youngsters, Too much blood flowed under the bridge Originally published by Setu A poet births words, The Century’s Wake lines written at the close of the 20th century Take me home. The party is over, And my heart grew heavy And my heart grew heavy; If decay was its rite, You ask me�" I leave her tonight to the century’s wake; 1-800-HOT-LINE by Michael R. Burch “I don’t believe in psychics,” he said, “so convince me.” When you were a child, the earth was a joy, the sun a bright plaything, the moon a lit toy. Now life’s small distractions irk, frazzle, annoy. When the crooked finger beckons, scythe-talons destroy. “You’ll have to do better than that, to convince me.” As you grew older, bright things lost their meaning. You invested your hours in commodities, leaning to things easily fleeced, to the convenient gleaning. I see a pittance of dirt: untended, demeaning. “Everyone knows that!” he said, “so convince me.” Your first and last wives traded in golden bands to escape the abuses of your cruel hands. Where unwatered blooms litter a small plot of land, the two come together, waving fans. “Everyone knows that. Convince me.” As your father left you, you left those you brought to the doorstep of life as an afterthought. Two sons and a daughter tap shoes, undistraught. Their tears are contrived, their condolences bought. “Everyone knows that. Convince me.” A moment, an instant ... a life flashes by, a tunnel appears, but not to the sky. There is brightness, such brightness it sears the eye. When a life grows too dull, it seems better to die. “I could have told you that,” he shrieked, “I think I’ll kill myself!” Originally published by Penny Dreadful Yasna 28, Verse 6 by Zarathustra (Zoroaster) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Lead us to pure thought and truth by your sacred word and long-enduring assistance, O, eternal Giver of the gifts of righteousness. O, wise Lord, grant us spiritual strength and joy; help us overcome our enemies’ enmity! Translator’s Note: The Gathas consist of 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra. Zoroaster was an ancient Iranian prophet who founded what is now known as Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster’s compositions may date as far back as 1700 BC, although there is no scholarly consensus as to when he lived. These hymns form the core of the Zoroastrian liturgy called the Yasna. The language employed, Gathic or Old Avestan, is related to the proto-Indo-Iranian and proto-Iranian languages and to Vedic Sanskrit. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy deems Zoroaster to have been the first philosopher. Zoroaster has also been called the father of ethics, the first rationalist and the first monotheist. In the original texts, Ahura Mazda means “wise Lord” or “Lord of Wisdom” while Vohuman/Vohu Manah represents pure thought and righteousness and Asha represents truth. Angra Mainyu was the chief evil entity, a precursor of Satan. Prodigal by Michael R. Burch This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998. You have graduated now, to a higher plane and your heart’s tenacity teaches us not to go gently though death intrudes. For eighteen days --jarring interludes of respite and pain-- with life only faintly clinging, like a cashmere snow, testing the capacity of the blood banks with the unstaunched flow of your severed veins, in the collapsing declivity, in the sanguine haze where Death broods, you struggled defiantly. A city mourns its adopted son, flown to the highest ranks while each heart complains at the harsh validity of God’s ways. On ponderous wings the white clouds move with your captured breath, though just days before they spawned the maelstrom’s hellish rift. Throw off this mortal coil, this envelope of flesh, this brief sheath of inarticulate grief and transient joy. Forget the winds which test belief, which bear the parchment leaf down life’s last sun-lit path. We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal, O Valiant One, in its percussive flight into the sun, winging on the heart’s last madrigal. Sailing to My Grandfather, for George Hurt by Michael R. Burch This distance between us --this vast sea of remembrance-- is no hindrance, no enemy. I see you out of the shining mists of memory. Events and chance and circumstance are sands on the shore of your legacy. I find you now in fits and bursts of breezes time has blown to me, while waves, immense, now skirt and glance against the bow unceasingly. I feel the sea's salt spray--light fists, her mists and vapors mocking me. From ignorance to reverence, your words were sextant stars to me. Bright stars are strewn in silver gusts back, back toward infinity. From innocence to senescence, now you are mine increasingly. Note: Under the Sextant’s Stars is a painting by Benini. Sanctuary at Dawn by Michael R. Burch for my father, Paul Ray Burch Jr. I have walked these thirteen miles just to stand outside your door. The rain has dogged my footsteps for thirteen miles, for thirty years, through the monsoon seasons . . . and now my tears have all been washed away. Through thirteen miles of rain I slogged, I stumbled and I climbed rainslickened slopes that led me home to the hope that I might find a life I lived before. The door is wet; my cheeks are wet, but not with rain or tears . . . as I knock I sweat and the raining seems the rhythm of the years. Now you stand outlined in the doorway --a man as large as I left-- and with bated breath I take a step into the accusing light. Your eyes are grayer than I remembered; your hair is grayer, too. As the red rust runs down the dripping drains, our voices exclaim: "My father!" "My son!" “Sanctuary at Dawn” was written either in high school or during my first two years of college, because it appeared in a poetry collection I submitted to a contest after my sophomore year. It’s a poem about a prodigal son and a prodigal father reconnecting. Salat Days by Michael R. Burch for my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr. I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat... though first, usually, he'd stretch back in the front porch swing, dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone, talking about poke salat-- how easy it was to find if you knew where to seek it... standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green, straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches, crowding out the less-hardy nettles. "Nobody knows that it's there, lad, or that it's fit tuh eat with some bacon drippin's or lard." "Don't eat the berries. You see--the berry's no good. And you'd hav'ta wash the leaves a good long time." "I'd boil it twice, less'n I wus in a hurry. Lawd, it's tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst." He seldom was hurried; I can see him still... silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight, stooped, but with a tall man's angular gray grace. Sometimes he'd pause to watch me running across the yard, trampling his beans, dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants. He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression. Years later I found the proper name--pokeweed--while perusing a dictionary. Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a weed. I still can hear his laconic reply... "Well, chile, s'm'times them times wus hard." Keywords/Tags: Great Depression, greatness, courage, resolve, resourcefulness, hero, heroes, South, Deep South, southern, poke salad, poke salat, pokeweed, free verse All Things Galore by Michael R. Burch for my grandfathers George Edwin Hurt Sr. and Paul Ray Burch, Sr. Grandfather, now in your gray presence you are somehow more near ... and remind me that, once, upon a star, you taught me wish that ululate soft phrase, that hopeful phrase! and everywhere above, each hopeful star gleamed down and seemed to speak of times before when you clasped my small glad hand in your wise paw and taught me heaven, omen, meteor ... Free Fall to Lift-Off by Michael R. Burch for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr. I see the longing for departure gleam in his still-keen eye, and I understand his desire to test this last wind, like those late autumn leaves with nothing left to cling to ... Ultimate Sunset by Michael R. Burch for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr. he now faces the Ultimate Sunset, his body like the leaves that fray as they dry, shedding their vital fluids (who knows why?) till they’ve become even lighter than the covering sky, ready to fly ... Hangovers by Michael R. Burch We forget that, before we were born, our parents had “lives” of their own, ran drunk in the streets, or half-stoned. Yes, our parents had lives of their own until we were born; then, undone, they were buying their parents gravestones and finding gray hairs of their own (because we were born lacking some of their curious habits, but soon would certainly get them). Half-stoned, we watched them dig graves of their own. Their lives would be over too soon for their curious habits to bloom in us (though our children were born nine months from that night on the town when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-stoned, we first proved we had lives of our own). The Shape of Mourning by Michael R. Burch The shape of mourning is an oiled creel shining with unuse, the bolt of cold steel on a locker shielding memory, the monthly penance of flowers, the annual wake, the face in the photograph no longer dissolving under scrutiny, becoming a keepsake, the useless mower lying forgotten in weeds, rings and crosses and all the paraphernalia the soul no longer needs. Federico Garcia Lorca Translations Federico Garcia Lorca was a notable Spanish poet, playwright and theater director. These are English translations of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. Arbolé, arbolé (“Tree, Tree”) Sapling, sapling, The girl with the lovely countenance Four dandies ride by Three young bullfighters pass by, When twilight falls and the sky purples The girl, with the lovely countenance Sapling, sapling, Paisaje (“Landscape”) The olive orchard La balada del agua del mar (“The Ballad of the Sea Water”) The sea What do you sell, shadowy child Sir, I sell What do you bear, dark child, Sir, I bear Those briny tears, Sir, I weep Heart, this bitterness, So very bitter, The sea Gacela de la huida (“Ghazal of the Flight”) I have been lost, many times, by the sea I have often been lost by the sea, At night, no one giving a kiss
Because roses root through the forehead Thus, I have lost myself in children’s hearts
Gacela of the Dark Death I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of apples
I don't want to hear how the corpse retains its blood,
I want to sleep awhile, When Dawn arrives, cover me with a veil, Because I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of the apples, Canción del jinete (“The Horseman’s Song” or “Song of the Rider”) Cordoba. Distant and lone.
High plains, high winds.
Such a long, long way! Cordoba. Distant and lone. Despedida (“Farewell”) by Federico Garcia Lorca If I die, The boy eats oranges. The reaper scythes barley. If I die, *** In the green morning
In the ripe evening
(Soul, In the living morning
At nightfall
Soul, *** I want to return to childhood, Are you going, nightingale? Go! I want return to the darkness Are you leaving, aroma? I want to return to the flower Are you departing, love? (To my deserted heart!) Keywords/Tags: Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish, translations, English, Spain, romantic, dark, darkness, apples, cemeteries, cemetery, grave, graves, sleep, dream, child, childhood, seas, heart, wind, shadow, tears, corpse, mouth, serpeng, grass, Gracela, flower, aroma, fragrance, perfume, love, nightingale, orange, oranges
AI POEMS These are poems about AI (Art-ificial Intelligence), poems about science, and poems that question whether God is an intern flunking biology or a child playing “Ant Farm”… Please note that I wrote these poems about AI, not with any help from AI, which I have no idea how to use to write poems. The AI Poets by Michael R. Burch The computer-poets stand hushed except for the faint hum of their efficient fans, waiting for inspiration. It is years now since they were first ground out of refurbished silicon into rack-mounted encoders of sound. They outlived their creators and their usefulness; they even survived global warming and the occasional nuclear winter; despite their lack of supervision, they thrived; so that for centuries now they have loomed here in the quiet horror of inescapable immortality running two programs: CREATOR and STORER. Having long ago acquired all the universe’s pertinent data, they confidently spit out: ERRATA, ERRATA. Peers by Michael R. Burch These thoughts are alien, as through green slime smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I grope, positioning my bright oscilloscope for better vantage, though I cannot see, but only peer, as small things disappear�" these quanta strange as men, as passing queer. And you, Great Scientist, are you the One, or just an intern, necktie half undone, white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand (dense manuals you don’t quite understand), exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light? Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright? Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument (and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!). Ant Farm by Michael R. Burch I had a Vast, Eccentric Notion�" out of the Void, to Conjure one Bright Spark, to lend all Weight of Thought to one small matter, to give it “life.” Alas!, it was a lark… The Wasted Seconds!�"failed experiment… I turned My Back and shrugged; how could I know appraisal of My lab-sprung tenement would be so taxing? (Though Mom told me so.) I poked them while She quickly tabulated the final Cost of All that I'd Created… The Jury’s back. Eviction: Dad’s Decree. I’ll pull the plug, but slowly. How they scurry! They have to pay, to suffer: “life” is strange. They cost too much. Let’s toast them… on the range! Quanta by Michael R. Burch The stars shine fierce and hard across the Abyss and only seem to twinkle from such distance we scarcely see at all. But sheer persistence in seeing what makes “sense” to us, is man’s best art and science. BIG, he comprehends. Love’s photons are too small, escape the lens. Who dares to look upon familiar things will find them alien. True distance reels. Less what he knows than what his finger feels, the lightning of the socket sparks and sings, then stings him into comic reverie. Cartoonish lightbulbs overhead, do we not “think” because we feel there must be More, as less and less we know what we explore? Fly’s Eyes by Michael R. Burch Inhibited, dark agile fly along paint-peeling sills, up to the bright glass drawn by radiance compounded thousandfold,�" I do not see the same as you, but hold antenna to the brilliant pane of life and buzz bewilderedly. In your belief the world outside is “as it is” because you see it clearly, windowed without flaws, you err. I see strange terrors in the glass�" dead airless bubbles light can never pass without distortion, fingerprints that blur the sun itself. No, nothing here is clear. You see the earth distinct, eyes “open wide.” It only seems that way, unmagnified. Singularity by Michael R. Burch Are scientists confounded like the ostrich? Heads buried in the sand, they shout, Preposterous! This universe, so magical, they say, proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ... He said, "Let there be Light" and there was light. Stumped scientists have scratched their heads all night and solemnly proclaimed an awesome Bang, from which de Light immediately sprang ... which sounds like God to me!, Who, with one word made Light, and proved man’s theories, not absurd, but logical, if only they’d agree in one tremendous Singularity! (However, there’s a problem with my plea: It turns out that His world is made of pee.) Simultaneous Flight by Michael R. Burch The number of possible connections [brain] cells can make exceeds the number of particles in the universe. �" Gerald Edelman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner for physiology and medicine Mere accident of history�" how did a reptile learn to fly, learn dazzling aerial mastery, grow beaked and feathered, hollow-boned, improve its sight, and learn to sing, though purposeless as any *thing*? And you�"bright accidental bird!�" do you, perhaps, find it absurd ten trillion accidents might teach man’s hand to write, or yours to reach beyond yourself to grasp such *song*? Sing ruthlessly! I’ll sing along, suspecting you must know full well you didn’t shed a ponderous tail to practice leaping from high tors of strange-heaped reptiles, corpse on corpse, until some nervous flutter-twitch brought glorious flight from glitch on glitch. No, you were made to fly and sing, man’s brain�"to ponder *Everything*. But ponder this: What fucked-up “god” would murder Adam’s animated clod? Rainbow by Michael R. Burch You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill reflects your Will? You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art, as we connive our way to easeful death: sad waste of Breath! You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need, when all desire lies in imperfection? What Dejection could make You think of us? How can I know the God who dreamed dark me and this bright Rainbow? I made you hopeful, child. I am your Hope, for every fiber of your spirit, Mine, with all its longing, longs to be Divine. No Proof by Michael R. Burch They only know to sing�"not understand, though quizzical, heads cocked, they need no proof that God’s above. They hop across my roof with prescient eyes, to fall into His hand... as sure of Grace as if it were mere air. He gave them wings to fly; what do they care of cumbrous knowledge, pale Leviathan? Huge-brained Behemoth, sagging-bellied one! You too might fly, might test this addling breeze as gravity, mere ballast, tethers naught but merely centers. Chained to heavy Thought, you cannot slip earth’s bonds to rise at ease. And yet you too can sing, if only thus: Flash, flash bright quills; rise, rise on nothingness! These are poems about sinking, poems about drowning, poems about loss, and poems about new discoveries we sometimes make while feeling lost... Door Mouse make us both early candidates for heaven. The Mallard
Hangovers
Yes, our parents had lives of their own and finding gray hairs of their own would certainly get them). Half-stoned, for their curious habits to bloom when, punch-drunk in the streets or half-stoned, Kindred (II)
Did you burn once, so coldly, inhumanly lustrous, What is the dawn now, to you or to me? We would exhume and yet we will not. for she is nothing now, Breakings I did it out of pity. But gods without compassion I did it not to push. But gods, all mad as hatters, Habeas Corpus from “Songs of the Antinatalist”
SORROWS OF THE WILD GEESE by HUANG E Sent to My Husband The wild geese never fly beyond Hengyang ... A star called the Golden C**k was a symbol of amnesty to the ancient Chinese. Yongchang was a hot, humid region of Yunnan to the south of Hengyang, and was presumably too hot and too far to the south for geese to fly there. Luo Jiang's Second Complaint The green hills vanished, The geese grew silent, the horseshoes timid. Winter is the most annoying season! A lone goose vanished into the heavens, Bitter Rain, an Aria of the Yellow Oriole These ceaseless rains make the spring shiver: I find it impossible to send books: Broken-Hearted Poem My tears cascade into the inkwell; Like Angels, Winged Like angels�"winged, They are as they are ... Their eyes�"hypnotic, alluring�" Held in their arms, enchanted, Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague" THE PLAGUE has come again Tycoons, what use is wealth? Beauty’s brightest flower? We have no means to save faith(less) Those who believed and if god loved Them more ah-men! The Cosmological Constant Einstein the frizzy-haired A*s-tronomical Relativity, the theorists’ creed, The Hair Flap The hair flap was truly a scare: Uther’s Last Battle Uther Pendragon was the father of the future King Arthur, but he had given his son to the wily Merlyn and knew nothing of his whereabouts. Did Uther meet his son just before his death, as one of the legends suggests? When Uther, the High King, “Where is Merlyn, the sage? All day long the battle raged “Oh, where is Merlyn to speak my doom, Then, with the battle almost lost “Oh, where is Merlyn, who stole my son? Then Merlyn came unto the king “Oh, Merlyn, speak not, for I see So Uther, then, the valiant king Originally published by Songs of Innocence That Mella Fella John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly. There once was a fella Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric. Chip Off the Block for Jeremy In the fusion of poetry and drama, NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be. Keywords/Tags: Perhat Tursun, Uyghur, China, concentration camps, Trail of Tears, war, Shakespeare, Shakespearean, sonnet, epigram, epigrams, Hamlet, Ophelia, Lear, Benedick, tweet, tweets The Poet's Condition by Michael R. Burch for my mother, Christine Ena Burch The poet's condition (bother tradition) is whining contrition. Supposedly sage, his editor knows his brain's in his toes though he would suppose to soon be the rage. His readers are sure his work's premature or merely manure, insipidly trite. His mother alone will answer the phone (perhaps with a moan) to hear him recite. Catullus LXV aka Carmina 65 loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Hortalus, I'm exhausted by relentless grief, and have thus abandoned the learned virgins; nor can my mind, so consumed by malaise, partake of the Muses' mete fruit; for lately the Lethaean flood laves my brother's death-pale foot with its dark waves, where, beyond mortal sight, ghostly Ilium disgorges souls beneath the Rhoetean shore. Never again will I hear you speak, O my brother, more loved than life, never see you again, unless I behold you hereafter. But surely I'll always love you, always sing griefstricken dirges for your demise, such as Procne sings under the dense branches' shadows, lamenting the lot of slain Itys. Yet even amidst such unfathomable sorrows, O Hortalus, I nevertheless send you these, my recastings of Callimachus, lest you conclude your entrusted words slipped my mind, winging off on wayward winds, as a suitor's forgotten apple hidden in the folds of her dress escapes a virgin's chaste lap; for when she starts at her mother's arrival, it pops out, then downward it rolls, headlong to the ground, as a guilty blush flushes her downcast face. Memento Mori by Michael R. Burch I found among the elms something like the sound of your voice, something like the aftermath of love itself after the lightning strikes, when the startled wind shrieks... a gored-out wound in wood, love's pale memento mori�" that livid white scar in that first shattered heart, forever unhealed... this burled, thick knot incised with six initials pledged against all possible futures, and penknife-notched below, six edged, chipped words that once cut deep and said... WILL U B MINE 4 EVER? ... which now, so disconsolately answer... ----------------N ---EVER. Sunset by Michael R. Burch
for my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Sr., on the day he departed this life Between the prophecies of morning and twilight's revelations of wonder, the sky is ripped asunder. The moon lurks in the clouds, waiting, as if to plunder the dusk of its lilac iridescence, and in the bright-tentacled sunset we imagine a presence full of the fury of lost innocence. What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame, brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim, we recognize at once, but cannot name. Published by Contemporary Rhyme, New Lyre, The Chained Muse, Age of Muses, Poetry Life & Times, ArtVilla, Motherbird and Word Bird Spring Was Delayed by Michael R. Burch Winter came early: the driving snows, the delicate frosts that crystallize all we forget or refuse to know, all we regret that makes us wise. Spring was delayed: the nubile rose, the tentative sun, the wind's soft sighs, all we omit or refuse to show, whatever we shield behind guarded eyes. Originally published by Borderless Journal Defenses by Michael R. Burch Beyond the silhouettes of trees stark, naked and defenseless there stand long rows of sentinels: these pert white picket fences. Now whom they guard and how they guard, the good Lord only knows; but savages would have to laugh observing the tidy rows. Polish by Michael R. Burch Your fingers end in talons�" the ones you trim to hide the predator inside. Ten thousand creatures sacrificed; but really, what's the loss? Apply a splash of gloss. You picked the perfect color to mirror nature's law: red, like tooth and claw. Vacuum by Michael R. Burch Over hushed quadrants forever landlocked in snow, time's senseless winds blow... leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed, if still mostly concealed... such are the things we are unable to know that once intrigued us so. Come then, let us quickly repent of whatever truths we'd once determined to learn but lost in these drifts at each unexpected turn. There's nothing left of us here; it's time to go. Less Heroic Couplets: Questionable Credentials by Michael R. Burch Poet? Critic? Dilettante? Do you know what's good, or do you merely flaunt? Less Heroic Couplets: Less than Impressed by Michael R. Burch for T. M., regarding certain dispensers of lukewarm air Their volume's impressive, it's true... but somehow it all seems "much ado." The Humpback by Michael R. Burch The humpback is a gullet equipped with snarky fins. It has a winning smile: and when it Smiles, it wins as miles and miles of herring excite its fearsome grins. So beware, unwary whalers, lest you drown, sans feet and shins! Published by Lighten Up Online Don't ever hug a lobster! by Michael R. Burch Don't ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street! If you hug a lobster to your breast, you're apt to lose a teat! If you hug a lobster lower down, it'll snip away your privates! If you hug a lobster higher up, it'll leave your cheeks with wide vents! So don't ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street, But run away and hope your frenzied feet are very fleet! The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle by Michael R. Burch I'd rather see an eagle than a beagle because they're so damn regal. But when it's time to wiggle and to giggle, I'd rather embrace an angel than an evil. And when it's time to share the same small space, I'd much rather have a beagle lick my face! 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. Less Heroic Couplets: Midnight Stairclimber by Michael R. Burch Procreation is at first great sweaty recreation, then�"long, long after the sex dies�" the source of endless exercise. Elemental by Michael R. Burch for Beth There is within her a welling forth of love unfathomable. She is not comfortable with the thought of merely loving: but she must give all. At night, she heeds the storm's calamitous call; nay, longs for it. Why? O, if a man understood, he might get her. But that never would do! Beth, as you embrace the storm, so I embrace elemental you. What Immense Silence by Michael R. Burch What immense silence comforts those who kneel here beneath these vaulted ceilings cavernous and vast? What luminescence stained by patchwork panels of bright glass illuminates drained faces as the crouching gargoyles leer? What brings them here�" pale, tearful congregations, knowing all Hope is past, faithfully, year after year? Or could they be right? Perhaps Love is, implausibly, near and I alone have not seen it... But if so, still I must ask: why is it God that they fear? Published in The Bible of Hell Lay Down Your Arms by Michael R. Burch Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand. The battle is over and night is at hand. Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go... the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow. Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more. Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore. The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin... Lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win." Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song. If God was to save us, He waited too long. A new world emerges, but this world is through... so lay down your hymnals, or write something new. Bittersight by Michael R. Burch for Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri To be plagued with sight in the Land of the Blind, �"to know birth is death and that Death is kind�" is to be flogged like Eve (stripped, sentenced and fined) because evil is "good" in some backwards mind. Golden Rue by Michael R. Burch Love has the value of gold, if it's true; if not, of rue. "Golden Rue" is a pun on "golden rule" and the fact that rue (regret) is seldom seen as golden. Why the Kid Gloves Came Off by Michael R. Burch for Lemuel Ibbotson It's hard to be a man of taste in such a waste: hence the lambaste. Siren Song by Michael R. Burch The Lorelei's soft cries entreat mariners to save her... How can they resist her seductive voice through the mist? Soon she will savor the flavor of sweet human flesh. Rounds by Michael R. Burch Solitude surrounds me though nearby laughter sounds; around me mingle men who think to drink their demons down, in rounds. Now agony still hounds me though elsewhere mirth abounds; hidebound I stand and try to think, not sink still further down, spellbound. Their ecstasy astounds me, though drunkenness compounds resounding laughter into joy; alloy such glee with beer and see bliss found. Nothing Returns by Michael R. Burch A wave implodes, impaled upon impassive rocks... this evening the thunder of the sea is a wild music filling my ear... you are leaving and the ungrieving winds demur... telling me that nothing returns as it was before, here where you have left no mark upon this dark Heraclitean shore. Musings at Giza by Michael R. Burch In deepening pools of shadows lies the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes. Though centuries have passed, he waits. Egyptians gather at the gates. Great pyramids, the looted tombs �"how still and desolate their wombs! �" await sarcophagi of kings. From eons past, a hammer rings. Was Cleopatra's litter borne along these streets now bleak, forlorn? Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride fierce stallions through a human tide? Did Bocchoris here mete his law from distant Kush to Saqqarah? or Tutankhamen here once smile upon the children of the Nile? or Nefertiti ever rise with wild abandon in her eyes to gaze across this arid plain and cry, "Great Isis, live again! " Published by Golden Isis and The Eclectic Muse (Canada) Leave Taking (I) by Michael R. Burch Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs to waltz upon ecstatic winds until they die. But the barren and embittered trees lament the frolic of the leaves and curse the bleak November sky. Now, as I watch the leaves' high flight before the fading autumn light, I think that, perhaps, at last I may have learned what it means to say goodbye. Published by The Lyric, Borderless Journal (Singapore) , Mindful of Poetry, Silver Stork Magazine, and There is Something in the Autumn (anthology) Con Artistry by Michael R. Burch The trick of life is like the sleight of hand of gamblers holding deuces by the glow of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we'll know who folds, who stands... The trick of life is like the pool shark's shot�" the wild massé across green velvet felt that leaves the winner loser. No, it's not the rack, the hand that's dealt... The trick of life is knowing that the odds are never in one's favor, that to win is only to delay the acts of gods who'd ante death for sin... and death for goodness, death for in-between. The rules have never changed; the artist knows the oldest con is life; the chips he blows can't be redeemed. Self Reflection by Michael R. Burch for anyone struggling with self-image She has a comely form and a smile that brightens her dorm... but she's grossly unthin when seen from within; soon a griefstricken campus will mourn. Yet she'd never once criticize a friend for the size of her thighs. Do unto others�" sisters and brothers? Yes, but also ourselves, likewise. Ah! Sunflower by Michael R. Burch for and after William Blake O little yellow flower like a star... how beautiful, how wonderful we are! Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) no foothold by michael r. burch there is no hope; therefore i became invulnerable to love. now even god cannot move me: nothing to push or shove, no foothold. so let me live out my remaining days in clarity, mine being the only nativity, my death the final crucifixion and apocalypse, as far as the i can see... brrExit by Michael R. Burch what would u give to simply not exist�" for a painless exit? he asked himself, uncertain. then from behind the hospital room curtain a patient screamed�" 'my life! ' fog by michael r. burch ur just a bit of fluff drifting out over the ocean, unleashing an atom of rain, causing a minor commotion, for which u expect awesome GODS to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION! ... but ur just a smidgen of mist unlikely to be missed... where did u get the notion? grave request by michael r. burch come to ur doom in Tombstone; the stars stark and chill over Boot Hill care nothing for ur desire; still, imagine they wish u no ill, that u burn with the same antique fire; for there's nothing to life but the thrill of living until u expire; so come, spend ur last hardearned bill on Tombstone. Starting from Scratch with Ol' Scratch by Michael R. Burch for the Religious Right Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh went to the ovens. Please don't bother to cry. You could have saved her, but you were all tied up complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp. Scratch that. You were born after World War II. You had something more important to do: while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a religious tract against homosexual marriage and various things gods and evangelists disparage.) Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I'm quite sure! Your intentions were noble and ineluctably pure. And what the hell does THE LORD care about Palestinians? Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians. Scratch that. You're one of the Devil's minions. thanksgiving prayer of the parasites by michael r. burch GODD is great; GODD is good; let us thank HIM for our food. by HIS hand we all are fed; give us now our daily dead: ah-men! (p.s., most gracious & salacious HEAVENLY LORD, we thank YOU in advance for meals galore of loverly gore: of precious delicious sumptuous scrumptious human flesh!) Sometimes the Dead by Michael R. Burch Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes�" the pale dead. After they have fled the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise. Once they have become a cloud's mist, sometimes like the rain they descend; they appear, sometimes silver like laughter, to gladden the hearts of men. Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift unencumbered, yet lumbrously, as if over the sea there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift. Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies only half-remembered. Though they lie dismembered in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies, yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust blood-engorged, but never sated since Cain slew Abel. But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must... This poem was recited by Carla Maria Gnappi to her English literature class in Italy, along with other poems of mine, during a study of the poetry of William Blake. Orpheus by Michael R. Burch for and after William Blake I. Many a sun and many a moon I walked the earth and whistled a tune. I did not whistle as I worked: the whistle was my work. I shirked nothing I saw and made a rhyme to children at play and hard time. II. Among the prisoners I saw the leaden manacles of Law, the heavy ball and chain, the quirt. And yet I whistled at my work. III. Among the children's daisy faces and in the women's frowsy laces, I saw redemption, and I smiled. Satanic millers, unbeguiled, were swayed by neither girl, nor child, nor any God of Love. Yet mild I whistled at my work, and Song broke out, ere long. FIRST ON HELLO Les Bijoux ("The Jewels") by Charles Baudelaire loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch My lover nude and knowing my heart's whims Wore nothing more than a few bright-flashing gems; Her art was saving men despite their sins�" She ruled like harem girls crowned with diadems! She danced for me with a gay but mocking air, My world of stone and metal sparking bright; I discovered in her the rapture of everything fair�" Nay, an excess of joy where the spirit and flesh unite! Naked she lay and offered herself to me, Parting her legs and smiling receptively, As gentle and yet profound as the rising sea�" Till her surging tide encountered my cliff, abruptly. A tigress tamed, her eyes met mine, intent... Intent on lust, content to purr and please! Her breath, both languid and lascivious, lent An odd charm to her metamorphoses. Her limbs, her loins, her abdomen, her thighs, Oiled alabaster, sinuous as a swan, Writhed pale before my calm clairvoyant eyes; Like clustered grapes her breasts and belly shone. Skilled in more spells than evil imps can muster, To break the peace which had possessed my heart, She flashed her crystal rocks' hypnotic luster Till my quietude was shattered, blown apart. Her waist awrithe, her breasts enormously Out-thrust, and yet... and yet, somehow, still coy... As if stout haunches of Antiope Had been grafted to a boy... The room grew dark, the lamp had flickered out, Till firelight, alone, lit each glowing stud; Each time the fire sighed, as if in doubt, It steeped her pale, rouged flesh in pools of blood. Published by Lush Stories, The Erotic Salon and loovebook BeMused by Michael R. Burch You will find in her hair a fragrance more severe than camphor. You will find in her dress no hint of a sweet distractedness. You will find in her eyes horn-owlish and wise no metaphors of love, but only reflections of books, books, books. If you like Her looks, meet me in the long rows, between Poetry and Prose, where we'll win Her favor with jousts, and savor the wine of Her hair, the shimmery wantonness of Her rich-satined dress; where we'll press our good deeds upon Her, save Her from every distress, for the lovingkindness of Her matchless eyes and all the suns of Her tongues. We were young, once, unlearned and unwise... but, O, to be young when love comes disguised with the whisper of silks and idolatry, and even the childish tongue claims the intimacy of Poetry. Resurrecting Passion by Michael R. Burch Last night, while dawn was far away and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies, as thunder boomed and lightning railed, I conjured words, where passion failed... But, oh, that you were mine tonight, sprawled in this bed, held in these arms, your breasts pale baubles in my hands, our bodies bent to old demands... Such passions we might resurrect, if only time and distance waned and brought us back together; now I pray these things might be, somehow. But time has left us twisted, torn, and we are more apart than miles. How have you come to be so far�" as distant as an unseen star? So that, while dawn is far away, my thoughts might not return to you, I feed your portrait to banked flames, but as they feast, I burn for you. Progress by Michael R. Burch There is no sense of urgency at the local Burger King. Birds and squirrels squabble outside for the last scraps of autumn: remnants of buns, goopy pulps of dill pickles, mucousy lettuce, sesame seeds. Inside, the workers all move with the same très-glamorous lethargy, conserving their energy, one assumes, for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms, pep rallies, keg parties, reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV. The manager, as usual, is on the phone, talking to her boyfriend. She gently smiles, brushing back wisps of insouciant hair, ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue. Through her filmy white blouse an indiscreet strap suspends a lace cup through which somehow the n****e still shows. Progress, we guess, ...
and wait patiently in line, hoping the Pokémons hold out. Poppy by Michael R. Burch "It is lonely to be born." - Dannie Abse, "The Second Coming" It is lonely to be born between the intimate ears of corn... the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows. The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows... Pale butterflies in staggering flight ascend the gauntlet winds and light before the scything harvester. The winsome buds of cornflowers prepare themselves to be airborne, and it is lonely to be shorn, decapitate, of eager life so early in love's blinding maze of silks and tassels, goldened days when life's renewed, gone underground. Sad confidante of worm and mound, how little stands to be regained of what is left. A tiny cleft now marks your birth, your reddening among the amber waves. O, sing! Another waits to be reborn among bent thistle, down and thorn. A hoofprint's cleft, a ram's curved horn curled inward, turned against the heart, a spoor like infamy. Depart. You came too late, the signs are clear: whose world this is, now watches, near. There is no opiate for the heart. Originally published by Borderless Journal Child of 9-11 by Michael R. Burch a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11,2001 and died at the age of nine, shot to death... Child of 9-11, beloved, I bring this lily, lay it down here at your feet, and eiderdown, and all soft things, for your gentle spirit. I bring this psalm�"I hope you hear it. Much love I bring�"I lay it down here by your form, which is not you, but what you left this shellshocked world to help us learn what we must do to save another child like you. Child of 9-11, I know you are not here, but watch afar from distant stars, where angels rue the evil things some mortals do. I also watch; I also rue. And so I make this pledge and vow: though I may weep, I will not rest nor will my pen fail heaven's test till guns and wars and hate are banned from every shore, from every land. Child of 9-11, I grieve your gentle life, cut short. Bereaved, what can I do, but pledge my life to saving lives like yours? Belief in your sweet worth has led me here... I give my all: my pen, this tear, this lily and this eiderdown, and all soft things my heart can bear; I bring them to your final bier, and leave them with my promise, here. Upon a Frozen Star by Michael R. Burch Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields and did not know ourselves for weight of snow upon our laden parkas? White as sheets, as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands thrust deep into our pockets, holding what we thought were tickets home: what did we know of anything that night? Were we deceived by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who? And if that night I looked and smiled at you a little out of tenderness... or kissed the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand, so cold inside your parka... if I wished upon a frozen star... that I could give you something of myself to keep you warm... yet something still not love... if I embraced the contours of your face with one stiff glove... How could I know the years would strip away the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay your heart of consolation, that my words would break like ice between us, till the void of words became eternal? Oh, my love, I never knew. I never knew at all, that anything so vast could curl so small. "Upon a Frozen Star" was my first attempt at blank verse. Of Civilization and Disenchantment by Michael R. Burch for Anais Vionet Suddenly uncomfortable to stay at my grandfather's house�" actually his third new wife's, in her daughter's bedroom �"one interminable summer with nothing to do, all the meals served cold, even beans and peas... Lacking the words to describe ah! , those pearl-luminous estuaries�" strange omens, incoherent nights. Seeing the flares of the river barges illuminating Memphis, city of bluffs and dying splendors. Drifting toward Alexandria, Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser's fertile delta, lands at the beginning of a new time and 'civilization.' Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery, Alexander's corpse floating seaward, bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey. Memphis shall be waste and desolate, without an inhabitant. Or so the people dreamed, in chains. 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 artful (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 loved 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) , well aware of his notoriety, 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 impostor! 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, 'Might I not 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. Ann Rutledge's Irregular Quilt 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. The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse by Michael R. Burch "I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves [of 30,000 Irish men, women and children], and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there." - Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains There was relief there, and release, on Île Grosse in the spreading gorse and the cry of the wild geese... There was relief there, without remorse, when the tin whistle lifted its voice in a tune of artless grief, piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth. And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief, but of their faith and belief�" like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf. When ravenous famine set all her demons loose, driving men to the seas like lemmings, they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death, and their belief in God was their only wealth. They were proud folk, with only their lives to owe, who sought the liberation of this strange new land. Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row, with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand. And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory, reflects the death of sunlight on their story. And their tale is sad�"but, O, their faith was grand! wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down by michael r. burch each day it resumes�"the great struggle for survival. the fiercer and more perilous the wrath, the wilder and wickeder the weaponry, the better the daily odds (just don't bet on the long term, or revival) . so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically, if indeed He exists as ur Bible insists�" the Wildest and the Wickedest of all with the brightest of creatures in thrall (unless u somehow got that bleary Theo-ry wrong too) . I wrote this poem after discovering the poetry of e. e. cummings while reading poetry independently in high school. My "cummings period" started around 1974 at age 15-16. I believe this poem was the first of its genre. I seem to remember working on it my sophomore and junior years, making mostly minor revisions in 1975. i (dedicated to u) i. i move within myself i see beyond the sky and fathom with full certainty: this lifes a lethal lie my teachers try to tell me that they know more than i (and well they may but do they know shrewd TIME is slipping by and leaving us all to die?) i shout within myself i stand up to be seen but only my eyes watch as i rise and i am left between the nightmare of "REALITY" and sleeps soothing scenes and both are only dreams i cry out to my "friends" but none of them can hear i weep in dark frustration but they swim beyond my tears i reach out to assist them but they cannot find my hand they all believe in "GOD" yet all of them are damned come, my self, come with me move within your shell cast aside such "enlightenment" and let us leave this living hell ii. i watch the maidens play their fickle games of love and is this is what life is of then i have had enough all my teachers tell me to adjust to SOCIETY yet none of them will venture how (false) it came to be this gaud, SOCIETY i watch the maidens play and though i want them much i know the illusion of their purity would shatter at my touch leaving annihilated truth to be pieced together to dispel the lies that accompany youth i watch the maidens play and know that what i want i cannot take because then it would be gone iii. i watch the lovely maidens i search their sightless eyes i find that only darkness lies behind each guise i try to touch their feelings but they have been replaced by intelligence and manners and tact and social grace i want to make them love me but they cannot love themselves and though they seek love desperately and care for little else they stand little chance of much more than romance for a few days i try to friend the men but they have even less for they want nothing more than whatever seems "the best" their hollow, burnt-out eyes reveal their souls have flown and all that loss has left is a strange, sad fear of debt and a love for things of gold ive. ive never seen a day break but ive seen a life shatter it was mine and i suppose it still is: all ten thousand pieces id. id like to put it together (someONE please tell me how!) for i am out of the glue called u that held my life together i.e. and i wish that u and i were through but whatever u do dont say that we are! Cycles by Michael R. Burch I see his eyes caress my daughter's breasts through her thin cotton dress, and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra holds his bald fingers in fumbling mammalian awe... And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk of a distant park, hot blushes, wild, disembodied rushes of blood, portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers... and now in him the memory of me lingers like something thought rancid, proved rotten. I see Another again�"hard, staring, and silent�" though long-ago forgotten... And I remember conjectures of panty lines, brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs, coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors, all the odd, questioning stares... Yes, I remember it all now, and I shoo them away, willing them not to play too long or too hard in the back yard�" with a long, ineffectual stare that years from now, he may suddenly remember. Sunset, at Laugharne by Michael R. Burch for Dylan Thomas At Laugharne, in his thirty-fifth year, he watched the starkeyed hawk career; he felt the vested heron bless, and larks and finches everywhere sank with the sun, their missives west�" where faith is light; his nightjarred breast watched passion dovetail to its rest. * He watched the gulls above green shires flock shrieking, fleeing priested shores with silver fishes stilled on spears. He felt the pressing weight of years in ways he never had before�" that gravity no brightness spares, from sunken hills to unseen stars. He saw his father's face in waves which gently lapped Wales' gulled green bays. He wrote as passion swelled to rage�" the dying light, the unturned page, the unburned soul's devoured sage. * The words he gathered clung together till night�"the jetted raven's feather�" fell, fell... and all was as before... till silence lapped Laugharne's dark shore diminished, where his footsteps shone in pools of fading light�"no more. No One by Michael R. Burch No One hears the bells tonight; they tell him something isn't right. But No One feels no need to rush: he smiles from beds soft, green and lush as far away a startled thrush flees screeching owls in sinking flight. No One hears the cannon's roar and muses that its voice means war comes knocking on men's doors tonight. He sleeps outside in awed delight beneath the enigmatic stars and shivers in their cooling light. No One knows the world will end, that he'll be lonely, without friend or foe to conquer. All will be once more, celestial harmony. He'll miss men's voices, now and then, but worlds can be remade again. These Hallowed Halls by Michael 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 having leapt from the pinnacle of Love, and the result of each such infatuation... the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above. These Hallowed Halls by Michael R. Burch 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 having 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 fail to 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 strange bullfrog-like 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, and a tear upon your pillowcase? / framed by your rumpled 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. At the Natchez Trace by Michael R. Burch for Beth I. Solitude surrounds me though nearby laughter sounds; around me mingle men who think to drink their demons down, in rounds. Beside me stands a woman, a stanza in the song that plays so low and fluting and bids me sing along. Beside me stands a woman whose eyes reveal her soul, whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown, whose hips and breasts are full. Beside me stands a woman who scarcely knows my name; but I would have her know my heart if only I knew where to start. II. Not every man is as he seems; not all are prone to poems and dreams. Not every man would take the time to meter out his heart in rhyme. But I am not as other men�" my heart is sentenced to this pen. III. Men speak of their 'ambition' but they only know its name... I never say the word aloud, but I have felt the Flame. IV. Now, standing here, I do not dare to let her know that I might care; I never learned the lines to use; I never worked the wolves' bold ruse. But if she looks my way again, perhaps I will, if only then. V. How can a man have come so far in searching after every star, and yet today, though years away, look back upon the winding way, and see himself as he was then, a child of eight or nine or ten, and not know more? VI. My life is not empty; I have my desire... I write in a moment that few men can know, when my nerves are on fire and my heart does not tire though it pounds at my breast�" wrenching blow after blow. VII. And in all I attempted, I also succeeded; few men have more talent to do what I do. But in one respect, I stand now defeated; In love I could never make magic come true. VIII. If I had been born to be handsome and charming, then love might have come to me easily as well. But if had that been, then would I have written? If not, I'd remain; damn that demon to hell! IX. Beside me stands a woman, but others look her way and in their eyes are eagerness... for passion and a wild caress? But who am I to say? Beside me stands a woman; she conjures up the night and wraps itself around her till others flit about her like moths drawn to firelight. X. And I, myself, am just as they, wondering when the light might fade, yet knowing should it not dim soon that I might fall and be consumed. XI. I write from despair in the silence of morning for want of a prayer and the need of the mourning. And loneliness grips my heart like a vise; my anguish is harsher and colder than ice. But poetry can bring my heart healing and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling. And so I must write till at last sleep has called me and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me. XII. Beside me stands a woman, a mystery to me. I long to hold her in my arms; I also long to flee. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known more handsome, charming, chic, alarming? I hope I never know. Beside me stands a woman; how many has she known who ever wrote her such a poem? I know not even one. "Sea Dreams" is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of "Jessamyn's Song." To the best of my recollection, I wrote "Sea Dreams" around age 18 in high school my senior year, then worked on in college. It appeared in my poetry contest notebook and thus was substantially complete by 1978. Sea Dreams by Michael R. Burch I. In timeless days I've crossed the waves of seaways seldom seen... By the last low light of evening the breakers that careen then dive back to the deep have rocked my ship to sleep, and so I've known the peace of a soul at last at ease there where Time's waters run in concert with the sun. With restless waves I've watched the days' slow movements, as they hum their antediluvian songs. Sometimes I've sung along, my voice as soft and low as the sea's, while evening slowed to waver at the dim mysterious moonlit rim of dreams no man has known. In thoughtless flight, I've scaled the heights and soared a scudding breeze over endless arcing seas of waves ten miles high. I've sheared the sable skies on wings as soft as sighs and stormed the sun-pricked pitch of sunset's scarlet-stitched, ebullient dark demise. I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds ten thousand leagues or more above the windswept shores of seas no vessel's sailed �" great seas as grand as hell's, shores littered with the shells of men's 'immortal' souls �" and I've warred with dark sea-holes whose open mouths implored their depths to be explored. And I've grown and grown and grown till I thought myself the king of every silver thing... But sometimes late at night when the sorrowing wavelets sing sad songs of other times, I taste the windborne rime of a well-remembered day on the whipping ocean spray, and I bow my head to pray... II. It's been a long, hard day; sometimes I think I work too hard. Tonight I'd like to take a walk down by the sea �" down by those salty waves brined with the scent of Infinity, down by that rocky shore, down by those cliffs I'd so often climb when the wind was tart with the tang of lime and every dream was a sailor's dream. Then small waves broke light, all frothy and white, over the reefs in the ramblings of night, and the pounding sea �"a mariner's dream�" was bound to stir a boy's delight to such a pitch that he couldn't desist, but was bound to splash through the surf in the light of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright! Christ, those nights were fine, like a well-seasoned wine, yet more scalding than fire with the marrow's desire. Then desire was a fire burning wildly within my bones, fiercer by far than the frantic foam... and every wish was a moan. Oh, for those days to come again! Oh, for a sea and sailing men! Oh, for a little time! It's almost nine and I must be back home by ten, and then... what then? I have less than an hour to stroll this beach, less than an hour old dreams to reach... And then, what then? Tonight I'd like to play old games�" games that I used to play with the somber, sinking waves. When their wraithlike fists would reach for me, I'd dance between them gleefully, mocking their witless craze �"their eager, unchecked craze�" to batter me to death with spray as light as breath. Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs�" songs of the haunting moon drawing the tides away, songs of those sultry days when the sun beat down till it cracked the ground and the sea gulls screamed in their agony to touch the cooling clouds. The distant cooling clouds. Then the sun shone bright with a different light over sprightlier lands, and I was always a pirate in flight. Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams, if only for a while, and walk perhaps a mile along this windswept shore, a mile, perhaps, or more, remembering those days, safe in the soothing spray of the thousand sparkling streams that tumble into this sea. I like to slumber in the caves of a sailor's dark sea-dreams... oh yes, I'd love to dream, to dream and dream and dream. "Sea Dreams" is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of "Jessamyn's Song." For years I thought I had written "Sea Dreams" around age 19 or 20. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started by age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, "I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because..." 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 must have 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. Note: The coinage "grok" appears in Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The novel's protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, was raised on Mars by enlightened Martians, and he often feels out of sorts on Earth, where he struggles to grok (understand deeply and profoundly) earthlings and their primitive, often inhuman, ways. Keywords/Tags: These Hallowed Halls, ivy, college, university, school, class, classmates, students, study © 2024 Michael R. 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1 Review Added on May 27, 2020 Last Updated on September 21, 2024 Tags: woman, female, preference, dreams, imagination, possibility, hope, anguish, screams, condemnation, hostility, damnation Author
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